ABSTRACT
The tendency to concentrate on the mistakes made while the Army was adapting to terra incognita during the period 1915-17 has meant that the process by which the Army developed a war-winning staff in 1917-18 has been neglected. One of the biggest problems faced by the Army was to produce enough SOs capable of running the bureaucracy, producing the efficient command and staff methods at which the German Army excelled, and manning the staffs of the large formations required in continental warfare. Critics, such as Liddell Hart, have completely failed to understand that the skills demanded in the leadership of mass armies in an industrialised age were more managerial than the heroic generalship of the ‘Great Captains’. By the end of 1915, on top of the divisional commanders and staffs required to man the forty divisional Headquarters, commanders and SOs had to be provided for three Army and nineteen Corps Headquarters, in France alone.
