Robert Paterson's Weblog

Nov 11 - Remembering my Family - What about yours?

At every Remembrance day, I remember in particular my Grandfather and my Great Uncle whom I knew and who served in WWI. But this year, thanks to my sister Diana, who has been doing all the work, I would like to honour the wider family by name who served in both wars. When you see the list - you may also wonder about your wider family. How great was their sacrifice and effort. Diana and I have found this research deeply moving and meaningful. I know you will too if you look more deeply into your family.

The Patersons were part of a close knit group of intermarried Scots families who played a major role in the establishment of Canada. All the sons and many of the daughters served in WWI. Many were killed or wounded. For the women at home - it must have been unbearable. My Great Great Aunt, lost all her children. Some lost their husbands in one war and their son in the next. 

Diana and I remember them most of all.

At the centre of the "Clan" were the Allans - who while capitalists of a first order - had a deep sense of duty. The Allans lived on both sides of the Atlantic and family members saw each other often. Most of the Canadian boys were educated in England. Some served in the British Army.

But Canada weeps for them all. For to survive was not the end. Many were scarred for life both in body and soul. 

My grandfather Alec, just promoted to Major. He was in France and in every action from Feb 1915 to September 9, 1918. He was one of the few from the 1st Division who volunteered in 1914 to survive. Here is an entry from the Battery War diary that talks to this.

 First of all the fallen in WWI.

Gwendolyn Evelyn Allan, aged 17, and Anna Marjory Allan, aged 15, (her body was never recovered) drowned at the sinking of the Lusitania 7th May 1915. Their mother was rescued and stayed in England to found a hospital for Canadian soldiers. Her son Hugh was to die the following year. 

Here are the two girls and their mother, Aunt Marguerite, who survived.

Her son, Flight Sub Lieutenant Hugh Allan, son of Lt Col Sir Hugh Montague Allan - the then patriarch of the family - killed on his first mission aged 20 on July 6 1917.

Captain John James Allan Liverpool Scottish killed 27th April 1916. His mother, Edith, had taken him to sign up on 15th May 1915

Allan Routledge killed 23rd Sept 1916

Temp Major - Captain Montague Claud Gribbon died 8th December 1915 at Kut el Amara in Mesopotamia - left his widow 389 pounds

Major Charles Napier North, Montague Claud Gribbon's brother in law, shot in the head by a sniper while inspecting wire near Zonnebeke Loos Nov 1st 1914 - left his widow 224 pounds 2 shillings and 3 pence. 

Captain George R Houston Boswall of the Grenadier Guards, died Loos 27th September 1915 aged 38!

Alexander Young, son of James Allan ( all we know right now)

Those who survived WWI

Major Claud MacFie - Seaforth Highlanders - DSO Gallipoli

Major Hugh Earnest Spencer Milburne

Major Claude Edward Allan Milburne

Lieutenant Ellice Allan Mackenzie Royal Canadian Artillery

Major James MacFie - India

Lt Col Bryce Allan DSO Gallipoli

Lieutenant Duncan Charles Allan son of Margaret MacFie - daughter of Sir Hugh Allan

Major Alexander Thomas Paterson (CFA) DSO and Bar - Served in France from Feb 1915 to September 9 1918 when he was gassed - My paternal Grandfather

Lieutenant Hartland Paterson lost a leg to wounds in his first action on September 12th 1918 - Alec's brother and my Great Great Uncle

Captain James Blackwood Paterson - Paymaster for the Canadian Black Watch and lender of last resort to all Canadian Officers!

Lt Col Charles Ballantyne - personally raised 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards (Canada) - My maternal great grandfather

Charles Bridges - It's complicated!

