In all this maze of abbreviation, G.H.Q. is the combination most often heard at the front. For G.H.Q. is the head of the army, the brain and nerve centre which directs and governs the whole vast organism of our fighting force, from the most advanced stretch of sandbags which marks the firing-line back to the enormous office of a thousand clerks, where the regimental records are kept in a snug French town far to the rear. To the men in the firing-line G.H.Q. is the home of the “brass-hats” (as Staff officers are popularly styled), a mysterious and remote place from which unexpected and inexplicable edicts are issued forth, mostly leading to unwelcome changes in comfortable billets or cosy trenches, a snug spot of soft jobs and easy living.
In reality G.H.Q. is nothing of the kind. I wish some of the imaginative writers who, in the course of one or other of the political controversies which this war has brought forth, have described G.H.Q. as a centre of fashion, swarming with idle A.D.C.’s buzzing about beautiful ladies, could spend a day or two in the place. Luxury follows fashion as surely as trade follows the flag. One glance at the bedroom which would be reserved for our friend, the imaginative writer, at the local hotel would speedily disillusionize him as to G.H.Q. being fashionable, luxurious, or even comfortable. —— (the etiquette of our army in the field forbids me even now to lift the transparent veil enveloping the identity of the French town where Sir John French has installed his General Headquarters) is not Brussels of 1815. Nor is it Capua. It is a small town with historic associations, particularly with England, the greater part of any architectural and antiquarian beauty it may have possessed, however, swept away by the growth of industry.
G.H.Q. is a place of hard work and of simple living. The men in the trenches who “grouse,” as all good soldiers “grouse,” about the “soft” and “safe” jobs at G.H.Q. have no conception of the strenuous life of the men in the offices there. I am personally acquainted, not with one or two, but with scores of officers who are at their desk at eight o’clock, or earlier, each morning, Sundays included, and are kept hard at it, with not more than two hours’ break in the day, until eleven o’clock at night. Rank makes no distinction. In fact, the heads of the different services set the example of “hustle” to their subordinates.
“Never in my life,” said an officer with a distinguished record of service in the field in South Africa, “have I worked so hard as I have done at G.H.Q. I have not heard a shot fired in this war; I have never seen a shell burst; I have not set eyes upon a German, not even a German prisoner. I never get any time for exercise. Sometimes I long to be up in the trenches, getting hard and fit in the fresh air, and winning clasps for the war medal.”
“It’s very strange to be back at the old game,” a General who had been moved from a high appointment at G.H.Q. to the command of a division in the field said to me one day. “Here I am following my natural vocation of commanding men in the field. I am getting sunburnt. I have an enormous appetite, and I sleep better than I ever did in my life. Of course, I miss my friends at G.H.Q., but this is a life of leisure compared to the grind there.”
All the threads of the army run back to G.H.Q.—the threads controlling its strategy, its supplies of men, of material, of food, of equipment; its relations with our Allies, the French. To do proper justice to the work of G.H.Q. would require a volume; but, as I have set myself in this book to write an impression and not a technical review of the work of our army in the field, I will content myself with setting forth as briefly as I can the services centred at G.H.Q. as a preface to glancing at the conditions of life prevailing at the hub of the army.
General Headquarters, then, consists of the Command-in-Chief, the General Staff, the Adjutant-General’s Staff, and the Quartermaster-General’s Staff. Here we have assembled the principal services of the army, the supreme direction of all centred in the person of the Commander-in-Chief assisted by the General Staff, the Adjutant-General’s Department responsible for personnel, and the Quartermaster-General’s Department responsible for supplies. General Staff, A.G. and Q.M.G. Departments (you see how easy it is to fall into army abbreviations!), are represented by General Staff officers and an officer representing together A.G. and Q.M.G. Departments (he is called Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster-General) attached to each army, army corps, and division, thus insuring smooth departmentalization of the different branches right through the army. Each of the subdivisions of the three great services, General Staff, A.G., Q.M.G. Departments, also have their special representatives with armies, corps, and divisions in the field in the shape of Assistant and Deputy-Assistant Directors of Medical Services, of Ordnance Services, and so on.
The General Staff is divided into two divisions—Operations, known as “O,” and Intelligence (“I”).
“O” occupies itself with strategy and tactics, the general brainwork of the army. It is also the centre to which all reports come.
“I” is the detective of the army. It is the business of this division to endeavour to discover by every possible means all about the enemy forces, their disposition and composition. One of the most important of the sections of “I” is the map department, where maps, not only of our own positions, but also, as far as possible, of the enemy, are prepared.