British Logistics on the Western Front, by Ian Malcolm Brown.

[Justin Moretti]

British Logistics on the Western Front by Ian Malcolm Brown.

A very good and well known account of the development of the "tail" function behind the British teeth and the way it evolved from the start of the war to the Army of Occupation in Germany after the Armistice. Brown argues that although there had been little specific attention given to logistics in Staff College training, the British Army was able to manage its logistics due to the high proportion of its trained officers who'd handled the task on Colonial campaigns and in the Boer War. He describes how this system became increasingly complex and eventually almost unworkable as the logistic demands of the expanding BEF grew beyond its logistic competence, leading to Geddes and other talented civilians being brought in to sort it out, and the changes they wrought. How the logistic system coped with the March 1918 offensives, the subsequent return to mobile warfare and problems seen in the post-Armistice Army of Occupation are also described. 

All of this is analyzed in relation to Field Service Regulations 1912 Part 2, which was supposed to lay the framework for the BEF logistics, and FSR-2 is critiqued for its perceived deficiencies (as Brown sees them) but given appropriate praise for the flexibility of its approach. He criticizes FSR-2's methods for keeping logistics and operations planning too far apart, and suggests that more interplay and consultation between them could have led to better outcomes, particularly in the March 1918 retreat. Brown rightly criticizes BEF logistics at the start of the war as being nowhere near adequate for the war Britain would eventually find itself fighting (as opposed to the quick one it thought it could fight with just two corps at the start). However, his statement that the BEF should have refrained from battles it wasn't logistically able to handle due to supply problems from home - e.g. Loos - fails to take account of the fact that the BEF wasn't given much of a choice by its ally... or by its own politicians. 

He appears to demonstrate adequately that a true breakthrough battle would have been logistically impossible for the BEF at any time in this war and theorizes that it eventually (1918) accepted this, settling instead for limited set-piece operations to which the Germans had no tactical answer but which the BEF was (at last) now logistically capable of mounting indefinitely, either sequentially or simultaneously as it saw fit. He contrasts this approach with the Kaiserschlacht, the failure of which he ascribes to a lack of focus on both logistics (he quotes one British officer describing the German assault halting because it is "foodless") and its strategic goal. The picture he gives at the end is of the Germans being able to retreat faster than the British could extend their supply chain, but not so fast that they could dig in sufficiently to make a fight of it.

All in all a good read, even if he does tend to accept and quote Tim Travers' opinion on GHQ and Haig a little too often and too uncritically - though he does give Haig praise where it's due, e.g. for his (Haig's) defence of Geddes and the concept of having civilian logistics experts do the work they knew best. Anyone who scratches even slightly beneath the surface in their study of WW2 history will probably find this work being quoted eventually, and it's worth acquiring a copy if you can do so at a reasonable price.