Major Charles Hope (CFA) My wife's Grandfather

The Fallen in WWII

Bill is 4th on the left in the 2nd row

Flight Lieutenant William Hope - 1944 Killed testing a Typhoon - Charlie Hope's eldest son and my wife Robin's Uncle

Captain Hugh Ellice Mackenzie Canadian Grenadier Guards - we have not found out how he died yet

Second Lieutenant George Cleeton Houston-Boswall Royal Scots regiment in December 1941 at Hong Kong

Served in WWII

Commander Robert Alexander Allan - RNVR - DSO Crois de Guerre, OBE

Col Alexander Thomas Paterson (yes my grandfather served in both)

Midshipman James Alexander Paterson CRN (my dad) invalided out of the service

My father is on the right - in the centre his aunt Elspeth who looked after the boys while their father was away at war for the second time. My Uncle Robert is on the left. I was named after him. 

Cpl Francis Hope, my father in law

Remembering Capt Philip Mann killed in Action April 1975

Since WWII there have been a number of minor wars where the warriors turned up. Philip Mann was one of those warriors.

Philip is on the right in this picture taken of us at school. This was in 1968. He was the one of the 3 of us (James Heaton is in the centre) who went on to join the regular army and joined his father's regiment. But he was not a peacetime soldier. 

The Dhofar campaign was one of those brutal little wars that Britain has often faught. 

Philip was killed in action on April 13th of 1975. He had just had his 25th birthday. His position was being overun and he had to call in fire on top of it.  Prior to this final action he won the highest award possible in Oman. Here is the citation.

I think today of his father Reverend Michael Mann and his sister Elizabeth.

The Middle East and Israel - The Dogs are off the leash

The Middle East and Israel remind me of dogs.

I walk our dogs off leash. I only put the leash on when I see people and other dogs who are not socialized. Dogs on leashes tend to behave badly with each other because they can get away with it and in many cases are reacting to the fear of their owner that something bad will happen. But if you go to a park that has a leash off policy, you tend to find confident well socialized dogs and owners who share these attributes.

Israel has been on a leash - protected by a nervous owner. This has meant that it can behave badly with no real consequences. It can give power to its own fundamentalists and to the settlers who drive an agenda that makes any peace impossible. For on the leash, Israel does not need to be serious about peace.

Israel lives in a dog park that insists on leashes. America has had a leash on Egypt and Jordan and many other Arab states too. This too has had internal consequences for these leaders. I wonder if their own fundamentalists have been empowered by this?

What seems to be certain now is that the Dog Park Rules have changed for all. It is going to be a No Leash park.

There will be real consequences for bad behaviour. I don't mean that there will be no bad behaviour, I mean that it will come with a big price. 

And the "Owner"? The US is left helpless the other side of the fence looking in.

What to do?

Realize that depending on imported oil is where the power and the pain lies. America's greatest defence is to make itself less vulnerable to oil. Local resiliency is the path to freedom

Fixing Education - #The Social Environment is the Key

Does your school have a social design?

Is your school designed to affect the students so that they acquire

• Social responsibility
• Empathy
• Resilience
• Ability to connect well across the ages and with adults

Where

• Excellence - where the definition of excellence is high but you can find status in what interests you
• Bullying is non existent
• The staff and the pupils really care for each other

These things don't happen by accident. They don't happen because you would like them to happen. They happen as a result of a conscious social design.

 

 

A pipe dream? No a reality and you can find out all about how to do this by looking at my old School - Harrow. Here is a link to their page - if you are interested and have time please look at the film on Settling into Harrow - where all I will talk about now is shown to you.

Social Hubs - Houses

Harrow has about 800 boys ranging from 13- 18 years old. The heart of the Social Design is that the boys are not all lumped into the larger mix but each spends his entire 5 years in a "House" with about 70 - 80 boys. He is bonded primarily to this social unit. 

Harrow has just built its first new house in ages - the point was not to expand the size of the school but to ensure that this unit size of 70 - 80 could be maintained.

Your key identity at Harrow is rooted in this group. You share your meals - you sleep - you play competitive sport - act in plays and give concerts - you have distinctive colours - you meet as old boys - all in this context. You do mix with the rest of the 800 boys but your house is your tribe. In a body 80 that lives like this for 5 years - YOU CANNOT HIDE. You have to find your place. 

