Discussion of ‘Terrain evaluation for Allied military operations in Europe and the Far East during World War II: ‘secret’ British reports and specialist maps generated by the Geological Section, Inter-Service Topographical Department’, by E.P.F. Rose & J.C. Clatworthy, Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology , 41 , 237–256

Abstract

Pat Farrington writes: Whilst researching the background to World War II activities of my father, John Leonard Farrington (1906–1982), starting at the Imperial War Museum, I followed a data trail that led me to a recent Quarterly Journal paper (Rose & Clatworthy 2008 a ) and its subsequent discussion (Ludford 2009; Rose & Clatworthy 2009). It was recognized in the UK that ‘Tri-service [land, sea and air] warfare, especially the amphibious invasions of Europe, could not be planned on a single-service basis and needed … integrated intelligence support. The biggest example of this kind was the Inter-Service Topographical Department’ (ISTD) (Herman 1996, p. 260). A founder member of ISTD's Geological Section and commanding officer from August 1944 to June 1946, and thus for much of the Section's existence, my father and other members of the ISTD worked (usually under great pressure) to generate specialist maps and reports that provided remote terrain intelligence: a small but significant contribution to operational planning that culminated in final Allied victory. His contemporaries as senior British military geologists, notably W. B. R. King and F. W. Shotton but also J. V. Stephens, had formative influences and lives that are already well documented (e.g. by Rose & Clatworthy 2007, 2008 b ), essentially because they remained in the UK and followed careers in ‘pure’ geology after the war. In contrast, my father had a career based largely outside the UK, and in ‘applied’ geology, so few details of his life have as yet been placed on convenient public record. It thus seems timely to publish here information helpful to set his wartime geotechnical achievements in clearer context, details gleaned largely from documents in family possession, notably his ‘Officer's Record of Service’ and Army Form B199A. These have been set into military and geological context with …