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The Hey folks, welcome to the battles of the First World War podcast.

Joining us today is Phil Watson, a veteran of the British Armed Forces, and now a PhD candidate

at the University of Wolverhampton, where his supervisor is none other than Dr. Spencer Jones.

I mean, how cool is that? Dr. Jones was a guest on the podcast some time ago.

Phil joins us today to discuss British Doctrine in the Great War, which he wrote about in three articles for the Western Front

Association's Stand 2 Journal. We will be referencing the three articles in our discussion today.

Phil, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Well, thanks to invite it. I'm really pleased. Privilege. Thank you.

So we'll start off. Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? And

how did you become interested in the First World War and this particular question of British doctrinal

developmental development. Okay, let's try and jump to that in about four bits.

Join the army as a boy soldier, I was only 16, joined in 1977. I finally got to my regiment in

1978. My regiment was a, was a cavalry regiment, and its role was a divisional reconnaissance,

and that's what I've done all my life or did all of my military career. Interestingly, before we

move on, is that within the reconnaissance world, whether it's now or whether it was 300 years ago,

decentralized command and mission command where junior NCOs are given an awful lot of space

to think and make decisions.

It was a culture I grew up in, so I have known nothing different.

So that will be a segue later on as we go through this.

Spent at least 50% of my time in Germany, backwards and forwards during the Cold War.

I served half my time in the ranks, up to the rank of Warrant Officer, and then I was commissioned from the ranks as an officer,

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