Visit to India by Mike Nicholson

The British Officer by Anthony Clayton

The British Officer by Anthony Clayton

Review by Robert Dixon

Anthony Clayton has written an interesting book concerning the professional development and social background of The British officer from the end of The Civil War to the deployments in Basra. Short chapters divide the 350 years history into easy to digest eras with excellent notes at the end of each for further research or interesting asides. Even those with a fair knowledge of the subject will find it rewarding and for those wishing for a good primer in the British Army this is an excellent narrative account. It is particularly strong on the social history of soldiering, tactical development and the evolution of the Army.

The relationship between officers and their soldiers is not so well explored, particularly in the first 150 years or so. This could be for a lack of source material but it would be fascinating to know more of the relationships between Marlborough and Wolfe?s young officers and their charges. Their great victories usually after months of gruelling campaigning could not have been won just through recourse to iron discipline of the flogging nature. I suspect the role of good leadership and a mutually respectful camaraderie must have been present despite the lack of institutionalised training for officers.

The pros and cons of the regimental system are well aired. The transition from private patronage to numbered regiments to county affiliations and the Cardwell reforms are all covered. One of the major failings of the Regimental system was that many officers became identified with their regiments to the exclusion of all else and formal education of the staff college type was looked down on in certain quarters until comparatively recent times. It was General Horrocks who remarked that one good commanding officer was worth a 100 years of regimental tradition.

A recurring theme throughout the history is how the Army went into a campaign inexperienced and underfunded, sorted itself out by learning the hard way on the hoof, usually emerged victorious and well trained, and then promptly went downhill again until the next crisis; very much 2 steps forward one step back. A large portion of the blame has to be levelled at politicians who never want to prepare for war but blame must also be levelled at the Army for resting on its laurels and following up on the lessons learned.. Too often there was a yearning to get back to the halcyon peacetime days of leisure activities and sports afternoons or to concentrate on operations that were more fun: imperial policing rather than total war. But it is not only The Army that can suffer from this malaise, look at the collapse of some of our business institutions and even the state of English rugby after the last world cup! Perhaps it is a British malaise.

The steady but often erratic development of Sandhurst and Staff Training is well described and the book really comes to life with the advent of the First World War making the last chapters eminently readable. The present era sees officer training at its most serious and professional ever. The dilemma over controlling fighting spirit within the constraints of internal security operations is addressed. In Northern Ireland it was sometimes a problem and opportunities to kill or capture terrorists were undoubtedly missed when commanders on the ground could not convert quickly enough from a policing mindset to aggressive follow up activity. However having read Dusty Warriors by Richard Holmes and hearing of some of the actions in Afghanistan it would appear that the modern Army has come to terms with this dilemma.

But surely an Army in the middle of 2 campaigns has never been as disgracefully under-funded and under-supported in its long history as it is being at this moment in time by the government. A reflection no doubt of the lack of war experience in politicians these days. Perhaps it is time for a Political Academy to make our leaders aware of their responsibilities!

Blood Sweat and Arrogance by Gordon Corrigan

I started this book with trepidation as Churchill has always been one of my greatest heroes. Like many of my generation I was brought up to believe that he epitomised the giant who rose above the dwarfs about him, the saviour Britain needed at its time of greatest need, a legend of Arthurian proportion. Of course he could be a difficult man, very demanding of his staff and sometimes too confident in the rectitude of his own wilder schemes. But at the end of the day he won the war.

Another cause of my trepidation was that here would be another book that tried to debunk Britain's history and its heroes. We seem to be have a great propensity to pull ourselves to pieces with the benefit of hindsight and ignoring the mores of the time. However I was determined to read the book as I had always enjoyed Gordon Corrigan's company when I was a subaltern in the Glosters and he was at the time a very young and vigorous company commander before he went off to The Ghurkas.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It is well written and romps along at great pace. It combines the sweep of grand strategy with fascinating details of the times interlaced with typical Corrigan humour and throw away asides deliberately intended to provoke the pompous and actually to make one think. He covers the interwar period in a very balanced way pointing out the driving factors on both sides of the hill. In the case of the UK has anything changed? The prevarications on defence spending by all parties despite the growing and obvious threats; the ostrich-like burying of heads in the sand, the clutching at straws to pretend that threats did not really exist could be transposed to present times all too easily. To fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while reducing the size of the armed forces in a climate of militant Islamism and a rearming Russia is surely history repeating itself and where is the Churchillian voice of warning?