So what is it about 80? 80 is of course one of the core building blocks (89 actually) of the Fibonacci series that governs most of how nature designs and also how humans do best in social units. 

80 is the size of the Century in the Roman Legion. 80 is a unit size that has been tested for millennia as ideal larger tribe. The smaller tribe is 34. The core team is 8 and the absolute maximum where there can be any social cohesion is 144. The Dunbar number is usually accepted as 150 for simplicity's sake. 

All real social design employs these numbers. For like gravity or light - nature is not arbitrary and math underpins all natural laws. 

 

Source Christopher Allen

So does your school or organization know anything about this or practice any of it? If you are in the army you do - all armies organize like this still. They do so because this works. It works to help people perform at their best.

If Harrow was just 800 boys then none of what I am talking about could happen. Many high schools have at least 800 pupils. Many have more than 1,500. With no Social Design that puts the kids into a tribe - tribes will form on their own as they do in prison where not to be in a tribe is to be "prey". Where most tribes are the dark side of tribes.

Where the staff become warders.

Social Design within the House

The house system has a very deliberate design inside the house too. This is not about a building or about a label - there is a social design inside the walls. 

Each house has a dedicated staff of adults and older boys whose job it is to make the place work and to set the environment where the boys have the best chance of doing well.

The House Master lives in the house and has a much lighter teaching load. They are chosen from the group of teachers who have put in about 10 -15 years as a teacher. They tend to be in their late 30's to early 40's. They have a 10 - 15 year term of office. They look after the "whole boy".

Matron who also lives in the house is in effect the uber mom. She looks after the boy boy.

There is a live in House Tutor, a teacher, whose job is academic coaching and mentoring. There are also 8 live out tutors who are attached to the house and about 10 boys. 10 boys is close enough for the team ideal of 8.

Think about all the work related issues that confront kids - and then imagine what it is like to have this kind of resource. All of this is OUTSIDE the classroom.

There are also the school chaplains who also act as the parish priest to the community.

The day to day running of the house is done not by any of the adult staff member but by the older boys.

All new boys are given a "shepherd" an older boy from the year ahead whose job is to help them find their way. Each new boy is also assigned to the care of a 6th former as well.

So at the heart of the school is not the class room but the society and each boy finds his own place. Where the boys experience and also create a safe and trusting trusted space.

Does your school have such a space?

The Social Design of the School

Nor is the larger school just the 800 boys going to classes. The larger school has a well thought our social design as well.

All boys eat in the central dining room - each house sits in its own area but this is where the entire school can meet socially - the larger social bonds happen around sharing food - THE core social bonding process.

The average class size is 12. This is in the realm of conversation that has an upper limit of close to 20. It means that many clases are about 8 which is the ideal human social design for conversation. When groups are over 23 conversation is impossible. There are two many possible connections.

Yes smaller classes are better. But reducing a class size from 34 to 26 achieves nothing. The Zone is 13 or less with 8 being best. Not a matter of opinion just as the laws of gravity are not a matter for debate either. 

The day to day discipline of the school is largely the job of the senior boys - School Monitors - about 1 -2 from each House. Teachers rarely have to be involved in discipline.

Teachers of course teach but that is a small part of what they do at Harrow. Harrow has something for all boys. It can be sport, acting, music, art, IT it can be anything and is. There is always a teacher who is engaged in the activity. What happens of course is that if your passion is the stage, as mine was, then Jeremy Lemmon, who ran that part of Harrow when I was there becomes one of your best friends.

Such a shift in relationship has a huge effect in class. You are being taught by people that you know as well as any friend. You know all of them not just the man in class. They can and do expect more from you as a result. They don't have to use power. 

