BOOK REVIEW: A GREAT FEAT OF IMPROVISATION.

Logistics And The British Expeditionary Force In France 1939-1940.

The publication by Helion of this book in the past month was brought to my attention by Mark at the Man of Tin blog as he knows of my great interest in logistics. I immediately ordered a copy and am now on their mailing list, thanks Mark.

The book is by Clem Maginniss who, as a ex-British Army logistician,  is fast becoming the premiere military logistics author of today. The book tells the story of the BEF from the declaration of war until the evacuation at Dunkirk from the logistics perspective.

There is no doubt that logistics is given short shrift in most military histories yet it is so true that "amateurs study tactics and professionals study logistics". This book seeks to redress the balance and  for this campaign certainly does exactly that. It tells the full story of the build up of the BEF during the phoney war, reminds us that at the time the BEF was the only fully motorised army in the world and outlines the extraordinary work needed to support what had became a force of over 400,000 by May 1940.

The research that has gone into this book is fantastic, there is so much detail that, just like the authors previous work, "An Unappreciated Field Of Endeavour", which covers British Army logistics in the First World War, this book will surely become the standard text on the subject.  However, great as this book is, it suffers from the same flaw as the previous work. That is the sheer amount of footnotes. These are so huge they often consume half of each page in the book and occasionally the whole page !!!!! While it is great to have so much information, it makes reading the book hard work. One is constantly loosing the thread because before turning the page you tend to read the lengthy notes and forget the main story !!!!!. 

There must be a better way of delivering these valuable footnotes without making the book so hard to read. Having said all that , this is a great book and highly recommended to anyone who wants to be a "professional".