Abstract Napoleon Bonaparte was, in 1798, the first general to include geologists as such on a military operation. Within the UK, the following century saw geology taught, and national geological mapping initiated, as a military science. Nevertheless, military geologists were not deployed on a battlefield until World War I, first by the German and Austro-Hungarian armies and later and less intensively those of the UK and USA. Geologists were used primarily to guide abstraction of groundwater, construction of ‘mine’ tunnels and dug-outs, development of fortifications and quarrying of natural resources to enhance or repair supply routes. Only the USSR and Germany entered World War II with organized military geological expertise, but the UK and later the USA made significant use of military geologists, albeit far fewer than the c . 400 in total used by German forces. Military geologist roles in World War II included most of those of World War I, but were extended to other aspects of terrain evaluation, notably the rapid construction of temporary airfields and factors affecting cross-country vehicular movement (‘going’). After 1945, more military geologists were used in the USA than Germany or the UK, in these and wider roles, but mostly as civilians or reservists.

Abstract Quarrying Companies were a new type of unit first raised within the Royal Engineers in World War I. Thirteen served in northern France, on the Western Front: two from late 1916 (198 and 199 Quarrying Companies) and 11 more from 1917 (320–329 and 348 Quarrying Companies). Recruited from Great Britain, Ireland and the Channel Island of Guernsey, each consisted of four officers and 264 soldiers; over 3000 men in total, assisted by c . 4000 less skilled labourers. They were used to support the British Expeditionary Force by providing ‘stone’, mostly from existing quarries near Marquise, NE of the port of Boulogne. There they excavated Devonian and Carboniferous ‘limestones’ in the Ferques Inlier, relatively strong rocks within a region of wide Mesozoic and Cenozoic outcrop. As the British Expeditionary Force expanded to a peak of five armies and c . 1.5 million troops, ‘stone’ was required for the enhancement or repair of the roads, railways and associated facilities that formed a crucial element of its infrastructure, essential for the efficient movement of soldiers and their copious supplies of food, stores and ammunition. The requirement ceased soon after the end of hostilities and all Quarrying Companies Royal Engineers were disbanded in 1919.

Abstract Eight Quarrying Companies Royal Engineers were raised during World War II, the first four in 1940. Unable to deploy to France as planned, these were used initially for bomb disposal, but from January 1941 companies 851 and 854 (succeeded in 1942 by 857) quarried stone for the construction of two military ports in western Scotland. In early to mid-1943, these companies were sent to support Allied forces in the North African Campaign and, from December 1943, the subsequent Italian Campaign. Other companies initially focused on ports and airfields associated with operations in the Atlantic: Company 853 quarried from 1941 to 1942 in Northern Ireland; Company 855 was deployed in 1941 to Poolewe in NW Scotland, before assignment in 1942–43 to Gibraltar; and companies 125 and 856 quarried from 1942 to 1943 on the Faroe Islands. Four companies were successively employed from 1942 to 1944 quarrying in Oxfordshire to aid the construction of a Central Ordnance Depot. Although three companies were operational in the Mediterranean region, the other five were united in 1944 to form a Quarry Group to support Allied operations in Normandy and the subsequent campaign across northern France, Belgium and into Germany. All eight received some geological guidance; all were disbanded before 1947.

Abstract 170 Tunnelling Company Royal Engineers left England in January 1940 to excavate bomb-proof military headquarters in northern France. Expansion into companies 170, 171, 172 and 173 was delayed when the British Expeditionary Force was defeated and evacuated, but completed in England in July to excavate accommodation underground for regional headquarters and artillery batteries – mostly in Cretaceous chalk. Companies 178, 179 and 180 formed in England in May–June 1940, and 178 and 180 soon deployed to Gibraltar, joined by 170 in 1941 and successively by 1st and 2nd Tunnelling Companies Royal Canadian Engineers. They excavated a major complex of tunnels and chambers within Jurassic dolomitic limestone by October 1943 to help fortify the rocky peninsula, work completed by a single company (172) thereafter. Companies 183, 184 and 185 joined 179 in 1941 to emplace ‘Canadian pipe mines’ to inhibit the invasion of Britain. 173 served in Malta 1941–43, and 171 during 1943–45, excavating >50 bomb-proof facilities in Oligo-Miocene limestones, plus works to enhance the civilian water supply. By late 1943, all companies except 172 (Gibraltar) and 171 (Malta) were based in Britain. At least five were converted for general engineering use and no longer needed geological assistance.

Abstract During the war of 1939–45, intelligence was gleaned from aerial photographs by a newly founded organization that developed into the Allied Central Interpretation Unit. This was based primarily at Danesfield House (known as Royal Air Force Medmenham) some 50 km west of London, in Buckinghamshire. At least six British geoscientists (and at least one American, L. J. Simon) were amongst its pioneering photographic interpreters, all recruited from civilian life: palaeobotanist H. Hamshaw Thomas; geologists L. R. Wager, N. L. Falcon, P. E. Kent and P. Allen; and a geologist who became distinguished as a geographer, D. L. Linton. Of these six, all except Linton were to become Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS): the highest British academic accolade for a scientist. Work at Medmenham, although important for the war effort, required interpreters familiar with aerial photographs rather than geology as such – but geology did assist the search for storage sites for ‘V’ weapons, terrain interpretation for the 1944 Allied landings in Normandy, and in guiding plans to bomb German industrial complexes hidden underground.