A consequence is also that all the ages mix at Harrow. Older boys run things and teachers are coaches. It is normal for a 15 year old to argue fiercely with a 50 year old teacher about say politics or art just as it is almost impossible for that 15 year old to act out in that teacher's class. 18 year old boys - young men really look after the younger boys - much of the sports coaching, house plays etc are run by the older boys - again creating a relationship not based on power but on mutual interests.

Status and Agression

In most schools status is where most of the conflict arises - in the getting of it or in not having it. Teens are also naturally agressive and boys can default to violence and the use of power. I won't talk today about how vile girls can be!

Here the House system shows its strength. Boys are difficult. They are by nature competitive. At Harrow this need to compete is channeled by the House - there are competitions for everything and most are inter house based. Boys true agressive nature can be harnessed in a healthy way.

You have to have money to go to Harrow. But even in that league there is money and then there is MONEY.

The uniform - though odd looking - has a purpose here too. All the boys look the same. There is no allowance for personal status show at school. The only status you can show is status that you have earned at the school itself - there are many items of clothing - hats, scarves, ties, jackets etc that show what you have achieved.

Think for a moment about your time at high school - how important was status and how was it earned?

So how can the lessons of a place like Harrow be implemented in a regular high school?

In my next post on Bussing, I will offer up a suggestion.

 

News #Fail CBC on the F35 #fail on defence

How the mainstream news fails us - they don't do their work. They stay on the surface. This is what makes the news part of the problem that we all face today - that we have no idea what is really going on!

The CBC report that a Canadian F18 fighter tracked a Russian fly by and escorted them out of Canadian airspace. Seems an innocuous story doesn't it?. But then the story moves onto the question of the F35 replacement - basically making the point that we need this new plane. The entire piece is lifted from a press release.

My problem is not that the story is lifted from the press release - laziness is only a small sin!

No it is that the CBC has missed all along the real story of the F35. The real story that has been building for years. That will blow up "suddenly" causing all to ask "What happened" That will mean that the public will have been hoodwinked into paying billions for something that does not work. 

For the real story is that it is an utter failure as a fighter! The real story is that this is no secret - it has been central to the procurement debate for several years!

It performs much worse than all the planes that it is meant to replace.

Here is a snip from Winslow Wheeler - THE expert on procurement (More on who he is and his POV here)

Even sadder than Lockheed's desperate grasp for reasons to do nothing to fix the self-dismembering F-35 program is the fact that the future of Western combat aviation relies on it. The 2,456 models of it on order for the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps will ultimately replace almost all tactical aircraft now in our inventory, except for the F-22, for which production beyond 187 aircraft was cancelled this past summer. Major allies, including Britain and much of the rest of Western Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and Israel have all made commitments to buy the aircraft. Sales to many others (there's a long list) are postulated, and those who do not intend to buy the F-35 will probably copy it to the extent their treasuries, government bureaucracies, and technological development permit.

Unfortunately, the F-35 is unaffordable, and it is a technological kluge that will be less effective than airplanes it replaces. It will undo our air forces and our allies', not help them.

The problems with the F-35 are not limited to its cost.

As a fighter, the F-35 depends on a technological fantasy. Having failed to develop in the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s an effective (and reliable) radar-based technology to shoot down enemy (not friendly) aircraft "beyond visual range," the Air Force is trying yet again with the F-35, like the F-22 before it. Both have the added development of "stealth" (less detectability against some radars at some angles), but that new "high tech" feature and the long range radar have imposed design penalties that compromised the aircraft with not just high cost but also weight, drag, complexity, and vulnerabilities. The few times this technology has been tried in real air combat in the past decade, it has been successful less than half the time, and that has been against incompetent and/or primitively equipped pilots from Iraq and Serbia.

