British Logistics on the Western Front: 1914-1919

(Hardback)

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Description

This work examines the evolution of the British Expeditionary Force's (BEF's) logistic and administrative infrastructure in France and its impact on operations. In so doing, it challenges the popular notion of British generals as bungling incompetents. While the BEF may be found wanting in some areas, administration was not one of them. The British generals proved themselves to be thoroughly modern professional officers in the manner in which they solved the ongoing crises that attended the explosive growth of the BEF and its artillery-intensive style of warfare. This study reinvigorates the debate about World War I by examining the field of logistics.

Reviews

Brown's study will help students at the upper-division undergraduate level and above to better evaluate the work of the administrative staffs of the WWI British army. * Choice *
This is a ground-breaking book which offers considerable food for though to scholars of military history. The book is well written and copiously illustrated with valuable statistical evidence. Its focus is on transportation and the provision of munitions of war, a focus in part dictated by the availabilty of evidence. This book is an important addition to the growing number of scholarly monographs published in recent years in which the traditional assessment of the British army's military performance on the western front in the First World War is being systematically reevaluted. It draws heavily and effectively on these important studies of the operational level of war, and takes then further in relating the operational to the administrative dimension of war. As such the book is essential reading for all serious scholars of the First World War. Equally important, it makes a significant contribution to the literature on battlefield logistics, the missing dimension of modern war. * The Journal of Military History *
[A] comprehensive study that is based on the full range of primary documents. * Canadian Military History *
An important study of a suprisingly neglected apesct of the Great War. . . . The work is suprisingly readable, considering its subject matter, and the text is supplemented by more than two dozen tables and diagrams. . . . Very useful for the serious student of World War II. * NYMAS Newsletter *
It is rare to be able to open a review by declaring that the work in question fills a gap in existing scholarship and does so very well indeed, but such is the case here. . . . This is an admirable book, and no student of the British army on the Western Front can afford to ignore it. * Albion *
Dr. Brown gives us what we seldom see, but need to understand: the history of how the greatest army in Great Britain's history was supplied. . . . In all, Brown's book reminds us why it is that amateurs argue tactics while professionals argue logistics. * The Journal of the Western Front Association-Stand To! *

Author Bio

Ian Malcolm Brown completed undergraduate and Master's degrees in History at the University of Calgary and holds a PhD in War Studies from King's College London. He is employed in the refractory industry as a Database Coordinator and currently resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.