Preface

Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew B. Godefroy, CD, Ph.D.
Officer in Charge of Professional Military Education
Canadian Army Command and Staff College

“A very large portion of the training was conducted in the open air, and every endeavour was made to teach the officers to study ground and its practical use in warfare. Small tactical problems, as well as larger strategic manoeuvres, attack and defence schemes, the defence of houses, villages and woods, outposts and advance guards, were constantly practiced.”—Colonel Gerald C. Kitson reporting on the first Staff Course, 1898

Major-General Sir Edward Hutton, General Officer Commanding the Militia of Canada, instituted a new Staff Course for select officers in 1898 with the aim of generating a sufficient number of trained leaders to form the nucleus of a proper General Staff for Canada’s evolving army. The first four-month Staff Course, led by Colonel Gerald Kitson, culminated in a series of staff rides “by which the work done during the Course was thoroughly tested.” Of the first 14 officers to attend the Staff Course, 12 graduated. Less than a year later, 8 of those officers were deployed as part of a coalition force to fight in the war then underway in the Transvaal, South Africa.

The staff ride continued to form a large part of the Army’s Staff Course curriculum until the outbreak of the First World War. After that, it was largely replaced, first by case studies and later by tactical exercises without troops (TEWT), both in the field and in garrison with the aid of canvas model or sand table demonstrations. Whatever the method, the aim of those activities was to encourage historical mindedness and maintain preparedness through the informed discussion and debate of doctrine and tactics. This was especially important during the inter-war period, when the army generally suffered from a lack of physical resources to conduct complex field exercises and training.

Like its main allies, after the Second World War the Canadian Army slowly returned to conducting TEWTs and staff rides. By the 1970s, those activities, along with battlefield touring, became a regular part of the precursors to the courses run at the Canadian Army Command and Staff College (CACSC) today.

Interestingly, only the practice of conducting TEWTs persisted at the CACSC through the years of the Afghanistan War. It is hoped that this new guide will encourage yet another revival of this important military practice, assisting all ranks in their study of doctrine and tactics, at all levels and through all phases of operations.