If the latest iteration of "beyond visual range" turns out to be yet another chimera, the F-35 will have to operate as a close-in dogfighter, but in that regime it is a dog. If one accepts every aerodynamic promise DOD currently makes for it, the F-35 will be overweight and underpowered. At 49,500 pounds in air-to-air take-off weight with an engine rated at 42,000 pounds of thrust, it will be a significant step backward in thrust-to-weight and acceleration for a new fighter. In fact, at that weight and with just 460 square feet of wing area for the Air Force and Marine Corps versions, the F-35's small wings will be loaded with 108 pounds for every square foot, one third worse than the F-16A. (Wings that are large relative to weight are crucial for maneuvering and surviving in combat.) The F-35 is, in fact, considerably less maneuverable than the appallingly vulnerable F-105 "Lead Sled," a fighter that proved helpless in dogfights against MiGs over North Vietnam. (A chilling note: most of the Air Force's fleet of F-105s was lost in four years of bombing; one hundred pilots were lost in just six months.)

Nor is the F-35 a first class bomber for all that cost: in its stealthy mode it carries only a 4,000 pound payload, one third the 12,000 pounds carried by the "Lead Sled."

As a "close air support" ground-attack aircraft to help US troops engaged in combat, the F-35 is too fast to identify the targets it is shooting at; too delicate and flammable to withstand ground fire, and too short-legged to loiter usefully over embattled US ground units for sustained periods. It is a giant step backward from the current A-10. 

The real story is at the heart of the problem facing the US and its allies in equipment replacement. The new kit costs too much and does not work.

So here is Canada signing on to a vast expense for kit that will not do the job - better we have asked to reopen the F18 line - after all the Russians are not building anything new.

The CBC and all the Canadian media are more than lazy here. The Canadian public knows nothing about the failure of the F35 and the deal has been done. Billions of precious dollars have been committed to a dud. We know nothing!

Who at the CBC has any idea about defence and what is going on? It's not a small topic. Who talks also about what is really going on in Afghanistan? I don't mean the usual ramp ceremonies, killings and corruption stories - I mean is nation building a legitimate strategy? 

Billions have been spent and more to come. 151 of our sons and daughter have been killed so far. But who at the CBC can go deep on this? 

We need a news service that can go beneath the surface. 

My bet is that the response will be costs. The CBC does not have the budget. That is rubbish.If I can read Winslow Wheeler then so can they. If I can read people like Steven Pressfield on Afghanistan - so can they. The expertise on any topic is out there. You just need the culture to go there.

The CBC is not alone here - where is the reporting in any other Canadian mainstream media organization? 

Don't you find it annoying that they go on and on about the value of their organizations and almost never get beyond a press release or the obvious?

Afghanistan - Time to rethink the process

What ever the outcome of the meeting between General McChrystal and the President, I think it is time to rethink the process by which the war is conducted and I think WWII offers us a better model.

Strategy was conducted in conference with the key allies combining the political and military. Key issues such as Germany First were decided in these meetings. The year of the second front was another key call.

By having such conferences, the commanders could be sure of the resources and of the task ahead. None of this begging for men. All was clear for the Commander. All he had to do was to do.

What is clear for any commander in Afghanistan?

Both Roosevelt and Churchill were served by a top soldier who not only knew their stuff but all the players. More both Marshall and Brooke held their own egos in check. So the political leader could be assured of a sure advice.

 

The leader of the allied team in Afghanistan has to be a diplomat and subtle. How was McChrystal chosen? Imagine if Patton had been in Ike's job? We might have lost the war. Very poor advice. Based on of course not a clear strategy.

Marshall had his Black Book. He had tested every senior officer. He cleared the decks after the Louisiana Maneuvers and his black book had the names of those who had it. This was war and only the most fitted would get command.

But most important of all - stay or leave - we need to think our way.

If it is leave we need as thoughtful a man as one who would stay. This is General Julian Byng. It was his job to extricate the British (Australian and New Zealanders too) from Gallipoli. The withdrawal was the most brilliant retreat in the annals of war. Byng then went on to command the Canadians in France and was the architect of Vimy. He knew how to pick men and it was his support that made Arthur Currie his Canadian successor.

