We Have Been Here Before: the Evolution of the Doctrine of Decentralised Command in the British Army 1905-1989

Vice President of the WFA, Dr Christopher Pugsley has generously allowed the WFA to present his Sandhurst Occasional Paper No 9 published in 2011 on "We Have Been Here Before: the Evolution of the Doctrine of Decentralised Command in the British Army 1905-1989".

Please use the link below to read and download the paper.

This paper argues that the British Army introduced a formal doctrine in 1905 which was further consolidated in 1909. What we would today term as the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) of the British Army evolved during the First World War and were consolidated into written doctrine in the interwar period.

Doctrine was centred at the tactical level at corps and below, with emphasis for training at the divisional-level. Post-1918 British Army doctrine expanded on this and looked at the range of contingencies at what it termed the 'strategical' level and produced written doctrine to a set of principles to allow for a 'war of the first magnitude' situation as the worst-case scenario. It accepted the reality of a spectrum of warfare and catered for it in published doctrine.

In the myriad small wars on the Northwest Frontier of India, in-theatre doctrine was published to reflect the particular circumstances of these campaigns. In each case the aspiration was to achieve 'mobility' or manoeuvre through centralised intent and decentralised execution.

This was not always realised but was aspired to and remained a constant in the annual cycle of training by which doctrine was disseminated.