ALPHABET SOUP! The British Army Staff System of World Wars I and II

Maj. Gen. David T. Zabecki | August 07, 2008  | 3 comments  | Print  | E-mail

The August/September 2008 issue of Armchair General contains the article, “The Commander’s Right Arm: Evolution of the Military Chief of Staff,” a history of the development of the military staff, particularly in Prussia/Germany, Britain and the United States, with emphasis on the modern commander’s “right arm” – the chief of staff. That article details the evolution of the modern staff from the era of Sweden’s Gustavus Adolphus to America’s current Joint Staff; but it is not always possible to include in a magazine article all of the details one would wish to include. This article supplements the information in the ACG August/September issue article with some clarifying information that readers should find useful.

Students of World Wars I and II often encounter a bewildering array of job titles and abbreviations for British General Staff officers of the period. This “alphabet soup” of letters and numbers is often confusing to the uninitiated or casual reader, and can prevent a full understanding of what’s being read about British Army staff operations and functions during the world wars.

To help decipher the jargon and often incomprehensible job titles, therefore, here’s a quick reference guide to help sort out the confusion:

• General Staff Officer 1 (GSO1), the head of G Branch
• General Staff Officer 2 (GSO2), the head of a G Branch staff division,     intelligence, operations, etc.
• General Staff Officer 3 (GSO3), an assistant division chief.
• Brigade Major, the GSO1 of a brigade.
• Brigadier, General Staff (BGS), the senior G Branch officer on corps staff
• Major General, General Staff (MGGS), the senior G Branch officer on army staff.
• Assistant Adjutant General or Assistant Quartermaster General (AAG or AQMG), lieutenant colonels, or in some cases colonels, heading divisions of the A or Q Branches
• Deputy Assistant Adjutant General or Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General (DAAG or DAQMG), majors as assistant division heads in the A or Q Branches.
• Staff Captain A or Q (SCA or SCQ), captains assigned to the A or Q Branches.

Armed with the above information, readers should be better able to “translate” the often confusing staff terminology frequently found in histories of British military operations of the two world wars — and help overcome the well-known “separated by a common language” problem of American and British interaction.

Maj. Gen. ret. David T. Zabecki, editor of Vietnam Magazine, has served as a S-3, a G-3, and a chief of staff in addition to one- and two-star commands supported by chiefs of staff. His two-volume study Chief of Staff: The Principal Staff Officer Behind History’s Greatest Commanders was published by the U. S. Naval Institute Press (usni.org, May 2008). 

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Tags: 20th century warfare, World War II, WWI

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