Royal Engineers Research Articles

GORDON LYALL PAVER (1913–1988) AND 42ND GEOLOGICAL SECTION, SOUTH AFRICAN ENGINEER CORPS: MILITARY GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS IN WORLD WAR II SUPPORTING BRITISH ARMY OPERATIONS: PART 2, NORTH AFRICA, THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION 1941–1945

ABSTRACT In September 1940, 42nd Geological Section of the South African Engineer Corps moved from Kenya to an operational base near Cairo in Egypt, continuing to serve within the British Army’s Middle East Command but with leadership by the newly-promoted Major Gordon Lyall Paver (1913–1988). The main part of the Section was employed to support the British 8th Army and operations west of the River Nile, particularly in the Western Desert of Egypt and Libya to Tunisia but also from bases elsewhere in Egypt, with surveys principally by means of electrical earth resistivity: guiding the deployment of Boring Sections Royal Engineers and other units in drilling boreholes from which to abstract potable groundwater. Detachments with similar roles were also employed further east of the Nile, in Sinai, Palestine, Transjordan, Syria and Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. In the Mediterranean region more generally, from 1943 additional deployments included Malta, Sicily and Cyprus, and later Greece. As conflict in North Africa came to an end in the spring of 1943, and so as to promote the use of geology and geophysics (rather than water diviners) as the best means for guiding the choice of sites for boreholes, Paver led teaching of a military training course in geophysical survey methods and the compilation of an authoritative textbook. In early 1945, as conflict in the European Theatre of Operations entered its final months, Paver assisted planning in England for potential deployment of the Section to the Far East and for the development there of an enhanced military geological staff—although hostilities came to an end before these plans materialized. Towards the end of his service, Paver completed for publication the final six of an 11-part series of articles on ‘Water supply in the Middle East campaigns’ that placed much military hydrogeological information on permanent public record. Demobilized in February 1946, Paver returned to a career as a consultant geophysicist, notably promoting ‘resistivity’ surveys to locate ‘underground water’, surveys including significant fieldwork in Egypt, Pakistan and Cyprus that developed his wartime skill base. He had pioneered and mostly directed the use of electrical earth resistivity surveys in support of British military operations during World War II and begun to influence a generation of Royal Engineers through his textbook: re-printed by the United Kingdom’s War Office in April 1945 to facilitate its long-term and wider use. Military honours were duly bestowed upon him for ‘gallant and distinguished services’ during the war.

‘100 large fruit trees cut down by ISAF’: land, infrastructure and military violence

This article examines the military violence of land use and infrastructure. The analysis discusses the case of the British Army’s Royal Corps of Engineers in 1860s British Columbia and in Helmand, Afghanistan following the post-2001 invasion. It charts how across British colonial and liberal military projects, military infrastructure activities have mobilised towards the goal of capitalist development. Drawing analytic lines between the Royal Engineers’ activities establishing the settler colony and colonial capitalism in British Columbia and their role in imposing liberal social, political and economic norms in Helmand, the article puts forward an account of why, how and with what effect military violence can include things such as the felling of trees, the issuing of private land title, the use of topsoil for road fill or prohibiting local farmers from growing tall crops near a roadway. The central argument of this article is that we should conceptualise and understand military activities such as these as violence. This analysis develops understandings of violence within scholarship addressing coloniality, liberal war, settler colonialism; and land, territory and infrastructure. Beyond the immediate analysis of specifically military violence, this discussion has broader implications for understanding the nexus of infrastructure, land and violence.

Understanding the historic legacies of empire from the timbers left behind: Towards critical dendroprovenancing in the British North Atlantic