If Corrigan's aim is to point out Churchill's faults and reduce the assessment of his effectiveness then the thesis is not so successful. When as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 20s Churchill reduced defence spending this was surely understandable in the climate of the times. Churchill was a consummate politician and always hungered for power throughout his career. That he changed his tune in the 30s and could see where Germany was heading before most of his contemporaries was surely more than just being difficult or opportunistic for the sake of it. Would that more of our politicians would admit that there is nothing wrong with changing their views as more evidence unfolds about a situation rather than holding on to dogma or party creeds.

Can Churchill be blamed for an inherent distrust of the military? They had failed to get their act together in the interwar period as Corrigan vividly describes. If successive CIGSs could not suggest a sensible way to re-equip the Army why should politicians understand the need. Churchill had been badly scarred by Gallipoli, his view was that a clever idea had been wasted by military incompetence in execution. Very few officers, senior, middle or junior seemed to understand the vital significance of all arms co-operation, particularly armour/infantry integration and the ability to regroup efficiently for the next phase. The start of the book vividly describes how this had been learned the hard way in the closing stages of the previous war but all too quickly forgotten. If the Army cannot agree what its doctrine should be and how it proposes to fight the next war then it must be very difficult to lobby politicians with any conviction. Indeed as the author points out this dilemma carried on well beyond WW2.

Many of Churchill's actions were surely influenced by his grasp of strategy at the highest level. He had to prove to America that Britain was deserving of support and was fighting on. He believed that the country did not have the luxury of rebuilding its military strength behind the wall of the Royal Navy, allowing Hitler a free hand in the rest of the world while it got its act together. He did mobilise the British public in more or less total support of the war which given the admiration for Hitler in some establishment quarters and the virulent pacifism in others was not something that just fell into place.

Norway was a shambles and Churchill's meddling did not help but there did not appear to be a coherent plan and command structure in place from the outset. Wavell was expected to do too much with too little but on the other side of the scales Churchill did gain support from the USA for the Europe first strategy and stopped them from invading Europe too soon which would have been an unmitigated disaster. Churchill had a lot to contend with it must be remembered.

Certainly Monty gets short shrift and undoubtedly he was probably psychologically flawed but I felt he was dismissed too easily. Where were the better men? Very few other generals seemed to be able to make things happen let alone win, and having spoken to officers and soldiers who served under him it is difficult to find serious critics: they believed in him. Auchinleck had lost Churchill's confidence so was inevitably doomed. Corrigan rightly points out that successive CIGS's did not stand up to Churchill but Brooke did manage to curb many of the wilder schemes and was probably well aware that if he opposed absolutely every whim then he himself would not last. Even Brooke in his own darkest days admitted that Churchill was vital for the war effort and knew deep down that he had to bear the cross of exasperation to support him for the good of the country and ultimate victory.

In summary this book is a superbly readable account of the British military effort from 1918 to 1945 and very relevant to the current military/political debate. It covers a huge canvas with vigour and indeed humour, some of the footnotes are hilarious! It reminded me of some areas I had forgotten and encourages me to read further into others: Why was Britain so badly off economically after WW1 compared to Germany who appeared to rise above crippling reparations to rearm illegally? What doctrine was The Staff College teaching in the inter war years? It has not diminished Winston in my eyes, he still stands out as a giant among pygmies for all his faults, but the dangers of senior officers not being on top of their profession and not having the moral courage to stand up to politicians are there for all who read to see.

