Operations (1821-1976)

Words of War

Albert Henry Collins Kylin and Kimono (1917)

Sometimes, when a word moves from one language to another, it takes on a more specific meaning. Consider the case of queso. In Spanish, its language of origin, it simply means “cheese.” In North American English, however, queso describes a seed-oil concoction made, Morgoth-wise, in mockery of its namesake.

A happier example is provided by the Japanese word chanson. Derived from the French word for any sort of lyrical composition, it refers to songs of the sort sung by Edith Piaf (and her less melancholic contemporaries) in the middle years of the last century.

The cover of a Japanese recording of chansons sung by chanteuse Yvette Giraud

Early in the nineteenth century, German-speaking soldiers used this phenomenon to fill a void in their lexicon. Looking for a word to describe things that were no longer tactical, but not yet strategic, they turned the French word opération. In its tongue of origin, opérations could be carried out by military units and formations of a wide variety of types. In its new home, Operationen were deeds done by field armies.¹

In the years that followed, the scope of Operation expanded somewhat. Still, the appearance of that word, or the adjective [operative] derived from it, informed readers of the Teutonic persuasion that they were dealing with events that belonged neither to battlefields nor the palaces where statesmen practiced their peculiar arts.

Soviet military thinkers took their definition of operatsiya from the writing of German soldiers. They thereby obtained a term of art that, thanks to two layers of linguistic filtration, could be provided with a single, highly-specific definition. Better yet, the Soviet fondness for systemization ensured that this term, and its linguistic near-of-kin, was set into a context that made it easy for people to see its boundaries.

Nous, les Anglo-Saxons, were not so fortunate. By the time we went looking for words to describe things that were no longer tactical (but not yet strategic) operation, operations, and operational were already spoken for. What was worse, they described phenomena that were, to quote the immortal words of Tony Orlando, “so close, yet so far away.”

In the middle years of the twentieth century, American soldiers and Marines employed the cognates of opération in a manner worthy of the French midwives who, in 1917 and 1918, had brought the infant American land forces into the modern era. Indeed, when, without the slightest hint of irony, they coined the phrase small-unit operations, the pupils exceeded their masters.

In 1976, the US Army published, under the title of Field Manual 100-5: Operations, a a delightfully detailed document dealing chiefly with the work of battalions, companies, and platoons. To the surprise of many Americans in uniform, one of whom would later become the author of this blog, this work garnered a good deal of criticism. The critics, most of whom drew heavily upon the German and Soviet military traditions, occasionally took umbrage at the advice that the book gave to lieutenant colonels, captains, and lieutenants. For the most part, however, the complaints resulted from the failure of FM 100-5 to devote attention to the deeds of army corps, armies, and groups of armies.

1. For an early example of the importation of opération into German, compare the French original of the war diary [journal d’opérations] of the French Army of Catalonia with its translation into German by an officer in the service of the Grand Duchy of Baden: Gouvion Saint-Cyr, Journal Des Opérations De L'armée De Catalogne, (Paris: Anselin et Pochard, 1821) and Gouvion Saint-Cyr ( Franz Xaver Rigel, translator) Tagebuch Der Operationen Der Armee Von Catalonien (Rastatt: D.R. Marx, 1823.)