If it is stay then what does that mean. We have to have a real strategy. Can we rely on the creation of a state? Is this realistic? Can we rely on Karzai? If not then what?

It might mean hold and contain.

After their total defeat, the British had a holding strategy that worked for 100 years. That might work too - but it does demand a bit of homework! I wonder how much the Pentagon know of what the Brits did on the frontier - I bet next to nothing.

But there are officers like Maj Jim Gant who know what they are doing. They know how to do this.

 
Download his paper here.

This is not big army. This is not nation building. This is social war where engagement and trust and time all are essential. It means living and being like Afghans. It means being in villages for years - not in an American Compound but in the village putting your life in the hands of those that you are there to serve.

Sounds mad? That is what the Brits did for a century.

Gant is the 21st century 19th century "Social Soldier" who loves and understands the Afghan people and knows how to work within its culture to get results. Underneath "Big Army" are people like Gant who have a lot to contribute if the President is interested in hearing what is practical.

Such a strategy is based on the Tribal and not State idea. It demands a long term attachment to the Tribes and to being there as true brothers. Jim Gant's greatest supporter is the supreme writer of historical fiction today, Steven Pressfield - author of amongst other books - The Afghan Campaign - the story of another campaign that ran into trouble - Alexander the Great.

Here is how he answers the question of whether Americans could do such a job - become those that they serve and escape the bubble of their culture and Big Army:

Men for the job

Tribal Engagement Team members, should this concept be adopted, would be called upon to commit for multiple tours under the loneliest, harshest and most hazardous conditions imaginable. To succeed with the tribe they are assigned to, they would have to demonstrate impeccable combat credentials and, even rarer, possess the “people skills” to establish and maintain rapport across a cultural chasm—Western to Tribal Afghan—that has defeated every outside entity from Alexander the Great to the British and the Soviets. The task would be extraordinarily difficult, dirty and dangerous, and in the end would almost certainly be rewarded neither by career advancement (because the enterprise would be unprecedented and outside the normal channels of military promotion) nor by recognition from the public at large, who in all probability will rarely hear of it and wouldn’t understand or appreciate it if they did.

How can we identify and attract such men?

Do you remember this tiny, three-line ad from the London Times, December 29, 1913?

Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honour and recognition in case of success.

5000 volunteers queued up in response to this advertisement, posted by Ernest Shackleton seeking crewmen for his Antarctic expedition.

I may be wrong, but I don’t think our young American warriors would respond with any less enthusiasm than their British cousins did a century ago to a similar call. Do you?

What is the strategy and what is the outcome. These are not the questions for the local commander - they are the questions for the political leadership. If there is a "Coalition" then they should be at the table.

Time to put the unworkable ideas of democracy and national building aside and to bring in people who know what they are doing to advise on what can be done.

Big Army has lost every conflict since WWII - for they miss the political point. Every army that has taken on Afghanistan has lost - including Alexander. Being powerful conventionally is not enough.

Alexander got out by bowing down eventually to the cultural realities of the place - if he could put aside his version of Big Army, then who are we to think we can better him?

 
 

 

North Korea - A last straw? America is helpless!

Things are very tense 60 years after the outbreak of the Korean War.

If I was Kim Jong Il would I cross the line now? I think I would for the following reasons.

• The US has to back South Korea
• But the US is militarily at full stretch with Iraq and Afghanistan
• The US is at full stretch financially and fiscally
• There is no ally in Europe to help as they did in 1950 for the same reasons
• America cannot respond fully

So North Korea can do it.

Will PRC step in and stop him?

If I was the leader in China I would make all the right noises and do nothing. This really puts China at the top of the heap because America will lose so much face.

America and the west is helpless. 

We have a maniac who has a good chance of winning big. He may go for it. If I was mad, I would.

Why America's Military is in such a mess

Why has America got the most expensive military in the world and yet cannot deploy the right force to do the job that confronts it?

