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The Esher Report of 1904, issued by a committee chaired by Lord Esher, recommended radical reform of the British Army, such as the creation of an Army Council, General Staff and Chief of the General Staff and the abolition of the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces.
The change to the character of the Army has endured.
The Second Boer War of 1899-1902 exposed weakness and inefficiency in the British Army and demonstrated how isolated Britain was from the rest of the world. The war had been won only by leaving Britain defenceless on land. In 1900, Imperial Germany began to build a battlefleet and industrial growth had already made it challenge Britain's economic lead in Europe.
The Elgin Commission had already advocated some changes in administration. Under Hugh Oakeley Arnold-Forster at the War Office the Report of the War Office (Reconstitution) Committee was set up to look into reform of the Army. It was chaired by Lord Esher, who had been a member of the Elgin Commission, and had two other members; Admiral Sir John Fisher (the naval Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, and a former Controller of the Navy and Second Sea Lord), and Colonel Sir George Clarke. The Esher Report was published, successively, in February and March 1904.
The Committee took evidence in private and its Report was in three parts. It analysed the complex arrangements and inefficiencies of the Army administration and made three main recommendations:
That rationalisation was recommended by the Report to be implemented throughout the Army. The Report also claimed that policy and administration had become too centralised in the War Office, to the detriment of initiative. Administrative districts [1] were recommended to be responsible for organisation to leave commanders of field units free to train for war.
King Edward VII welcomed the Report and successfully urged the Arthur James Balfour's government to accept its recommendations. However, some in the Army were wary of its recommendations, one opponent being Lord Kitchener. Richard Haldane, who became War Secretary for Henry Campbell-Bannerman's government in 1905, implemented many of its recommendations between 1906 and 1909. Among his advisers was General Sir Gerard Ellison, who was also Secretary of the Esher Committee.
The recommendations were to form the basis of Army reform for the next 60 years. The military historian Correlli Barnett wrote that the Esher Report's importance "and its consequences can hardly be exaggerated.... Without the Esher Report... it is inconceivable that the mammoth British military efforts of two world wars could have been possible, let alone so generally successful." [2]
The War Office has referred to several British government organisations in history, all relating to the army. It was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). It was at that time, equivalent to the Admiralty, responsible for the Royal Navy (RN), and the Air Ministry, which oversaw the Royal Air Force (RAF). The name 'War Office' is also given to the former home of the department, located at the junction of Horse Guards Avenue and Whitehall in central London. The landmark building was sold on 1 March 2016 by HM Government for more than £350 million, on a 250 year lease for conversion into a luxury hotel and residential apartments.
The Confederate order of battle during the Battle of Gettysburg includes the American Civil War officers and men of the Army of Northern Virginia. Order of battle compiled from the army organization during the battle, the casualty returns and the reports.
Reginald Baliol Brett, 2nd Viscount Esher, was a British historian and Liberal Party politician, although his greatest influence over military and foreign affairs was as a courtier, member of public committees and behind-the-scenes "fixer", or rather éminence grise.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, later Commander-in-Chief, British Army, or just the Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C), was (intermittently) the professional head of the English Army from 1660 to 1707 and of the British Army from 1707 until 1904. In 1904 the office was replaced with the creation of the Army Council and the appointment of Chief of the General Staff.
A military staff or general staff is a group of officers, enlisted and civilian staff who serve the commander of a division or other large military unit in their command and control role through planning, analysis, and information gathering, as well as by relaying, coordinating, and supervising the execution of their plans and orders, especially in case of multiple simultaneous and rapidly changing complex operations. They are organised into functional groups such as administration, logistics, operations, intelligence, training, etc. They provide multi-directional flow of information between a commanding officer, subordinate military units and other stakeholders. A centralised general staff results in tighter top-down control but requires larger staff at headquarters (HQ) and reduces accuracy of orientation of field operations, whereas a decentralised general staff results in enhanced situational focus, personal initiative, speed of localised action, OODA loop, and improved accuracy of orientation.
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The U.S. Army was founded on 14 June 1775, when the Continental Congress authorized enlistment of riflemen to serve the United Colonies for one year.
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Ordnance sergeant was an enlisted rank in the U.S. Army from 1832 to 1920. The Confederate States Army also had an ordnance sergeant position during its existence. Ordnance sergeants were part of the Army's Ordnance Department and were in charge of the ordnance stores at a particular fort or other Army post. Often they led caretaker detachments or were the sole caretakers of ungarrisoned fortifications and other facilities. In both armies the rank insignia consisted of three inverted chevrons with a 5-pointed star above it.
The Army Council was the supreme administering body of the British Army from its creation in 1904 until it was reconstituted as the Army Board in 1964.
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The Haldane Reforms were a series of far-ranging reforms of the British Army made from 1906 to 1912, and named after the Secretary of State for War, Richard Burdon Haldane. They were the first major reforms since the "Childers Reforms" of the early 1880s, and were made in the light of lessons newly learned in the Second Boer War.
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