Organization: How Armies are Formed for War

1. The Staff

The origin of the Staff must be looked for in the earliest European organization, that of the Reiters and Landsknechts in Germany about A.D. 1500, and in the armies of Maurice and Gustavus modelled on them. This organization was copied in England, France, Prussia, and other military nations, and survives in essentials to this day.

We find in the sixteenth century that the fighting officers of the troop or company left the drill to the Sergeant, an officer of experience in handling troops, and a most important personage in the unit. In action, while the other officers were in front, fighting, the Sergeant was in rear correcting the men’s movements, and giving orders. In the Infantry he had to run up and down the ranks for this purpose, and was therefore not armed with the long pike, which would hamper him. The Sergeant therefore either retained the halberd when Infantry gave it up for the pike, or was armed with a half-pike. These arms long survived in the British Army, where sergeants carried a halberd down to 1829, and the subalterns a half-pike or “spontoon,” down to 1786.

Similar duties to those of the Sergeant in the Company were performed in the Regiment by the Sergeant-Major, who supervised the drilling of the Companies by the Sergeants, regulated the march of the Regiment and its manœuvres in battle, and was therefore charged with the issue of orders. He was thus virtually a Staff Officer to the Colonel. Similarly, in an army, the Commander required an officer of experience to draw up the army in line of battle, a difficult task, and a delicate one, as the precedence of each corps had to be respected. This officer was called the Sergeant-Major-General, as he filled for the Army the same functions as the Sergeant-Major for the Regiment. He was the Staff Officer of the Army, responsible for planning the battle manœuvres, regulating marches, arranging for the quartering of the troops, and necessarily, therefore, for issuing the orders dealing with these matters. The word Sergeant was soon dropped from both these titles. The Sergeant-Major became the Major of the Regiment, with the duties of the modern Adjutant, and the Sergeant-Major-General became the Major-General of the Army.

We thus find in the sixteenth century that the Staff work of the Army was performed by the officer known in France as le Major-Général des Logis, or Major-General of Quarters, as the allotment of quarters was one of his chief duties. It may be mentioned that the old word for Staff duties was Logistics, formed from the word Logis, and meant the duties of the Major-Général des Logis. This title was then shortened to le Major-Général, by which name the chief Staff officer of the Army has been always called in France down to this day.

The full word was translated Quartier-Meister-General in German, or Quarter-Master-General in English, and this Staff Officer was charged with the Staff duties of the Sergeant-Major-General—namely: Orders, Drill, Manœuvres, Quarters. But the necessity of preceding the army to allot quarters for it entails deciding which road the army is to march by, so the duty of reconnoitring the roads, and thus that of reconnaissance generally, was added to the list of the duties of the Q.M.G. We thus find, in the eighteenth century, that what are now the duties of the General Staff were allotted to the Quarter-Master-General in the British and Prussian Services, and to the Major-Général in the French.

These duties continued to be performed by the Q.M.G. Staff in England, down to a few years ago. In Prussia the Q.M.G. was the second officer to Moltke on the General Staff in the war of 1870, and the appointment was only abolished in 1888.

At the close of the seventeenth century another Staff Officer was established at Head-Quarters by the name of Adjutant-General, who was charged with all questions relating to personnel, and with routine duties, as distinguished from those connected with movement, quartering, and fighting, which were the duties of the Q.M.G. The A.G.’s Staff is in all armies charged to-day with the same duties as in the eighteenth century.

There were generally attached to the Staff some Engineer Officers, who were charged with map-making for military purposes. The maps of European countries are therefore known as Staff Maps, while that of Great Britain is called the Ordnance Survey, because made by the Royal Engineers, a Corps under the “Master-General of the Ordnance.”

The General Staff was created in Prussia in 1815, in consequence of the experience gained in the Napoleonic Wars. The then Q.M.G. Staff was transformed into the General Staff, and placed under the direct orders of the King. Some of the General Staff Officers were attached to Army Corps and Brigades (there were not yet any Divisions), and the rest formed the Great General Staff at Berlin. There has been but little change in this organization of the Prussian General Staff, which, it may be noted, acts for the whole military forces of the German Empire, for there is no German General Staff in the sense in which there is a German navy.