This story has the answer to this question - its budgets are controlled by its suppliers and its suppliers have bought the leadership.

A Marine Lt Col with Jon Stewart

Who would ever have thought that a Lt Col in the Marine Corps would make electrifying watching on the News Hour?

Well if you really know your stuff and you really have something to say then it might happen and it did.

Here is Lt Col John Nagl talking to Jon Stewart about the cultural revolution that will have to happen to the US Armed Forces if they are to make a positive difference in conflict. Thanks John Robb who writes brilliantly about what is going on for the link and Small Wars Journal for their continuing broad coverage of what is important in Military Affairs today.

Also shows that the US Military is starting to "get it" in terms of how to communicate well today. Have something real to say about about something real and have a spokesperson who can be human do the talking.

Just being able to apply overwhelming force is no longer good enough - on its own - you lose wars that way now. So how do you then go beyond this?

Here is Tom Barnett at TED giving the context for a way of organizing so that you can win the war and the peace.  A tour de force - a master class of distilled wisdom.

History Repeating itself? Outsiders in Iraq?

I read an article today about David Kilcullen that rang a big bell. Kilcullen is an Australian outsider who has recently made it into the inside of policy being made in Iraq. More about him in a second.

Here is the aha - When the rules of war change, the establishment get struck in their old mindsets and only the outside "amateurs" have a chance of getting you unstuck.

In the 1914 - 1918 war, there was deadlock. No one could find an answer to the defense.  All they could do was to increase the weight of the effort. The French and British and later American Leadership were trapped by their doctrine and by the fact that they could all draw on immense manpower that they could easily lose.

The Australians and the Canadians were very different. Both fielded volunteer armies ( Both had large Corps of over 100,000 men) Their men were not urban factory workers or rural peasants. They were extremely self sufficient and bloody minded who did not take to authority. They came from big lands but small populations. They could not be wasted.

Above all they were lead by gifted amateurs. Australia by John Monash, a son of Prussian and Jewish parents who was an Engineer. He had been in the militia since 1884 and in 1914 was a Colonel. Arthur Currie lead the Canadians by 1917 and was the planner for Vimy Ridge. Currie had been a not very successful real estate salesman, echoes of Grant, and also had been in the militia where he began the war as a Colonel in the artillery.

Both men understood that the simple application of mass, think Iraq, was not going to do the job. Both could rely on the quality of their men to take a much more fluid approach. Both also used artillery like a scalpel and not simply a hammer. If you are interested in the detail here is a paper on the Currie revolution that I wrote for Veterans Affairs.

By 1918, a totally frustrated Lloyd George was planning to replace Haig with these two men. Currie's work as point for the allies when the Canadian Corps pushed across the Canal de Nord and broke through the Hindenberg line ended the war before this took place.

I think that Iraq & Afghanistan are deja vu all over again. Our military leadership are stuck somewhere in Northern Europe still fighting the  Soviet Union. They cannot break the mindset of applying force and just as bad of force protection. They don't have infinite manpower but they have access to infinite money and to technology. Intellectually they may "get it" but in their hearts they don't.

But now we are in "post Somme" Iraq and there is a realization that we are stuck - the time when the amateur from away can be heard.

Kilcullen's main theory (Wikipedia) is that a Kinetic approach (like the first day of the Somme) cannot prevail against an enemy whose order of battle is organic and cultural:

Counterinsurgency in its traditional guise is based on systems analysis. But Cartesian systems analysis cannot handle the complexity inherent in counterinsurgency. Fortunately, since the 1960s scientists have developed new approaches to systems analysis, based on the emerging theory of Complexity, which does provide means for handling this complexity. Therefore complex systems analysis of insurgent systems may be the tool needed to develop a fundamentally new version of counterinsurgency for this War.

