ABSTRACT
Four years before the outbreak of World War I, British general Henry Wilson noted that few of his nation’s regimental officers showed much concern for “a funny little country like Belgium, although most of them may be buried there before they are much older.”1 Wilson’s grim prophecy, of course, came true during the course of the war, as almost 700,000 Britons died in Belgium and France. If men like Wilson foresaw not only the German invasion of Belgium, but also its likely consequences, then it is all the more curious that the British army did not more fully prepare for that eventuality. From a strictly military standpoint, those preparations would have made good sense. The whole logic of war planning and general staffs inclined professional military officers toward thinking about exactly the kind of problem that landing a force in Belgium presented. Since an alliance already existed between France and Britain, joint war planning could have been a routine matter.
