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Within British and Commonwealth forces of the Second World War, 42nd Geological Section was the only unit in which geologists and geophysicists deployed as a team into campaign areas. Water supply was a problem in many arid or semi-arid regions, and the section used geophysical methods (primarily surveys by electrical resistivity) to locate optimum sites for drilling boreholes to abstract potable groundwater – methods utilised also by the German Army but not otherwise by the British. Mobilised in August 1940, the section was operational first in East Africa and subsequently North Africa, the Middle East and the Mediterranean region until the end of the war. By September 1943, its core strength comprised five officers and 33 other ranks, commonly and widely deployed as detachments of one officer plus about seven other ranks. In total, thirteen officers are known to have served with the section, the first three from the Geological Survey of South Africa. Most were exceptionally well qualified and many achieved distinction in their civilian careers after the war. The section provides a little-known example of the significant specialist skills contributed by the South African Engineer Corps to the Allied war effort.

The International Association for Military Geosciences (IAMG) was founded in 2013 at Aviemore in Scotland, during the 10th International Conference on Military Geosciences. The conference series had begun in 1994 in the United States, with subsequent almost biennial meetings alternating between Europe and North America. Initially, geological in their focus, however, the meeting themes broadened over the years to embrace military aspects of both geology and geography, and subsequently geosciences as a whole. Numbering was introduced (and applied retrospectively) in 2005, and the series title stabilised in 2009. The IAMG foundation reflected a developing international interest in military geosciences, evidenced by a significant number of books and journal articles as well as ancillary conferences focused on this discipline in recent years.

In September 1940, 42nd Geological Section of the South African Engineer Corps moved from Kenya to an operational base near Cairo in Egypt, continuing to serve within the British Army's Middle East Command but with leadership by the newly-promoted Major Gordon Lyall Paver (1913–1988). The main part of the Section was employed to support the British 8th Army and operations west of the River Nile, particularly in the Western Desert of Egypt and Libya to Tunisia but also from bases elsewhere in Egypt, with surveys principally by means of electrical earth resistivity: guiding the deployment of Boring Sections Royal Engineers and other units in drilling boreholes from which to abstract potable groundwater. Detachments with similar roles were also employed further east of the Nile, in Sinai, Palestine, Transjordan, Syria and Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. In the Mediterranean region more generally, from 1943 additional deployments included Malta, Sicily and Cyprus, and later Greece. As conflict in North Africa came to an end in the spring of 1943, and so as to promote the use of geology and geophysics (rather than water diviners) as the best means for guiding the choice of sites for boreholes, Paver led teaching of a military training course in geophysical survey methods and the compilation of an authoritative textbook. In early 1945, as conflict in the European Theatre of Operations entered its final months, Paver assisted planning in England for potential deployment of the Section to the Far East and for the development there of an enhanced military geological staff—although hostilities came to an end before these plans materialized. Towards the end of his service, Paver completed for publication the final six of an 11-part series of articles on 'Water supply in the Middle East campaigns' that placed much military hydrogeological information on permanent public record. Demobilized in February 1946, Paver returned to a career as a consultant geophysicist, notably promoting 'resistivity' surveys to locate 'underground water', surveys including significant fieldwork in Egypt, Pakistan and Cyprus that developed his wartime skill base. He had pioneered and mostly directed the use of electrical earth resistivity surveys in support of British military operations during World War II and begun to influence a generation of Royal Engineers through his textbook: re-printed by the United Kingdom's War Office in April 1945 to facilitate its long-term and wider use. Military honours were duly bestowed upon him for 'gallant and distinguished services' during the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

