Recent studies of the British Army during the First World War have fundamentally overturned historical understandings of its, yet the chain of command that linked the upper echelons of GHQ to the soldiers in the trenches remains poorly understood. In order to reconnect the lines of communication between the General Staff and the front line, and to challenge lingering popular conceptions of callous incompetence, this book analyses a database of more than 4,000 officers who commanded infantry battalions during the war.