All armies have now copied the Prussian General Staff system, with modifications, but it is an error to suppose that the General Staff duties were not performed before the Prussians so styled them. We have seen that they were carried out by the Q.M.G. Staff. In the small armies commanded by Frederick and Wellington, and by Napoleon at the outset of his career, these great Generals were virtually their own Chief of the General Staff. They wrote or dictated detailed orders, worked out movements on the map, and perused states and returns. Frederick himself gave orders for marching, pitching camp, and fighting, sent them out by his orderly officers, and watched their execution personally.

As Napoleon’s armies increased in size, the General Staff duties became very heavy, and were carried out most ably by Berthier, his “Major-Général,” or Chief of the Staff. Their nature is stated in quite modern shape by the great Swiss Military writer Jomini, who had himself been Chief of the Staff to Ney in 1805, as well as to the Russian Army in 1813, after his desertion from the French. (See “L’Art de la Guerre,” Vol. ii., chap, vi., par. 41.)

The Head-Quarters Staff in Napoleon’s great wars was organized in the following manner:B

The Staff was divided into five branches:

1. Personal Staff of Napoleon.

2. Personal Staff of the Chief of Staff.

3. The Staff proper.

4. Officers “at disposal,” generally away on special missions.

5. Topographical Bureau, comprising a dozen officers employed in mapping.

1. Napoleon’s Personal Staff consisted of:

(a) The Civil Secretariat.

(b) The Military Secretariat, which had charge of the Map, and took down Napoleon’s dictated Orders.

(c) Several Generals, Aides de Camp to the Emperor, available for special missions.

(d) Orderly Officers to carry Orders.

(e) Equerries.

2. Berthier’s Staff comprised:

(a) The Civil Secretariat.

(b) The Military Secretariat.

(c) A dozen Aides de Camp.

Berthier’s duty was to embody Napoleon’s instructions in Orders, and transmit them.

3. The Staff proper, which comprised a score of officers, and was divided into three branches:

(a) Correspondence, orders, movements, states, intelligence.

(b) Camps, billets, police, subsistence, hospitals.

(c) Laws, decrees, conscription, prisoners.

UNITED STATES STAFF IN THE CIVIL WAR

An example of organization of a Head-Quarters Staff in a great war may be found in the Civil War, in the United States. When General Grant was Commander-in-Chief, his Staff consisted of nineteen Officers:

PRUSSIAN STAFF IN 1870

It may be interesting to see how the Prussian Head-Quarters Staff was organized for the strategical conduct of the War of 1870.

At the head was Moltke, the “Chief of the General Staff” in peace and war, who really directed the operations, although nominally only the adviser of the King of Prussia, the Supreme Commander.

Moltke was assisted, and replaced when absent, by the Q.M.G., who acted as Chief of the Office.

The General Staff under Moltke consisted of twelve officers, and was organized in three Sections as follows:

1. Operations.
2. Railways and Communications.
3. Intelligence.

Each Section was under a Colonel, the “Chief of the Section,” with one Field Officer and two Captains as his assistants.

The Commissary-General of Supplies, and the Director of Military Telegraphs were also attached to the Staff.

Each Army had the following Staff, comprising six to nine General Staff Officers:

One Chief of General Staff.
One Chief Q.M.G.
One to two Field Officers.
Three to five other Officers.

2. The Supply and Transport Services

The early forces in Europe subsisted merely by individual plunder, each man obtaining his food and forage as he could. Later, the central power provided certain places where supplies were collected by force. The next step in supplying armies was taken when it was found that the local resources could be drawn on to furnish supplies on payment. This provided a more certain and effective supply, and demanded fewer troops to be employed in collecting. This change had a far-reaching result. The fact that cash had to be paid for these purchases caused Supply to come under the Civil Finance Department. Hence we find in Cromwell’s army this Service controlled by the Treasury, as it continued to be down to the Crimean War, with ill results for the army.

Transport was required to carry the supplies from the districts whence they were collected to the area occupied by the troops, where they were stored in magazines. The next step, therefore, was to increase the mobility of the army by providing additional Transport to move supplies from these magazines up to the fighting troops.

