Orchestrating Warfighting: A History of the British Army’s Corps and Divisions at War Since 1914

Orchestrating Warfighting provides a detailed and wide-ranging examination of the employment of corps and divisions from the First World War through to the early twenty-first century.

Division and corps formations have been at the forefront of the British Army’s prosecution of war since 1914. They constituted the major command and organisational elements that underpinned the conduct of large-scale warfighting on land. Divisions and corps were of central importance to the conduct of the First and Second World Wars, the maintenance of a conventional deterrence posture during the Cold War, and were also employed in major confrontations since 1945, including the Korean War and two Gulf Wars. The British Army of the early twenty-first century still retains two divisional formations alongside the British-led Allied Rapid Reaction Corps within NATO.

Orchestrating Warfighting examines British, Dominion, and imperial corps and divisions, taking part in the total wars of the first half of the twentieth century and smaller scale conflicts since 1945. It throws new light on questions of command, generalship, and the management of battles and campaigns across a diverse range of theatres. Orchestrating Warfighting is of interest to historians of the British Army, operational military history, and modern war.

Tim Bean is a Senior Lecturer in War Studies in the Department of War Studies, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, UK. He specialises in joint and combined operations with an emphasis on Headquarters South East Asia Command, 1943-45, and the Burma campaign in general.

Edward Flint is head of the Department of Defence and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, UK. His research interests include defence, security, and strategy, with a particular focus on the evolving role of Civil Affairs and Military Government during military operations.

James E. Kitchen is a Senior Lecturer in War Studies in the Department of War Studies, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, UK. His research interests include the global dimensions of the First World War and colonial conflict in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Paul Latawski is a Senior Lecturer in War Studies in the Department of War Studies, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, UK. His research interests include post-1945 British contingency operations, the evolution of urban warfare, British Army doctrine, and the history of the Polish armed forces.