Major General (Ret’d) Mungo Melvin mentors 2 CMBG staff during Exercise UNIFIED RESOLVE II

By MCpl Alexander Frid | January 30, 2020 | Unit News
Award-winning military historian Major General (Ret’d) Mungo Melvin, CB, OBE (left), was at Garrison Petawawa recently to mentor 2nd Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group (2 CMBG) staff on a variety of topics including strategy and leadership during Exercise UNIFIED RESOLVE II. He was thanked for his visit by 2 CMBG Commander Colonel Jason Adair (right) at the conclusion of his presentation. By Private Robert Kingerski.

The former Chief Army Instructor at the Royal College of Defence Studies in the United Kingdom, and author of “Manstein: Hitler’s Greatest General” was at Garrison Petawawa recently to mentor 2nd Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group (2 CMBG) staff during Exercise UNIFIED RESOLVE II.

Major General (MGen) Retired (Ret’d) Mungo Melvin, CB, OBE, guided staff through a number of topics including operating in dynamic environments.

“The brigade itself has to be self-reliant to work as a combined arms team without relying on a lot of extra support, and that’s both positive and negative,” said MGen (Ret’d) Melvin. “The positive is cohesion, the negative is often times the brigade will not necessarily understand that with any British or American Brigade [or] Division construct, there’s a lot of extra support that it can draw on - a very big positive. It’s just one of three brigades that can deploy, it will obviously strive for a level of excellence so it can fit in well into US or UK divisions and I think that’s a very strong incentive to do well.”

MGen (Ret’d) Melvin spoke with command teams to mentor on operational and strategic maneuvers and provided valuable insight during a lecture on Russian strategic goals throughout history and its relevancy today.

Photo by Private Robert Kingerski.

He later provided another lecture on the “Decision in Battle.”

A noted historian, he also spoke to the enduring qualities of leadership.

“Command also has a more enduring aspect,” said MGen (Ret’d) Melvin. “You look for examples of leadership in combat back to ancient times and still get useful lessons, whereas we don’t go back to Greek and Roman and Carthaginian warfare to learn how to do tactics.”

MGen (Ret’d) Melvin is currently working on his next book with his daughter titled “The Cannae Paradox” but it is not expected to be released for a few more years.

You can follow MGen (Ret’d) Mungo Melvin on Twitter @MungoMelvin.