AbstractThe forests of British North America were integral to Britain's maritime empire. Many of these timbers exist today as wooden beams and flooring at historical dockyards and garrisons such as the Royal Naval Dockyard of Bermuda. In this paper, we investigate what timbers from this Dockyard can tell us about interconnections and empire‐building throughout the North Atlantic region. To do this we drew from approaches of critical physical geography, historical geography, and dendroprovenancing by using timber as a way to interrogate collaboratively the changes in—and connections across—socio‐ecological landscapes. We examined HM Customs records between 1825 and 1850 to determine the flow of timbers to Bermuda. We then sampled timbers from buildings constructed between 1825 and 1853 and analyzed them using isotopic and dendrochronological techniques to establish the probable location of origin of the timber samples. HM Customs records showed that prior to the 1840s, timbers primarily came from British North America, whereas post‐1840 timbers primarily came from the southeastern United States, with some still coming from Europe and British North America. To establish whether timber use by the Royal Navy and Royal Engineers matched the pattern in the customs documents, we looked to the dendrochronological records. Dendrochronologic evidence showed that military construction followed the same pattern, with buildings constructed pre‐1840 using material from British North America and buildings constructed post‐1840 using timbers sourced from the southeastern United States. Finally, using this information we explore some of the connections between regions, in terms of resource use, and the implications of those uses—for example, that the British Admiralty continued to benefit from the practices of slavery through the use of products produced from enslaved labour in other parts of the North Atlantic well after emancipation.

Effect of sex and combat employment on musculoskeletal injuries and medical downgrading in trained military personnel: an observational cohort study

IntroductionFollowing the opening of all combat roles to women across the UK Armed Forces, there is a requirement to understand the risk of injury to these female personnel. Women injure...

Managing Chaos: The Falklands Campaign 1982

I kept a detailed diary throughout the Falklands campaign. When I read my Falklands diary 40 years on, I do not know the author. That person was driven, single-minded and obsessed with winning at all costs, well aware of the global and national implications of both success and failure. I also carried an 8-mm camera and filmed when I could. In 2015, I published this footage with the title, ‘Commando Engineers in the Falklands War: Version II’, unedited, except for format and subtitles, on YouTube. It was well received. On the voyage home from the conflict, on SS Canberra, I instructed my officers and soldiers to write down their experiences, which were circulated as an after-action report within the Royal Engineers. There was little debriefing on return. The implications of what we had learned were daunting and too expensive to face. We were very tired. We moved on. The focus remained on the British Army of the Rhine. I left the Army in 1993 and moved to the US, where I reside today with my family. We are all US citizens. Since retiring in 2014 after 20 years in business I revisited the Falklands Campaign as a lecturer for the US Marine Corps. Like most veterans, my memories and views have changed over time, as has my knowledge, not least from talking to Argentine veterans and learning from the US Marine Corps. This article reflects my views today on my very real experiences 40 years ago.◼

Discourse on Lost Pages of History: Architectural Works of Vasudev Kanitkar in Western India

Ample western historiographical resources are available to understand Colonial Architecture in India. Architectural language evolved during Colonial period in India was a collaborative effort of British Royal and Local engineers from several parts. The eclectic architectural language of British India is a product of the amalgamation of western models and eastern knowledge simultaneously. They worked in collaboration with Indian philanthropists, engineers, contractors and artisans. Much is available to read about royal engineers as pride for the British sovereign but contributions of local engineers who equally built colonial India are lost in the pages of history. This Paper tried to document and discuss works of local contractor Vasudev Kanitkar born in Baroda and worked at several places in Western India. With the help of archival resources and primary secondary surveys conducted this research paper compiles architectural contributions of Vasudev Kanitkar less known for his many landmark edifices he designed and built in western India.

BRITISH MILITARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF MALTA, PART 2: THE SECOND WORLD WAR, 1939–1945

ABSTRACT During the Second World War, the central Mediterranean island of Malta was famously besieged by the Italian navy and intensively bombed by Italian and later German air forces, from June 1940 until Allied victory in North Africa in May 1943 brought an end to the siege. It was then scheduled as a staging post to support the Allied invasion of Sicily from North Africa in July 1943 and of mainland Italy from Sicily in September. From 1941 until 1945, two Tunnelling Companies Royal Engineers, overlapping in succession, excavated underground facilities safe from aerial or naval bombardment. In 1943 and then 1944–1945, two Boring Sections Royal Engineers in succession drilled wells to enhance water supplies, initially for increased troop concentrations. Borehole site selection was guided in 1943 by the Director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain (Edward Battersby Bailey: 1881–1965) and by geologists Captain Frederick William Shotton (1906–1990) and Major Gordon Lyall Paver (1913–1988). In 1944, it was guided by geologist Captain Howard Digby Roberts (1913–1971), leading a detachment from 42nd Geological Section of the South African Engineer Corps that pioneered earth resistivity surveys on the island. Overall, these military studies generated a new but unpublished geological map of the island at 1:31,680-scale and refined knowledge of its geological structure: a much faulted but otherwise near-horizontal Oligo-Miocene sedimentary sequence. Further refinement was achieved as a consequence of the 1944–1945 drilling programme, led principally by geologist Captain Thomas Owen Morris (1904–1989) of the Royal Engineers. By 1945, this had helped to develop an improved water supply system for the island, and plans to develop groundwater abstracted from a perched upper aquifer (in the Upper Coralline Limestone and underlying Greensand formations, above a ‘Blue Clay’) as well as from the main lower aquifer, near sea level (in the Globigerina Limestone and/or underlying Lower Coralline Limestone formations).