Applying the branch of complexity theory that deals with organic systems, the paper develops a model of insurgencies as biological systems. This model identifies key system elements and means to attack them. It also allows insights into the systems dynamics of global insurgency, the enabling role of culture in insurgent systems, evolution and adaptation in insurgent groups, insurgent ecosystems, and the nature of the Islamist ‘virtual state’. A historical survey of five previous counterinsurgency campaigns provides a tentative validation of this systems approach. Applying this model generates a new strategy for the War on Terrorism – Disaggregation. Like Containment in the Cold War, a Disaggregation strategy means different things in different theatres or at different times. But it provides a unifying strategic conception for the War. Disaggregation focuses on interdicting links between theatres, denying the ability of regional and global actors to link and exploit local actors, disrupting flows between and within jihad theatres, denying sanctuary areas, isolating Islamists from local populations and disrupting inputs from the sources of Islamism in the greater Middle East.

This gives rise to an operational concept: the aim of counterinsurgency (hence the war aim in this campaign) is to return the insurgency’s parent society to its normal mode of interaction, on terms favourable to us. This demands an understanding of what ‘normality’ is for a given society, and a realisation that military measures only create preconditions for other elements of national power to resolve underlying issues. The systems model also generates practical insights – the need for a common strategic understanding, a constitutional path to address legitimate grievances, understanding of the global insurgent ecosystem and our role in it, a tailored analysis of each insurgency, and improved cultural capability.

Kilcullen has argued in most of his works for a deeper cultural and linguistic understanding of the conflict environment, an approach he has recently begun calling "conflict ethnography". In May 2007 on the Small Wars Journal website he argued that:

The bottom line is that no handbook relieves a professional counterinsurgent from the personal obligation to study, internalize and interpret the physical, human, informational and ideological setting in which the conflict takes place. Conflict ethnography is key; to borrow a literary term, there is no substitute for a “close reading” of the environment. But it is a reading that resides in no book, but around you; in the terrain, the people, their social and cultural institutions, the way they act and think. You have to be a participant observer.(My emphasis)  And the key is to see beyond the surface differences between our societies and these environments (of which religious orientation is one key element) to the deeper social and cultural drivers of conflict, drivers that locals would understand on their own terms.

I think that we are here again. Kilcullen is the consummate outsider as were Monash and Currie. He is not trapped by tradition and he also has a keen mind and a different kind of experience (The Australian).

But when the invasion of Iraq was being planned, Kilcullen was one of a handful of senior military advisers in the coalition of the willing to voice a dissenting view. "I was one of a bunch of people ... who said 'Iraq is going to be a lot harder than you people seem to think, based on 20 years of experience doing it and studying it. It's going to take a lot more than you seem to be willing to commit."'

It was a view that then US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld rejected out of hand, saying Kilcullen didn't know what he was talking about.

But now, after more than four years of entrenched conflict with no end in sight, Kilcullen's doctrine of counterinsurgency prevails in Washington and on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq, where it provided the foundation for the surge strategy the Bush administration says is beginning to succeed.

Kilcullen is one of the most influential Australian military minds of his generation. He grew up on Sydney's north shore, the son of academics. He studied counterinsurgency as a cadet at Duntroon, served for more than 20 years in the Australian Army and was awarded a PhD in political science from the University fo NSW for a thesis on Indonesian insurgent and terrorist groups and counterinsurgency methods. He has been a military adviser to the Indonesian Special Forces in counterinsurgency, taught counterinsurgency tactics at the British School of Infantry, and served in peacekeeping operations in Cyprus and Bougainville. Kilcullen also commanded an Australian infantry company in counterinsurgency operations in East Timor and trained and led East Timorese forces after the independence vote in 1999. He was a special adviser for irregular warfare to the 2005 US Quadrennial Defence Review and is Rice's chief strategist on counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism, working in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia.

His no-nonsense guide to fighting insurgents, The 28 Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level CounterInsurgency, is used by the US, Australian, British, Canadian, Dutch, Iraqi and Afghan armies as a training document.

It is now time to find more Kilcullens, Monash's and Curries

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