Order Of Battle Of The British Army 1914

A complete Order of Battle for the British Army in 1914. 470 content pages.

Facsimile reprints of the Order of Battle of the British Army in the Great War 1914-1918. These give details of every division with its component brigades, battalions, artillery, engineers, medical support etc., units and record any changes. There are also organisational tables for divisions in the various theatres of war. Included are the names of GOCs and brigade commanders and senior staff officers. Each division has a brief history listing the operations and battles in which it was engaged and the corps to which it was subordinated at the time. One volume provides details of corps, army and superior HQs. This volume is Part 1. The Regular British Division. 1st - 3rd Cav Divs; Guards and 1st - 8th Inf Divs; 27th - 29th Inf Divs.

“Long-out-of-print account of the first weeks of the Great War by Alexander von Kluck, Commander of the German First Army, which fought and lost the decisive Battle of the Marne after clashing with the BEF at Mons and Le Cateau. ...Von Kluck was given the crucial role in 1914 of commanding the German First Army, the ‘fist’ of the famous Schlieffen Plan to knock out France in a lightning six-week campaign. Kluck’s mission was to march through Belgium (bringing Britain into the war), drive through north-east France and scoop up Paris, thus trapping the main French armies between their capital and the Franco-German frontier where the German left-wing was waiting. Kluck did all that was asked of him, but when Schlieffen’s plan left the drawing board and was tested on the battlefield, it began to unravel. Firstly, the British Expeditionary Force arrived in France much faster than the Germans had expected, fighting delaying actions against Kluck at Mons and Le Cateau. Secondly, as he approached Paris, Kluck’s exhausted army began to lose touch with the Second Army of von Bulow to their left. Crucially, Kluck sidestepped westwards to keep in touch with Bulow, thus giving France’s General Joffre the chance to launch the counterstroke attack on his flank that became the Battle of the Marne; a series of engagements which first checked, then reversed, the hitherto victorious German onslaught. Cyril Falls, doyen of Britain’s Great War historians, called Kluck’s book “One of the most interesting and important of German war books’. Written with all the headstrong fierceness which made Kluck famous, this book is one which no student of the Great War will want to miss. It comes complete with maps, an appendix giving the First Army’s Order of Battle, and a frontispiece photograph of the author.”—N&M Press Reprint

Colonel G.W.L. Nicholson's Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919 was first published by the Department of National Defence in 1962 as the official history of the Canadian Army’s involvement in the First World War. Immediately after the war ended Colonel A. Fortescue Duguid made a first attempt to write an official history of the war, but the ill-fated project produced only the first of an anticipated eight volumes. Decades later, G.W.L. Nicholson - already the author of an official history of the Second World War - was commissioned to write a new official history of the First. Illustrated with numerous photographs and full-colour maps, Nicholson’s text offers an authoritative account of the war effort, while also discussing politics on the home front, including debates around conscription in 1917. With a new critical introduction by Mark Osborne Humphries that traces the development of Nicholson’s text and analyzes its legacy, Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919 is an essential resource for both professional historians and military history enthusiasts.

The British Expeditionary Force at the start of World War I was tiny by the standards of the other belligerent powers. Yet, when deployed to France in 1914, it prevailed against the German army because of its professionalism and tactical skill, strengths developed through hard lessons learned a dozen years earlier. In October 1899, the British went to war against the South African Boer republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State, expecting little resistance. A string of early defeats in the Boer War shook the military’s confidence. Historian Spencer Jones focuses on this bitter combat experience in From Boer War to World War, showing how it crucially shaped the British Army’s tactical development in the years that followed. Before the British Army faced the Boer republics, an aura of complacency had settled over the military. The Victorian era had been marked by years of easy defeats of crudely armed foes. The Boer War, however, brought the British face to face with what would become modern warfare. The sweeping, open terrain and advent of smokeless powder meant soldiers were picked off before they knew where shots had been fired from. The infantry’s standard close-order formations spelled disaster against the well-armed, entrenched Boers. Although the British Army ultimately adapted its strategy and overcame the Boers in 1902, the duration and cost of the war led to public outcry and introspection within the military. Jones draws on previously underutilized sources as he explores the key tactical lessons derived from the war, such as maximizing firepower and using natural cover, and he shows how these new ideas were incorporated in training and used to effect a thorough overhaul of the British Army. The first book to address specific connections between the Boer War and the opening months of World War I, Jones’s fresh interpretation adds to the historiography of both wars by emphasizing the continuity between them.

A detailed account of the composition, structure and Organisation of the First World War German Army has long been needed by English-language readers - this work will fill this gap admirably.In more than 300 pages, the authors examine all aspects of the army. A detailed analytical text is followed by an extensive compendium of order-of-battle data. Topics covered include: High Command & War Leadership Composition of Army Groups, Armies, etc. Organisation of the Field Army. Branches covered in detail incl. Infantry, incl. MG formations; Cavalry; Artillery; Pioneers; Air Force; Supply troops; Tank units; Pioneers; Signals troops; Railway & Transport troops; Medical troops; Field Gendarmerie, etc. etc. Organisation of the Home Front & Occupied Territories Extensive order-of-battle data, plus lists of units, army commanders & chiefs of staff

A seventeen-volume compilation of selected AEF records gathered by Army historians during the interwar years. This collection in no way represents an exhaustive record of the Army's months in France, but it is certainly worthy of serious consideration and thoughtful review by students of military history and strategegy and will serve as a useful jumping off point for any earnest scholarship on the war. --from Foreword by William A Stofft.