The Real Controller of the Battle: The Importance of Studying Tactical Battalion Command—A Case Study

This article examines the command of the 22nd Australian Infantry Battalion during the 1918 Hundred Days campaign of the First World War as a means both to explore the nature of decentralised command at battalion level and to demonstrate what can be gained by exploring an understudied level of the army’s organisation. It explores the degree to which “command and control” was delegated to the battalion commander for planning and executing operations. The article demonstrates how decentralised command and control functioned in late 1918, as a moderately successful if awkward and inconsistent process.