The First World War

by John Keegan

All the while the local German commanders, junior but determined and well-trained officers, were hurrying reserves to the flanks by bicycle or on foot. By contrast, and here the functional contribution to failure was at work, the British junior officers were passing their observations of the local situation, as the plan required, back up the chain of command so that authority could be granted for any alteration of the all-defining plan they requested. Behind the battle zone, telephone lines speeded communications but it was still painfully, indeed lethally, slow. “The Corps commander in some room five miles or more from the battle had to make a decision on the flimsiest and often false information, and the necessary orders had then to travel back, along the same chain, to be considered and written out in greater detail at each stage (divisional headquarters, brigade headquarters, battalion headquarters), till finally they reached the front-line companies.”