Charles Warren: Royal Engineer in the Age of Empire

No abstract available.

Internal controls, labour processes and work at the Isthmus Lockstation, Rideau Canal, 1832-1854: Discipline and governmentality at a distance.

The emergence of an internal control system to guide operations along the Rideau Canal beginning in 1832 is examined through analysis of a book of directives (the Order Book) maintained by the lockmaster at the Isthmus lockstation. The Orders guided the work of the lockmaster and established general controls and control activities. Orders for adequate documents and records, physical control over assets and records, and proper authorization of activities were common. Orders are seen as efforts by British Royal Engineers, who were geographically removed from the oversight of the Rideau Canal Office, to discipline civilian lockmasters and to encourage lockmasters to govern themselves. Comparing the Order Book to Orders and Regulations in place in 1831 for the Royal Engineers also highlights similarities between expectations of Royal Engineers and those established for the civilian workforce under their direction, indicating a transfer of accounting technologies from the Royal Engineers to the civilian workforce.

BRITISH MILITARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF MALTA, PART 1: NINETEENTH CENTURY FOUNDATIONS

Malta, an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, was fortified as a base for the Knights Hospitaller 1530–1798 and to provide major harbours for the British Royal Navy after 1813. Men with British military associations (all subsequently to attain some distinction in public and/or academic life) were amongst the many pioneers of Maltese geology who established the essence of its outcrop stratigraphy and structure: a circa 300-metre-thick sequence of near-horizontal mid-Cenozoic fossiliferous limestones punctuated by a ‘blue clay/marl’, cut by a series of major faults and penetrated by several caves and fissures whose infill contained significant remains of Pleistocene vertebrates. Between 1843 and 1856, Lieutenant (later Vice-Admiral) Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt (1811–1888) defined major units in the bedrock sequence, Colonel (later Major-General) Sir William Reid (1791–1858) promoted publication of a geological memoir, and a 1:31,680-scale geological map prepared by the 3rd Earl of Ducie on a Royal Engineers topographical base map was published under Royal Engineer auspices. Mostly between 1860 and 1866, Captain (later Professor) Frederick Wollaston Hutton (1836–1905) and Surgeon (later Deputy Surgeon-General and Professor) Andrew Leith Adams (1827–1882) made field observations that refined earlier interpretations of stratigraphy and structure and generated revised but small-scale maps. They also collected specimens that facilitated specialist identifications of Malta’s fossil faunas, including foraminifera by Thomas Rupert Jones (1819–1911), Professor of Geology at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Rock specimens were sent in 1888 by Surgeon-Captain David (later Surgeon-General Sir David) Bruce (1855–1931) and the former engineer Lieutenant (and later Professor) Osbert Chadwick (1844–1913) to the pioneer oceanographer John (later Sir John) Murray (1841–1914). They stimulated Murray’s benchmark study 1889–1890 of Malta’s sedimentary sequence and fossil foraminifera, and their palaeoenvironmental interpretation, plus his compilation of a 1:129,254-scale geological map. These prompted extensive local studies and collection of macrofossil specimens by schoolmaster (later Lieutenant-Colonel) John Henry Cooke (1862–1933). By the end of the century, representative Maltese fossils had been presented for specialist study and identification or description to major museums in England, Scotland and Italy, facilitating improved correlation of Maltese strata with Oligo-Miocene successions elsewhere.