42nd Geological Section of the South African Engineer Corps was a unique unit that supported British armed forces during World War II. It was co-founded and led for most of the war by Gordon Lyall Paver (1913–1988), one of the few 'British' officers serving specifically as geologists during the war to achieve the rank of major. Born in South Africa at Johannesburg and in his early years educated there at St. John's College, from 1926 Paver was educated in England, at Charterhouse School until admitted in 1931 to Pembroke College in the University of Cambridge, where he studied chemistry, geology and mineralogy. He graduated in 1934 and returned to South Africa, being appointed to the Geological Survey of South Africa as one of its first geophysicists and contributing to magnetometric and gravimetric surveys in the Transvaal region, expertise used in 1938 to 1940 to draft his thesis for a PhD degree (awarded in 1942). Although married in 1939 and briefly employed as a consultant geophysicist, in August 1940 Paver was one of the first three geoscientists to be mobilized as officers to found 42nd Geological Section, at Zonderwater near Pretoria in South Africa. After only a month's military training, at the end of September the Section and its vehicles deployed by rail and sea to a base near Nairobi in Kenya for operational service in East Africa, with 'Acting Captain' Paver as its Second-in-Command. Detachments from the Section were widely deployed in Kenya and later in Italian and British Somaliland (present-day Somalia) and also in Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) for surveys by means primarily of electrical earth resistivity but also vertical force magnetometer. These guided drilling of wells by another unit of the South African Engineer Corps to abstract potable groundwater— thereby facilitating troop concentrations and forward movements in arid or semi-arid regions during the 'British' Army's East African Campaign. Members of the Section also compiled geological maps of Kenya at scales of 1:1,000,000 and 1:2,000,000 and pioneered a military geological unit created within the East African Engineers that supported British forces in the region from 1941 to 1945. The Campaign drew to a victorious close during 1941 and, from the end of August, the Section was re-deployed northwards to a base near Cairo in Egypt. It continued to serve within the British Army's Middle East Command but with leadership now by Paver, promoted 'Acting Major' from 31 August and in December 'mentioned in despatches' for his earlier distinguished service in East Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'military geology', translated from German after earlier use in French and Spanish publications, entered the English language via American publications from 1917 onwards, initially after the USA entered World War I. It was widely used in the USA and, in direct or indirect translation, in several European countries additional to Germany and Austria thereafter, but not in the United Kingdom—although military applications of geology had been perceived and utilized by the British Army for much of the previous century. However, the term was used and its scope defined on the basis of operational experience at a meeting in Brussels on 28 February to 1 March 1945 as World War II drew to an end, a meeting seemingly unique for the War in that it comprised five 'British' geologist officers of field rank: the South African Major Gordon Lyall Paver, English Major Frederick William Shotton, Australian-born but Canadian-educated English Major John Leonard Farrington, English Squadron Leader John Francis Kirkaldy, and Welsh Major David Ronald Arthur Ponsford. Their purpose was to review wartime use of 'military geology' in the British Army, and to make recommendations for a more efficient British military geological service in the future, especially in the Far East after the war in Europe entered its final phase. The meeting generated a four-page closely-typed unpublished 'Memorandum: Military geology in the British services' (now preserved in England in the Lapworth Museum at the University of Birmingham and in The National Archives, Kew, near London). This included a very brief summary of the British Army's deployment of geologists within western Europe, East Africa, the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean region, and India. Those present brought together long experience from all these campaign areas except India (and the Far East in general). That deficiency was made good later in the year, on 7 December 1945, when Eric J. Bradshaw, Superintending Geologist of the Strategic Branch of the Geological Survey of India, completed an 81-page typed unpublished 'Military geology: Memorandum of post-war policy' (accessible in England at Birmingham, at Kew, and at the British Geological Survey, Keyworth). This with its 23 pages of appendices records details of wartime work in India and discussions held by the author there and in the United Kingdom following the end of hostilities in Europe on 8 May 1945. It re-defines the scope of 'military geology' for British armed forces in terms of water (resources, floods and drainage), stone and miscellaneous mineral resources, soils, engineering projects (reconnaissance, stability and excavations), terrain, 'photo-geology' and several miscellaneous applications. The memorandum proposed a grandiose organization of 151 geologist officers plus ancillary staff for British military geology postwar. That organizational scheme was not adopted—but by 1945 the term 'military geology' had clearly extended from American to significant British use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central text of this paper has been transcribed directly from the handwritten, unpublished 'Abstract of Notes' by Tannatt William Edgeworth David (1858-1934), an Australian geologist of great distinction, from which he lectured at the Geological Society of London on 26 February 1919. He was then en route home to Australia after serving on the Western Front, across parts of Belgium and northern France, in the First World War--as the senior of two geologists at General Headquarters, British Expeditionary Force. His text provides the first overall account of military applications of geology on a battlefield by any geologist to serve as such in action with British troops. An introduction, illustrations, references, footnotes and concluding discussion have been added by E. P. F. Rose to amplify (and slightly amend) David's hastily-compiled personal record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]