General Staff of the Bureau of War

#On the Staff's Recorded Place

"…the grudging respect of the Bureau of War's General Staff…" — Bureau of Medicine entry, On Doctor Trenn

This entry is a survey of the present record, compiled in A.S. 201 / 1911 CE. It covers one body and one habit. The body is the General Staff of the Bureau of War. The habit is reading the replies of the Chief Anatomist.

That habit is all the activity the record attests. I put it at the head of the folio so that no reader takes the length of the survey for the size of the Staff.

The Codex names the Staff twice. The Bureau of Medicine entry records that the Chief Anatomist enjoys "the grudging respect of the Bureau of War's General Staff." The Chief Anatomist entry is more exact. Every major garrison commander on the Sagittal Line writes to the office, and "the General Staff of War reads what it sends back." That makes two sentences. A careful clerk can draw three things from them: an affiliation, an activity and an attitude. A careless clerk draws a headquarters, a roster and a Chief of Staff with a moustache. I have sent careless clerks to count ammunition for less.

The Staff belongs to War. It is a separate thing from War as a whole. It is also separate from Medicine, from the office of the Chief Anatomist and from the garrison commanders whose letters begin the exchange. The consulted record does not say when the Staff was constituted, by what instrument, under whose seal or with how many chairs at its table. This survey does not say either.

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#On the Institution Around It

"A sword without a writ is mutiny. A writ without a sword is Doctrine."

Everything in this section belongs to the parent Bureau. I set it down so the reader knows what sort of house the Staff lives in. The furniture is War's.

The Bureau of War was established in A.S. 105 / 1815 CE under the Charter of Crimson Ink. The charter gave it the raising, equipping and drilling of the forces under the Synod's banner, and their theological supervision as well. Its men come from the Continental Levy. The Bureau calls this tithe of sons an offering, and no province has ever once mistaken it for one. Recruits are baptised in trench water at the training garrisons. Officers wear the crimson sash. Every rank in the chain needs certification from the Bureau of Doctrine, and no campaign plan circulates until Doctrine and the Bureau of Purity have sealed it.

The Warden-General commands at the top of that chain. The published War entry says so plainly, and below him it lists the Vexillators, the Tribune-Chaplains and the Litany-Engineers. A General Staff appears nowhere in that list. The record leaves blank where the Staff stands in relation to the Warden-General, and whether it advises him, serves him or only shares his corridors. A.S. 105 is the date of War's charter, and the Staff has no date of its own on file. Anyone who paints 105 over the Staff's door will answer to me.

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#On the Correspondence

The exchange has three recorded steps. A garrison commander on the Line writes to the Chief Anatomist. The office replies. The General Staff reads the reply.

I cannot tell you how the letters travel, which clerk carries them, how long the reading takes or whether the Staff initials the margin. The record keeps those particulars to itself. I will not invent a postal service to flatter a two-sentence attestation.

The record does show an oddity, and the oddity is the reason for this survey. The Chief Anatomist holds no Synodal rank. She has no liturgical authority, no vestment and no right of audience before the Assembly of Thrones. A curate in his first week may bless a field ration, and she may not. The precedence tables of Strasbourg leave her out entirely. Yet the officers of the Church's military arm read her office's letters. Medicine's own entry admits that they respect her, though grudgingly. That is the only kind of respect War has ever offered anyone who does not carry a sword.

The explanation is arithmetic. A chaplain can absolve a sentry. He cannot tell the sentry's commander at what distance the sentry's stomach will begin to cramp. That figure comes from Medicine with a name attached and a disclaimer fastened underneath, and it still holds up when the quartermaster checks it. Precedence decides who walks first in a procession. A casualty table keeps a garrison standing. Whatever else the Staff may be, its reading shows that it knows which of the two matters at the front.

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#On the Classifications

"The cause was theological. The starvation was real." — Doctor Trenn, Chief Anatomist

A reply from the Chief Anatomist holds observation, measurement, clinical classification and casualty assessment. The classification is the part that bites.

The main example comes from the Famine Pits. Near the Pits of the Blightmarsh, soldiers who have eaten well starve anyway. Medicine names the hazard Residual Consumptive Emanation, Category Three. Its distances come from the controlled exposure of A.S. 134 / 1844 CE, which Doctor Maren Solen attended as Chief Anatomist:

• cramping begins at fifty yards;
• nausea and compulsive chewing come at thirty;
• at ten, the body consumes itself.

Doctor Trenn was appointed in A.S. 189 / 1899 CE and was nowhere near the Pits in 134. She refined the terminology afterwards from the confirmation files, and the Line now uses her terms.

Consider what those words do to the man who reads them. The Chief Anatomist entry makes the point as a comparison, and I repeat the comparison here. A commander who reads "hunger sickness" sends his sentries forward on double rations. A commander who reads "Category Three, onset at fifty yards" keeps them back. The decision is his own. Medicine issued no order, and the record shows no order from the General Staff. A military reader was handed a name and a number, and he did the rest himself.

That is the whole working of the Staff's documented tie to medicine. Language arrives at a desk where men decide things. The survey shows me no folio in which a particular reading by the Staff changed a particular deployment. I decline to forge one.

A smaller example follows. Some soldiers return from certain encounters with their eyes still working and no power left to describe what those eyes saw. Medicine calls the condition "semantic ablation." Mercy calls it "the silence of the blessed." War calls it "non-deployable." Three Bureaus apply three vocabularies to one man on a cot. War's word is the one that moves him off a roster. Medicine's word is the one that tells the reader what is wrong with him.

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#On Authority and Its Limits

The Staff gains nothing by its reading. Clinical classification stays with Medicine. The findings stay in the Vault of Findings beneath the old Mercy Wing, where entry requires clearance from two Bureaus and departure requires clearance from three. Those rules govern the directorate's archive. Reading a reply earns no reader an exemption from them. Doctor Trenn's filing cabinet has turned away three Hierarchs on grounds of patient confidentiality. That refusal is the Chief Anatomist's own practice. Any reader from War who wanted to look inside would join the Hierarchs' queue, and that queue does not move.

Medicine's standing has been revised in print. The revision belongs to Medicine's entry, not this one. I reproduce it because the Staff's relationship depends on what sort of body is writing to it.

Since A.S. 158 / 1868 CE, a standing disclaimer has been appended to every field report. It states that the Bureau of Medicine "does not provide recommendation, prescription, or operational guidance. For recommendation, consult the Bureau of War." The Staff sits inside the very Bureau the disclaimer names. The record does not say whether War's recommendations are drafted by the Staff. The disclaimer is Medicine's stated policy. At least one assessment from the same directorate ends with "recommend against being present," and the disclaimer and that assessment are filed in good order in the same archive. I note the pair and leave them to settle it between themselves.

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#On the Present Record

As of this survey, A.S. 201, two published entries attest the General Staff of the Bureau of War. It reads the Chief Anatomist's replies to the major garrison commanders of the Line, and it respects her office without enthusiasm. The consulted sources do not record its formal remit, its membership, its seat or its founding. "Unrecorded" is the right word. Such arrangements may exist in some War folio I have not been shown. They do not exist in this one.

Readers who want a Chief of Staff should apply to the Bureau of War. Readers who want a founding year should apply to Providence. The Staff reads, and the record says so.