CANADIAN LINKS WITH BRITISH MILITARY GEOLOGY 1814 TO 1945

ABSTRACT Military applications of geology became apparent within the United Kingdom during the nineteenth century, and were developed during the First World War and more extensively during the Second, incidentally by some officers with links to Canada. In the nineteenth century, three Royal Engineer major-generals with geological interests had served there briefly: Joseph Ellison Portlock (1794–1864) helped to stem invasion of Upper Canada by the United States Army in 1814, pioneer geological survey in Ireland from 1826, and promote knowledge of geology amongst British Army officers; Frederick Henry Baddeley (1794–1879) helped to pioneer geological studies in south-east Canada in the 1820s; Richard John Nelson (1803–1877) served in Canada after mapping the geology of Jersey in 1828 and making geological observations in Bermuda. During the First World War, Tannatt William Edgeworth David (1858–1934), a Welsh-born Australian and from 1916 to 1918 the senior of two geologists serving with the British Army on the Western Front, had a Canadian military family link through his mother; and Reginald Walter Brock (1874–1935), Dean of Applied Science at the University of British Columbia and a distinguished Canadian geologist, interrupted his career for infantry service in Europe but was used as a geologist from mid-1918, in Palestine. During the Second World War, the British military geologist Frederick William Shotton (1906–1990) provided geological advice to, amongst other units, Canadian forces who generated thematic maps for parts of northern France that predicted ‘going’ (conditions affecting cross-country vehicle mobility) to follow the D-Day Allied landings in Normandy. In 1943, Thomas Crawford Phemister (1902–1982), Professor and Head of the Department of Geology and Mineralogy at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland but from 1926 to 1932 an associate professor at the University of British Columbia, as an ‘emergency’ Royal Engineers captain founded the Geological Section of the Inter-Service Topographical Department, a unit whose reports and thematic maps provided terrain intelligence for Allied forces in both Europe and the Far East from a base in England, within the University of Oxford. John Leonard Farrington (1906–1982), an undergraduate student from 1923 to 1928 of Brock and/or Phemister at the University of British Columbia, co-founded the Section and soon succeeded Phemister as its head, from 1944 to 1945 in the rank of major. Soon after 1945, military geologists became established in continuity within the British Army.

Timothy George Frankau

Timothy George Frankau (“Tim”) served as a GP in Dursley, Gloucestershire, between 1978 and 2010. Although somewhat reserved, Tim was an excellent family doctor, respected by and endeared to colleagues,...

Commemorating the Crimean, South African and First World Wars: A Case-Study of the Royal Engineers, 1856–1922

The First World War is often held to be a watershed in the memorialisation of war in Britain. Through an exploration of the Royal Engineers’ commemorative space at their headquarters in Chatham, this article argues that the post–1918 war memorial boom displays not only divergences from, but also continuities with, Victorian and Edwardian practices. Thus, although the mass volunteerism and conscription of 1914–1918 resulted in both the rank and file and the bereaved being drawn into the memorialisation process for the first time, memorial forms and messages, nonetheless, retained firm links with commemorative rituals of the late nineteenth century.

Colin James Pennycuick (1933–2019)

Colin James Pennycuick (1933–2019)

Geology and the Allied liberation of Normandy in World War II: British military applications of geology in France 1944-1945 contrasted with Italy 1943-1945

The Allied liberation of Normandy in northern France began on D-Day, 6 June 1944, with the greatest amphibious assault in world history. Planning was assisted by re-printing local geological maps and by early appointment of British military geologists to the headquarters staff at Army Group level: Major (later Lieutenant- Colonel) W.B.R. King succeeded by Captain (later Major) F.W. Shotton. Their priority tasks were to help guide the choice of the invasion area within Normandy; map natural hazards to cross-beach trafficability; determine sites suitable for rapid construction of temporary airfields; compile groundwater prospect maps and guide well drilling to ensure adequate supplies of potable water; guide the quarrying of stone, notably for the repair or enhancement of main supply routes; and compile ‘soil’ maps, potentially to indicate suitability for cross-country trafficability. As in Italy from 1944, in northern Europe from 1945 another geologist staff officer (Major D.R.A. Ponsford) was employed to focus on ‘works’ in rear areas whilst the geologist first appointed focused on ‘operations’ ahead. Wartime experience provided the basis postwar for publication of a Royal Engineers’ military geological textbook and the foundation of a small pool of geologist officers in the British reserve army that continues to the present day.

