How Field Notes Works: Sources, Maps, Politics & Battlefield Method // Log 001
Field Notes is the research arm of Gallus. It exists to do something more useful than turn famous battles into slogans. The aim is to explain how a campaign came about, who made the decisions, what the ground looked like, what forces were actually available, what happened in sequence, how people on both sides understood the situation, and what can genuinely be supported by evidence.
That means a battle article should answer more than who won? It should answer why were they there at all?
1. Context comes before combat
No campaign begins when the first round is fired. Before an operational article we establish the political, diplomatic, economic and strategic setting that produced it. Where that background is substantial enough to stand on its own, it becomes a separate companion Field Note rather than being squeezed into a few introductory paragraphs.
The Falklands series is the model: a dedicated political road-to-war article sits before the campaign and battle guides. The same rule applies to the Anglo-Zulu War, the Napoleonic Wars, the world wars and modern operations. Political history is not decoration around military history; it explains why military orders were issued in the first place.
2. We separate governments, armies and peoples
Field Notes does not treat a state, its government, its armed forces and its civilian population as if they were one voice. A decision by a cabinet is not automatically the view of every citizen. An order from a commander does not describe the experience of every soldier. A wartime claim is not automatically a fact.
Where sources disagree, the disagreement is shown. British, Argentine, Zulu, German, French or other perspectives are identified as such rather than blended into an artificial single narrative.
3. Source hierarchy
We work outward from the strongest available evidence. The usual order is:
- Primary official records: operational orders, war diaries, government papers, diplomatic correspondence, award citations, official inquiries and contemporary maps.
- Museums and archives: curated collections with provenance, cataloguing and specialist interpretation.
- Contemporary first-hand material: letters, memoirs, interviews, newspapers and oral histories, treated with the normal cautions of memory, censorship and perspective.
- Modern scholarship: historians who have compared multiple archives and can expose where the contemporary record is incomplete or partisan.
- General reference material: useful for orientation, never a substitute for stronger evidence where stronger evidence exists.
A source can be official and still be wrong. Official reports were written by institutions with interests, assumptions and incomplete information. Their value lies in showing both evidence and contemporary institutional thinking.
4. The political article rule
When a campaign has a serious diplomatic or political pre-history, we build a separate political article with its own chronology and cast of decision-makers. Key political figures receive a short introduction, an image where licensing permits, and a link to a reputable biography or archival profile.
The battle guide then gives only the immediate political and operational reason for that action and links back to the political parent article. This prevents duplication while allowing a reader to move from cabinet room to campaign map to individual battlefield.
5. Orders of battle are working tools
An order of battle is not a decorative list of regiments. We use it to show command relationships, available strength, supporting arms, reserves, artillery, engineers, air or naval support, and where possible the gap between nominal establishment and what was actually present.
Numbers are dated and qualified. A unit can be listed as 600 strong in one source and enter a particular fight with far fewer men. Prisoners, casualties, detached troops, sickness and transport problems all change the usable force.
6. Ground matters
Maps are read as terrain rather than as flat diagrams. Ridges, dead ground, rivers, peat, roads, walls, visibility, observation, artillery positions and communications can explain decisions that look irrational on a modern screen.
Where possible, Field Notes pairs a campaign map with closer battle mapping and photographs of the ground. If a modern map differs from a contemporary one, that is made clear.
7. Personalities need biographies, not labels
Commanders are not introduced simply as heroes, villains or surnames attached to arrows. A useful profile covers their career before the battle, what authority they actually held, the information available to them, the decisions for which they were responsible, how contemporaries judged them and how later evidence changed that judgement.
That is particularly important when reputations were shaped by defeat. The Piaggi papers after Goose Green are a good example: later Argentine Army review material complicates the much simpler post-war story that placed responsibility solely on one commander.
8. First-hand accounts are evidence, not omniscience
A participant can describe what he saw, heard and believed. He cannot necessarily describe what was happening beyond his position. Two honest witnesses can remember the same event differently.
We use short quotations where they add something a paraphrase cannot: fear, confusion, tone, contemporary language or a command decision. Quotes are attributed and linked. They are never used merely to make a page feel dramatic.
9. Casualties and disputed numbers
Casualty figures often vary because sources count different periods and categories. Field Notes distinguishes killed, wounded, missing and captured where the evidence allows it. If credible sources disagree, we give a range or state the competing figures instead of choosing the neatest number.
10. Images need provenance
Historic photographs and portraits are used only when the source and reuse status are understood. Public-domain and appropriately licensed museum or archive material is preferred. Captions identify the subject, date where known, source and licence. A famous image is not automatically a free image.
11. What service experience can — and cannot — add
Gallus was founded by British Army veterans. That experience can help when explaining fieldcraft, communications, load carriage, training areas, command friction, weapon effects or how terrain feels when you have to cross it rather than view it on a map.
It does not make us eyewitnesses to earlier wars and it is never used to replace historical evidence. Modern service experience can illuminate a problem; it cannot prove what happened in 1879, 1815 or 1944.
12. Products come after the history
Field Notes supports a heritage shop, but the article is not built backwards from a T-shirt. Relevant designs can be linked at the end of a piece. They do not determine the conclusion, casualty figures, wording or choice of evidence.
13. Corrections are part of the method
History is an argument with evidence. Better scans appear, archives release new files, identifications change and old assumptions are corrected. When a substantive error is found we correct the article rather than defend the earlier wording. Where the change materially alters an interpretation, the article should say so.
14. The standard every campaign should reach
A complete Gallus campaign set should ultimately contain: a political/strategic lead-up where required; a campaign overview; detailed battle guides; maps and terrain; orders of battle; key biographies; first-hand material; aftermath and legacy; and a source trail strong enough for the reader to continue independently.
The aim is simple: respect the people involved enough to make the history complicated when it really was complicated.
Useful starting archives: National Army Museum · Imperial War Museums · The National Archives · The Gazette · Argentina — Defence Open Archives · South African History Online.