The train which carried supplies was, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a mass of hired or pressed country carts and wagons, driven by wagoners on foot, and difficult to manage or move near the enemy. It was found that, unless organized under military control, the transport was not very efficient, and by the epoch of Napoleon both the Transport and the Supply Services had become more and more military in organization. But they were both still Civil Services, owing to the hold the Treasury had over them, from the fact that both entailed constant expenditure during war.

During the nineteenth century the Train which provided transport became in all armies a Military Organization, with enlisted drivers under regular officers; while Supply continued to be organized as a Department under Civil officials, as it still is abroad. This system tends to produce difficulties, as the Combatant Military Train Officers have to move Supplies under the instructions of the Civil Supply Officials, and in foreign armies it is found difficult in war to make both work in co-operation. The tendency is, in fact, to bring about the close union between these two Services, long since found desirable in England. In all armies there are Transport and Supply Columns formed from the Train with the addition of Supply personnel. In England alone are both provided from one Corps, the Army Service Corps, and the description of the British Transport and Supply Services given in Part II. illustrates what is perhaps the best organization of these Services for war.

3. The Medical Organization for War

In the Middle Ages there was no medical organization with armies, nor were there even any surgeons. The sick and wounded were left to shift for themselves, and were tended, if at all, by private persons out of charity, or in monasteries, for the monks alone possessed any knowledge of surgery and medicine in those days.

Rudimentary provision for surgery in armies is found in the organization of the German mercenaries of the sixteenth century, where a surgeon was appointed by each Captain for his Troop of Reiters or Company of Landsknechts. Later, a Surgeon was attached to the Regiment, and medical care, from being purely a matter for the Captain to organize, became a Regimental responsibility. By this time the practice of surgery had long passed from the hands of monks into those of the barbers. Thus in the seventeenth century the Prussians had Feldschere, Field Barbers, attached to Companies and Regiments for surgical duties. There also began to be during the sixteenth century a certain number of what we should call Staff Surgeons, attached to the Higher Commands, who were supposed to supervise the Regimental Surgeons. The latter gradually became better educated, while the Company Surgeons under their supervision remained merely rude subordinates.

During the seventeenth century the sick and wounded were treated in tents pitched in the rear of the camp as long as the army was stationary, and tended by some of the women who accompanied it. When it moved, they were handed over to local authorities, or left in the villages near the fighting. An effort was then made in most countries to establish hospitals in the chief towns in the theatre of war, into which the wounded could be collected for better tending. By the eighteenth century Army Surgeons were allotted to these hospitals, which seem first to have been organized in France, where, however, they were managed by contractors. The abuses of this system led to the hospitals being placed under the Intendants of the Army, a change which effected little improvement, as the Intendants, through ignorance and apathy, hampered the action of the medical department, and delayed any improvement in it. France was the first country to organize any sort of mobile hospital, the germ of our field ambulance. One ambulance wagon was provided per 1,000 men, and in battle, dressing stations were formed in rear, to which wounded found their way, or were carried on stretchers. Stationary hospitals were also established in rear, and the modern system of evacuation of wounded to the rear was rudely organized. The same idea was started in Austria, and, in a less developed form, in Germany.

During the eighteenth century we find an organization of Regimental Surgeons, with attendants and stretcher bearers, and a provision of field equipment carried in wagons. Thus units corresponding to Field Ambulances were gradually organized in the armies of France, Austria, and Prussia. There were larger organizations of the same nature at Head-Quarters of the Armies, and of the Higher Commands when these were introduced in France during the Napoleonic Wars. These Field Ambulances had ambulance wagons, and other wagons carrying the dispensary and kitchen, and the necessary equipment, stores, and supplies, and were manned by a Corps of Hospital Orderlies and Stretcher Bearers. In rear of these units were stationary hospitals under military control. The Austrian organization was nearly as good as in France, but that of Prussia and other States lagged considerably behind them. In fact the Prussian troops had no medical organization, beyond the provision of regimental surgeons, at Jena, nor at Eylau, nor even at Waterloo.

It was not till during the nineteenth century that modern Medical Organization gradually evolved into its present highly developed condition in all civilized armies. This can be studied in the description of the British Medical Service (Chapter X.), which is nearly identical with that of Germany, and may be considered to represent a high type of Medical Organization for War.