The Key Role Played by WAAC British Post Office Female Staff in Army Signal Units on the Western Front, 1917–1920

There is a gaping void in the historiography of the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), later called the Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps QMAAC), brought about by the absence of an informed understanding of the crucial role played by the young women seconded from British post office exchanges to serve as telephonists and telegraphists in France in 1917. Specifically attached to Royal Engineers’ signal units in British Expeditionary Force army bases and all three echelons of its General Headquarters, their arrival ensured the continued smooth operation of the army’s vital lines of communication. This article examines how their key role as professional technologists within a tightly secured military sector made a significant contribution to the final successful outcome of the conflict. Questions can be raised why their skills were never later addressed within the historiography, and it may be concluded that adequate recognition is long overdue.

Scallywag bunkers: geophysical investigations of WW2 Auxiliary Unit Operational Bases (OBs) in the UK

ABSTRACT In 1940, with the fall of France imminent, Britain prepared secret ‘Auxiliary Units’ tasked with guerrilla activities [Scallywagging] in the invading army’s rear. Patrols of four to eight highly skilled men used below-ground Operational Bases (OBs) in remote locations to avoid detection. No official records are released, but OBs were ‘Mark I’, enlarged deer setts, smuggler caves, etc., and Mark II, prefabricated designs by the Royal Engineers. This paper details three sites in Suffolk: one unknown Mark I was destroyed, a Mark II was partially intact and a Mark II was fully intact, all in secluded woods. Geophysical surveys found metal detectors optimal for location, with mid-frequency GPR/ERT optimal for characterisation. Archaeological finds included home-made braziers, 1940 kerosene heater stove, metal pans, ventilation systems and escape tunnels. This study shows OBs varied in construction and condition, with surveys detecting and characterising them, bringing WWII British ‘invasion’ history into the wider scientific community and public domain.

The Intimate International Relations of Museums: a Method

This article proposes a method for analysing museums as sites of intimate and colonially-produced international relations. Beginning with fieldwork that approaches museums as sites through which people intimately encounter the objects, institutions, selves and others of international politics, we explore how intimacy can be ‘read’ as socio-sexual affect, scales and proximities, and colonial differentiation/racialisation. The article is grounded in fieldwork at the British Army Royal Engineers Museum in Kent, UK, conceptualised as an assembly of, following Stoler, imperial debris. We explore how certain museum exhibits work as intimate ‘organising objects’, locating the museum collection, and those who visit or are excluded from it, within the intimate circulations of imperial and colonial violence. The article makes two core contributions: first, responding to recent literature in IR on museums we propose a framework for understanding how museums and exhibitions function as everyday sites of coloniality and racialisation. Second, we propose that approaching intimacy as a method is instructive for fieldwork in international relations (including museums) which takes the colonial constitution of the global/local seriously.

Tinker, Mapper, Soldier, Spy – Captain Henry Elsdale’s Pioneering 1882–83 Experiment with Small Balloons and Vertical Aerial Photography in Halifax, Canada

The first aerial photography trials in Canada took place at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1882 and 1883. They are attributed to an Englishman, Captain Henry Elsdale (1842–1900) of the Royal Engineers Corps. He experimented with a lightweight camera and a small, tethered balloon to successfully acquire a series of vertical aerial photographs of the Citadel Hill area of Halifax. The concept of miniaturization of his apparatus and its skillful airborne deployment is echoed some 130 years later in the proliferation of unassisted aerial vehicles and aerial imaging. This paper addresses three aspects. The first includes an appreciation of Elsdale as an early leader of aerial photography and related experimental activities involving a semi-autonomous airborne device. His original documentation of the effort, including scope, technical challenge and outcome, establish him as a remote-sensing protagonist who clearly anticipated the utility of vertical aerial imaging. The second aspect focuses on the examination of locale and content of the 1883 aerial photography and a comparison with contemporary geo-spatial representations of Halifax. Finally, documentation and outcome of those air photo experiments are reviewed in the context of similar efforts in Europe and North America, ascertaining the strikingly modern vision of Henry Elsdale to innovate surveillance practices for military and civilian application.

Dennis Thornton Price

Dennis Thornton Price was born in Leeds on 24 May 1930, the eldest child of Kitty and Stanley Price, a couple from Croydon who had four children. During the war...