Abstract The military aspects of hydrogeology can be categorized into five main fields: the use of groundwater to provide a water supply for combatants and to sustain the infrastructure and defence establishments supporting them; the influence of near-surface water as a hazard affecting mobility, tunnelling and the placing and detection of mines; contamination arising from the testing, use and disposal of munitions and hazardous chemicals; training, research and technology transfer; and groundwater use as a potential source of conflict. In both World Wars, US and German forces were able to deploy trained hydrogeologists to address such problems, but the prevailing attitude to applied geology in Britain led to the use of only a few, talented individuals, who gained relevant experience as their military service progressed. Prior to World War II, existing techniques were generally adapted for military use. Significant advances were made in some fields, notably in the use of Norton tube wells (widely known as Abyssinian wells after their successful use in the Abyssinian War of 1867/1868) and in the development of groundwater prospect maps. Since 1945, the need for advice in specific military sectors, including vehicle mobility, explosive threat detection and hydrological forecasting, has resulted in the growth of a group of individuals who can rightly regard themselves as military hydrogeologists.

Abstract The first British Army hydrogeologist to be deployed as such on a battlefield was Lieutenant W.B.R. King, in June 1915 on the Western Front. There, the British Expeditionary Force, in Belgium and northern France, expanded at its peak to five armies: 1.5 million men and 0.5 million horses/mules, each man/animal requiring on average 10 gallons (45 l) per day of potable water. A ‘Water Boring Section Royal Engineers’ was eventually raised for each army, equipped with American-made ‘portable’ drilling rigs, and utilizing air-lift pumps. These innovations and King's pioneering ‘water supply’ maps facilitated the development of the British Army's first operational ability to exploit groundwater from deep aquifers, primarily those in Cretaceous Chalk, by drilling >470 boreholes. Additionally, in 1915, a report by three ‘British’ Geological Survey officers helped guide limited boring within Allied amphibious landing areas on the Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey. A civilian water adviser, Arthur Beeby Thompson, transferred from Gallipoli to the Balkans in January 1916 and thereafter used geology to guide significant groundwater abstraction by siting 125 military boreholes and 211 Norton tube wells. From 1915, the Director of the Geological Survey of Egypt, W.F. Hume, provided similar guidance for campaigns from Egypt into Palestine.

Abstract To drill boreholes for water supply, the Royal Engineers raised ten ‘Boring Sections’ between September 1939 and May 1943, eight in the UK, two in Egypt. While supporting campaigns in World War II, two deployed briefly to France, seven served widely within the Middle East (one of these in Iraq and Iran and later Malta, the others mostly operating from Egypt), one deployed to Algeria/Tunisia, four to Sicily and/or Italy (one of these onward to Greece), two deployed to support the D-Day Allied landings in Normandy and the subsequent advance via Belgium to Germany, and three served long-term in the UK. Greatest use was by Middle East Command, which at its peak had about 35 officers, 750 men and 40 drilling rigs assigned to water supply, and whose boreholes attained a cumulative length of some 40 km. The British Army used geology to help guide emplacement of boreholes in all these regions. Innovations included groundwater prospect maps at scales of 1:50 000 and 1:250 000, to help planning for the Allied invasion of Normandy and the subsequent campaign in NW Europe. Geology also helped guide groundwater abstraction by Indian Engineers in the Far East, and British/South African troops in East Africa.

Abstract In 2003, three British reserve army geologists contributed hydrogeological advice to assist planning for the Coalition invasion of Iraq by predicting likely groundwater and drilling conditions. In consequence, 521 Specialist Team Royal Engineers (Water Development) was deployed in theatre soon after hostilities began, to provide a water supply infrastructure for British troops. However, a speedy end to combat, and concentration of British troops in southern Iraq where surface waters were the primary source of supply, necessitated only four new boreholes. Elements of 521 STRE deployed to Afghanistan in 2006, again with hydrogeological guidance, to enhance water supplies for a Provincial Reconstruction Team and Forward Operating Base (FOB), and to develop a water supply infrastructure for the main British operational base at Camp Bastion. Local contractors were used to drill 11 wells, each to over 100 m depth, in Quaternary alluvium. Subsequently, hydrogeology was used to guide successful groundwater development at four out of five FOBs, involving 28 new boreholes, minimizing risks associated with water supply by road or helicopter, and to facilitate expansion of Camp Bastion to accommodate a surge of Coalition troops. Tasks in Afghanistan have generated the most significant British military use of hydrogeology in recent years.