Robert Dixon 3 Sep 07

Raising Churchill's Army: The British Army and the War Against Germany 1919 - 1945

RAISING CHURCHILL' S ARMY: THE BRITISH ARMY AND THE WAR AGAINST GERMANY 1919-1945

by David French, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, xii & 319 pp ISBN 0-19-82641 (Hbk)

Since the early 1990s, a distinct new strand in the academic historiography of the Second World War has emerged, which seeks to question the generally accepted view of the superior fighting efficiency of the German ground forces in combat against their US and British opponents. Initially, such work concerned itself mainly with the performance of American troops in North Africa, Italy and Northwest Europe. Michael Doubler's Closing with the Enemy: How GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944-1945 and Peter Mansoor's The GI Offensive in Europe: The Triumph of American Infantry Divisions, 1941-1945 (University Press of Kansas, 1994 and 1999 respectively) were the most important examples.

More recently, however, similar studies have appeared dealing with the British and Canadian armies. They include Terry Copp's Fields of Fire: The Canadians in Normandy (University of Toronto Press 2003), John Buckley's British Armour in the Normandy Campaign (Frank Cass, 2004) and, of course, Montgomery and 'Colossal Cracks': The 21st Army Group in Northwest Europe (Praeger, 2000), by the RMAS Department of War Studies' own Stephen Hart. The most comprehensive contribution to the genre, however 'at least as far as the British Army's performance between 1939 and 1945 is concerned 'is Professor David French's Raising Churchill's Army.

This superbly researched and meticulously footnoted book pulls no punches in dissecting the weaknesses of the British Army during the Second World War, notably its failure to establish a coherent system for the dissemination of doctrine and the training of personnel to a common standard. French is also appropriately critical of the autocratic approach to command and control practiced by the vast majority of senior British officers. However, the book also clarifies that, for a nation in which the Army took third place to the RAF and Royal Navy as the physical means by which British security would be achieved (the reverse was true for Nazi Germany), many of the deficiencies of British forces were inevitable. Thus, the author demonstrates convincingly how the Army's inability to gain access to scarce resources during the inter-war years, and political decisions to focus its attention on 'imperial policing', undermined its genuine attempts to learn the lessons of the Western Front and to develop the physical and conceptual means to conduct modern high-intensity operations against a major European opponent.

Similarly, his analysis of the impact of manpower shortages, especially after 1942, provides the essential basis for understanding the methods by which the Army fought its battles and campaigns throughout the Second World War. One of French's greatest achievements, however, is to show how the Army eventually came to find ways of ameliorating the worst effects of its weaknesses and of emphasising its strengths. He shows, for example, how 'in stark contrast to the Wehrmacht' British campaigns were generally mounted with a clear eye to logistical sustainability. The importance of improvements in communications, allowing British artillery to provide the firepower necessary to help mount successful attacks and facilitate better all-arms cooperation, is also clearly revealed. Reputations 'of Montgomery in particular, and of the British 'Tommy' more generally' are rehabilitated.

As a result, a more nuanced picture of the British Army's performance in North Africa and Northwest Europe emerges. Raising Churchill's Army also has a clear and logical structure and a very accessible style, which make it a pleasure to read. As the book's sub-title indicates, the author makes no attempt to discuss British performance against the Japanese Army, so readers interested in this topic will have to hope for a separate volume. More confusingly, however, it remains unclear why so little attention is paid to the Italian campaign. Given the leading role played by the British in this theatre until the end of the war, this seems a slightly curious omission. There is also no serious treatment of the Army's role in amphibious operations, while the author's analysis of the cultural reasons for the Army's approach to command and control' although intriguing' deserves further development. These caveats notwithstanding, however, this reviewer has no hesitation in recommending this book as the most important single-volume treatment of the British Army in the Second World War to have appeared to date.

Simon Trew Department of War Studies

The Originals - The Secret History of the Birth of the SAS - In Their Own Words

Stalin's Folly: The Secret History of the German Invasion of Russia - June 1941

ROOT CAUSES OF TERRORISM - MYTHS, REALITY AND WAYS FORWARD

ROOT CAUSES OF TERRORISM MYTHS, REALITY AND WAYS FORWARD

Edited by Tore Borg Routledge, London and New York, 2005 269pp, ISBN 0-415-35150-2

This book does justice to its title in the sense that it provides a nuanced discussion of the causes of terrorism. Although nearly all contributions could be read in their own right, each one approaching the topic from a different angle and offering specific insights, it is above all the combination of the twenty chapters in a single volume that makes the book recommendable.

