The military papers and correspondence of Major-General J.F.C. Fuller, 1916-1933

The contribution of Major-General J.F.C. Fuller to military thought cannot be understood without studying his military career closely from December 1916, with his transfer to the Heavy Branch, Machine-Gun Corps, to his retirement in December 1933. While serving in France at Tank HQ, Bermicourt, he was instrumental in training the future Tank Corps during its ‘probationary period’, developing the tactics used at the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, and in laying the basis for the employment of tanks in 1918 in combined-arms operations. In August 1918, he moved to the War Office, then in January 1923 to the Staff College, Camberley, returning to Whitehall in February 1926 to become the Military Assistant to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Thereafter, he served in Aldershot, Wiesbaden and Catterick. The memoranda and reports he wrote, and his personal and official correspondence, allow numerous insights into the evolution of the thinking of one of the most influential military theorists and historians of the twentieth century