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The focus of this book is on the systems and individuals who made up the British Army’s often rather ramshackle intelligence service, from the Scoutmaster General of the Civil War period to the Intelligence Corps of the First World War. Along the way we meet some remarkable individuals, the most famous being Colquhoun Grant, Wellington’s chief intelligence officer in Spain. However we also see the British Army’s often rather hostile attitude to permenant intelligence departments, and individual officer’s dislike of spending too much time in Intelligence, away from the ‘proper’ army.
For most of this period each new commander in the field had to create his own intelligence system, with his own men. One constant theme is the use of men with local knowledge, but no prior connection to the Army – we find them in the Crimea and in South Africa, where their local knowledge and daring helped the army underdo the consequences of its own lack of action.
One of the author’s constant complaints is the British Army was often rather averse to actually having an intelligence department. He does have a good point – for many years the general attitude was that a sizable intelligence system could only be set up after the outbreak of a particular war, using those with a special understanding of the area in which the conflict was being conducted. However supporters of this view often failed to acknowledge that the army needed a large number of man trained in how to carry out intelligence work at the very start of any conflict, in order to be able to set up the expanded organisation and benefit from anything it may discover. This idea seemed to have lost out towards the end of the Nineteenth Century when the Intelligence Department survived from the Boer War to the First World War, when it became the Intelligence Corps, but remarkably that corps was disbanded in 1929, and wasn’t reformed until 19 July 1940, more than month after the end of the Dunkirk evacuation! In earlier periods, when the army was often rather small, one can perhaps understand why there was a reluctance to spend some of the limited budget on a non-combat branch, but this failure often came back to haunt the army at the start of wars.
Even when there was a functioning intelligence department there was no guarantee that its reports would be acted on. The classic example comes at the start of the Boer War, where the department came under attack for ‘failing’ to predict the war or the strength of the Boer forces, but was able to prove that it had actually provided very accurate intelligence in both areas, only for it to be largely ignored. A second problem is that it was quite easy for departments founded with intelligence in mind to get distracted, especially during the Nineteenth Century, where we find members of the department translating literature or involved in worthwhile but not military mapping projects. A second problem was that service with the main intelligence department took men away from regimental service, seen as at the heart of the British Army, so whenever a new conflict broke out the men in the Intelligence Department almost all wanted to head to the fighting.
Unspurprisingly the overall picture we get is rather mixed. The better commanders were able to create equally good intelligence systems, so we find Churchill in the War of the Spanish Succession and Wellington in Spain well served. In other cases capable individuals made up for the failings of the system. The Crimean War was the lowpoint (as is so much else), and the First World War perhaps the most professional period studied here. Don’t expect too many detailed accounts of particular intelligence operations – the focus here is on the structures of British military intelligence and the individuals who worked within it, and it does that job well.
Chapters
1 - The Scoutmaster General
2 - John Churchill
3 - The Eighteenth Century
4 - The Corps of Guides and the Depot of Military Knowledge
5 - The Peninsular War
6 - The Great Peace 1815-1854
7 - Major Thomas Best Jervis
8 - The Crimean War
9 - The Recriminations
10 - The Topographical and Statistical Department
11 - Major Charles Wilson and the Formative Years of the Intelligence Department
12 - Intelligence in the Field
13 - The Sudan Wars
14 - Brackenbury and Ardagh and the Developing Years of the Intelligence Division in London
15 - The War in South Africa
16 - The Field Intelligence Department
17 - The Intelligence Corps
18 - The Growth of Professionalism
19 - The Planning Years
20 - 1914
21 - 1915-1916
22 - Intelligence and Security and Intelligence Acquisition
23 - 1917
24 - 1918-1929
Author: Brigadier Brian Parritt
Edition: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
Year: 2011