The volume in its entirety clarifies the difficulties in defining terrorism and the futility of treating it as a homogenous phenomenon. The reasons why different actors resort to terrorism vary. Each terrorist campaign is therefore specific and needs to be addressed separately. There is thus no single root cause of terrorism, or even a common set of causes, nor is there a 'quick fix' or a standardised cure to the problem.

The book makes a valuable contribution by debunking some of the most common myths concerning root causes of terrorism. It disproves the alleged relationship between poverty and terrorism, that suicide terrorism in general is motivated by religious beliefs or that terrorists are insane, irrational actors. It also demonstrates that terrorism is not necessarily always the method of the weak against the strong, nor that it is something that only the 'bad guys' apply. Democratic states have also sponsored terrorism and used it to their advantage.

Furthermore, it offers an array of different definitions and various ways of categorising diverse types of terrorism. Apart from being useful to those who want to examine terrorism themselves, the classification also demonstrates the difficulties that everybody faces when trying to grasp the problem. By doing so, the book raises many new questions. Since one needs to formulate useful questions to get useful answers, this is the volume's main strength. Whilst helping to raise questions, the book does not fully succeed in indicating ways forward.

Despite the Editor's excellent efforts to outline how the chapters are linked and to extract conclusions, the book offers little help to decision-makers on how to actually tackle terrorism. Nevertheless, the book does indicate some possibilities for influencing factors that may actually have an impact on the level of terrorism.

Overall, it is well worth reading for a broad audience, as it clarifies the difficulties in defining and combating terrorism, making politically exploitable post September 11 slogans such as 'waging a war against terrorism' appear as what they are 'over simplistic.'

Bjorn Muller-Wille Department of Defence and International Affairs

NATO AND PEACE SUPPORT OPERATIONS - 1991 - 1999 POLICIES AND DOCTRINE

NATO AND PEACE SUPPORT OPERATIONS 1991-1999 POLICIES AND DOCTRINES

By Henning A Frantzen Frank Cass, London & New York, 2004 239pp, ISBN 0-415-34996-6

The years 1991-99 were possibly the most turbulent for NATO since its formation. New risks and threats challenged the organisation to adapt its horizons, command structures, deployments and doctrine. Any analysis of NATO's developing doctrine during those years confronts the problem that NATO member states have disagreed about certain fundamentals of peace support operation (PSO) doctrine.

At the time of writing, NATO had still not approved a document that all the member states could sign. Henning Frantzen has attempted a daunting task in following, not only NATO debates on doctrine but developments in Britain, Canada and Denmark. Based on his doctoral thesis and painstaking research, Frantzen's analysis is tightly argued, providing detail and insight into the political context for doctrinal thinking.

Particularly fascinating are the differing lessons taken from the conflict in Bosnia from the early to the mid-1990s for peacekeeping and enforcement, depending on the country's cultural and historical experience. There are some interesting interpretations and some provocative conclusions which, no doubt, some readers will want to challenge. The assertion that none of the armed forces under consideration have adapted their training to the needs of PSO (p.193), from the perspective of anyone training at RMAS, is patently not true.

The only major irritant in this book is the tendency of Frantzen to use 'peace support' as a generic term, even when the organisation or state to which it is being applied is resisting its use, and occasionally before the term had even been thought up! This can be misleading since it obscures the major doctrinal differences that the author is intending to highlight over how and when to apply force.

Whilst the need for force is more readily recognised in contemporary peace missions, countries like Canada that have taken a leadership role in the field of peacekeeping, are distinctly uncomfortable with its implications. The book also begs the question as to how Britain has succeeded in dominating the debate within NATO from its initial doctrine of Wider Peacekeeping through to its emerging PSO doctrine. Nevertheless, it will be of use to those with both a direct interest in the subject title, and also those studying NATO and the politics of multilateralism.

Rosemary Durward Department of Defence and International Affairs

Sandhurst - A Tradition of Leadership

For further information on the new book 'Sandhurst- A Tradition of Leadership' please click onto the following link:

http://www.tmiltd.com/bookdetails.php?ProductCode=sandhurst