"An Army of Brigadiers"

[Gunner Bailey]

16 hours ago, Steven Broomfield said:

I'm not allowed in Ikea: apparently (according to Mrs Broomfield) my incipient claustrophobia would result in a panic attack in their somewhat restrictive ambience.

 

IKEA have a cure for that - Hot dog or meat balls. Cheap and cheerful......

[Steven Broomfield]

Thank God I'm not allowed.

 

And, back on topic, I have ordered a copy (using the Forum link, naturally) as the festive Book List is getting a bit long.

[Crunchy]

An Army of Brigadiers: British Brigade Commanders at the Battle of Arras 1917, Trevor Harvey, Helion and Company Limited, Solihull UK, 2017, 433pp

    Occasionally there arrives a book with a great deal to offer, but falls short of  meeting expectations through its presentation and written style. Trevor Harvey’s An Army of Brigadiers: British Brigade Commanders at the Battle of Arras 1917 is one such volume, which is unfortunate for he has undertaken an enormous amount of research on a subject that has not been considered previously.  Pursuing a similar theme to Andy Simpson’s Directing Operations: British Corps Command on the Western Front 1914-1918, and William Westerman’s Soldiers and Gentleman: Australian Battalion Commanders in the Great War, 1914-1918, Harvey provides a study of British brigade commanders over the period mid-October 1916 to mid-May 1917, culminating in the Battle of Arras.  In doing so he seeks to identify the roles, responsibilities and functions of a brigade commander during the Great War.

    

     The strength and credibility of this book lies in the remarkable breadth and depth of research the author has undertaken as part of his PhD thesis on the subject, using a wide range of primary and secondary sources. The choice of the Battle of Arras is sensible, being a major campaign mid-way through the war when the lessons from the Somme were beginning to be implemented across the BEF through the SS series of pamphlets.

 

    Following an Introduction which sets the background and purpose of his work, the second chapter provides an overview of the results of Harvey’s consideration of 116 brigadier-generals whose brigades played some part in the Battle of Arras in the spring of 1917.  Here he relates the theory and practice of brigade command, together with the functions of the brigade staff, followed by the results of his analysis of the 116 subjects. These include the arms into which they were commissioned, the routes by which they were commissioned, their ages, whether they were Staff College graduates or not, their campaign service, the casualties they suffered, and so on. All of this provides some very interesting and worthwhile statistics and information, but whether they add materially to the principal focus of the study is questionable. 

 

    We then move onto the core of the book in which Harvey narrows his survey,  considering five brigadier-generals from different backgrounds and formations, each being addressed in a seperate chapter. In doing so he makes a good choice of cases to enable a fair and objective study to be undertaken. Drawing them from different divisions across five different corps that participated in the battle, he selects a Canadian, two Scots, an Irishman and an Englishman, one of whom was a civilian part-time soldier prior to the war, and the rest Regulars, including a dug-out. These range from the then youngest brigadier-general (34) to one of over fifty years of age, each with different service and staff careers pre-war. This is further varied by the nature of the divisions each of the five brigades were allotted to - one Dominion, one Regular, one Territorial, and two New Army.  This breadth of variation provides a sound basis for analysis, but one questions whether it is suited to defining the role, responsibilities and functions of a brigade commander, which are the same irrespective of a commander’s background or the type of formation the brigade served in.  
    
    Each of the five chapters follow a generally similar format, of which the major portion comprises the service record, performance, and relationships of the brigade commander, officers who commanded each of the four battalions in the brigade, the brigade majors, and staff captains - including several of those who held these appointments outside of the period under consideration -  together with the brigade’s activities in the months leading up to Arras, and concluding with a summary of its contribution to the battle.  These are supplemented, but not in all cases, with issues such as the background of the corps and divisions the brigade served in, the degree of churn or stability of key staff, and similarly that of battalions due to casualties, leading to matters of training and capability. 

 

    In approaching his study and the reasons for it, and despite researching the pre-war doctrine on the matter, one senses that Harvey’s knowledge of the fundamentals of command and control within military organisations is limited. Nor does he seem to understand the relationship between command on the one hand, and control on the other, and how each work within the army. Thus his premise for identifying the essence of the respective roles and responsibilities within the hierarchical structure of the British Army, although valid in the narrow sense he portrays them in his Introduction, is simplistic. In the end, the issues Harvey concludes about brigade command are limited in their scope; there is more to the subject than he addresses. 

 

    Nonetheless, the book offers valid insights of how brigade commanders, their staffs, and their subordinate units operated and interacted with each other, together with a sound assessment of the performance of each of the five commanders under scrutiny. Similarly, one learns a great deal about the personalities involved, their relationships with their staff and subordinate commanding officers, their styles of command, and the issues confronting them. Here Harvey seeks to establish the degree of confidence each brigade commander had in his subordinates, and the capabilities of their battalions. This is an important point, which affects the priorities in exercising command, and the manner and extent to which control is effected both up and down the chain of command. Additionally, the book provides a snapshot into each of these brigades within a specified period of the war, their strengths and weakness, the activities they were engaged in, and their contribution to the battle.  In all these issues An Army of Brigadiers makes a useful contribution to the historiography of the British Army mid-way through the war. In essence, however, this is more about the brigadier-generals themselves, the issues they faced, and the brigades they commanded, rather than a solid study of the intended purpose the author set to to define - what constituted the elements of brigade command, and his conclusion falls short of a fully rounded understanding of them.

 

    Supplementing the chapters are several good, clear, coloured maps, numerous tables within the chapters providing considerable data, together with seven very useful appendices listing the 116 brigade commanders, the brigades they commanded and divisions they served in; DSO citations; and five Orders of Battle, including names of commanders down to battalion level, for the various stages of the Arras fighting. The amount of detail Harvey has accumulated is breathtaking, and in doing so he provides a wealth of material for researchers and fellow historians alike. But this, together with his written style, is also the weakness of the book. 

 

    In presenting his work Harvey overwhelms us with information and detail, a good deal of which is irrelevant to the purpose of the study, such as the service background of a good many officers who were no longer in the brigade during the period under consideration. This, and other unnecessary information, regularly distracts the reader, interrupts the flow of the book, and obfuscates much of the good work contained in it. Nor are some his observations borne out by the evidence he offers to support them. Furthermore, Harvey’s writing style lets him down. It is often repetitious in its wording within paragraphs, frustrating in its presentation, and at times lacks a coherent progression of the subject under discussion. This is a book that would have benefited greatly from an experienced editor, who could have sorted the wheat from the chaff, allowing the nuggets of good information and analysis it contains to rise to surface, and present what is a commendable study in a more concise, clear and readable manner. 

 

    Notwithstanding these criticisms, An Army of Brigadiers adds another layer to our understanding of the workings of the BEF during the Great War, and in an area that has had little scholarly analysis devoted to it.  Moreover, the extent of the information it contains makes it a valuable research tool for those without access to the primary sources. As such, it deserves a place on the bookshelves of those with a strong interest in the BEF on the Western Front, both lay readers and historians alike.