Abstract At the time the Geological Society was founded in 1807, Europe had entered the latter half of some 23 years of near-continuous warfare, in which the overall scale and intensity were wholly new. Wars from 1792 to 1815 affected the careers of many well-known geologists in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Influential early members of the Society included a significant number of men with periods of military service or education, or militarily-funded employment: four of its 11 primary founders, Jacques-Louis, Comte de Bournon, James Franck, George Bellas Greenough and Richard Phillips, as well as six of its first 23 Presidents – Greenough, Henry Grey Bennet, John MacCulloch, Roderick Impey Murchison, Henry Thomas De la Beche and Joseph Ellison Portlock. Several councillors, such as Thomas Frederick Colby and John William Pringle, and three of its first five executives – William Lonsdale, David Thomas Ansted and T. Rupert Jones – also had military affiliations. Largely as a consequence of Napoleonic warfare, from 1814 to 1845 national geological mapping in Britain was supported by military funding, and between 1819 and the end of the century geology was a subject taught at various times in all military training establishments within Britain.

Abstract During the 19th Century, the British military pioneered geological mapping and teaching, and the operational use of Norton tube wells. In the First World War, the British army appointed its first military hydrogeologist to serve as such, to develop water-supply maps for Belgium and northern France and guide deployment of Royal Engineer units drilling boreholes into the Cretaceous Chalk of the Somme region and Tertiary sands beneath the Flanders plain. Similar well-boring units were also deployed with geological guidance in the northeastern Mediterranean region. All military geologists were demobilized after hostilities ceased, but wartime experience was quickly drawn together in the first Royal Engineer textbook on water supply. During the Second World War, several British military well-drilling units were raised and deployed, notably to East Africa and North Africa as well as northern France, normally with military geological and sometimes (in Africa) with military geophysical technical direction. A reduced well-drilling capability has since been retained by the British army, through the Cold War to the present day, supported by a small group of reserve army geologists to contribute basic hydrogeological expertise to the armed forces for peace-time projects and war-related operations.

Abstract The first geologists employed in government service in Britain had military appointments: J. MacCulloch from 1809 to 1826 in England and Scotland, and J. W. Pringle followed by J. E. Portlock from 1826 to 1843 in Ireland. The founder of the British Geological Survey in 1835, and his successor as director-general in 1855, both had military origins. Several early influential members of the world's oldest geological society, founded in London in 1807, had military connections. From 1819 to about 1896 geology contributed to military education in Britain at the East India Company's military college, the Royal Military Academy, the Royal Military College, the Staff College, or the School of Military Engineering. However, professional geologists were not strictly used as such in the British army until the 1914–1918 world war, and then they were primarily used in response to problems of static battlefield conditions on the western front in Europe. W. B. R. King guided development of potable ground-water supplies; T. W. E. David guided siting of mine tunnels and dugouts, and other geologists served with the Tunnelling Companies of the Engineer Corps. Geologists were used more widely in the more mobile conflicts of the 1939–1945 world war: notably W. B. R. King in France and the United Kingdom, F. W. Shotton in North Africa and northwest Europe, and J. V. Stephens in Italy. These and others were all to some extent concerned with water supply, but increasingly geologists became involved in terrain assessment for military purposes (e.g., airfield sites, ground trafficability, quarrying of aggregates, and effects of aerial bombing). In both wars there were but few British military geologists; most were granted Emergency Commissions in the Royal Engineers for their war service. Only since 1949 has the corps maintained continuity of geological expertise through a small team of reserve army officers. This team now provides support for regular forces in both peace and war.

Abstract British geologists participated for more than a year in the planning of “Operation Overlord,” the Allied invasion of northwest France. Following D-Day on June 6, 1944, they contributed to the subsequent 11-month operational phase in western Europe, including the initial 3-month battle for Normandy. Beachhead maps were prepared prior to the invasion at 1:5,000 scale from published topographic and geologic maps, aerial photographs, and secret ground reconnaissance. They indicated the character of the beaches and cliffs, distribution of different surface sediments, and other factors likely to affect cross-beach mobility. Airfield suitability maps were made to indicate the distribution within enemy territory of candidate areas for the rapid construction of airfields. After the invasion, between June 7 and August 13, 1944, 20 airstrips, mostly 1,100–1,500 m in length, were completed in the British occupied area of Normandy. Geological information was used to guide the systematic development of road metal. Initially, weak Jurassic limestones were quarried, as at Creully; later, stronger Paleozoic quartzites were worked, as at Mouen, southwest of Caen. Stone produced by the Royal Engineers in Normandy quickly rose to a peak monthly total of more than 140,000 tonnes in August 1944. Water supply intelligence and the control of well siting and drilling were geologist's responsibilities. In 1st Corps area, about 50 water points were established, with 12 operational at any one time. Water in Normandy was obtained largely from rivers and existing wells, supplemented by 33 new boreholes. Geologists were also used to assess the effects of aerial bombing; soil conditions affecting cross-country vehicular movement; ground conditions for river crossings; and the nature of the sea floor beneath the English Channel. Normandy thus provides a case history of British military geology “par excellence.”