The British Army, information management and the First World War revolution in military affairs

Information Management (IM) – the systematic ordering, processing and channelling of information within organisations – forms a critical component of modern military command and control systems. As a subject of scholarly enquiry, however, the history of military IM has been relatively poorly served. Employing new and under-utilised archival sources, this article takes the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of the First World War as its case study and assesses the extent to which its IM system contributed to the emergence of the modern battlefield in 1918. It argues that the demands of fighting a modern war resulted in a general, but not universal, improvement in the BEF’s IM techniques, which in turn laid the groundwork, albeit in embryonic form, for the IM systems of modern armies. KEY WORDS: British Army, Information Management, First World War, Revolution in Military Affairs, Adaptatio

How we remember them: the 1914-18 war today

The annual commemoration of the fallen in the world wars and small wars Britain has been involved in takes place on the nearest Sunday to "Remembrance Day", 11 November. On that day in 1918, at 11 o'clock in the morning, the guns fell silent on the western front for the first time since August 1914

‘Mediating Remembrance; Personalization and Celebrity in Television Remembrance’

In the period since the First World War both conflict and remembrance have been experienced at a personal level and through a range of media. This article discusses the growing significance of broadcast remembrance texts focusing upon three recent television texts: The Fallen (BBC 2) (Matthews, 2008), My Boy Jack (ITV) (Kirk, 2007) and My Family at War (BBC 1) (Austin, 2008). It is suggested that personalization, celebrity and domesticity within television remembrance enables mediated remembrance to serve as an interface between the personal, domestic, unofficial and often feminized sides of remembrance and its national and official role. These texts both emphasize and legitimate the private and domestic sides of grief by portraying them within the public sphere. In so doing they engage with many who may feel excluded from traditional remembrance events and elicit an empathy for the bereaved which is removed from any support for conflicts and war