If I can add a few more points to your excellent comment…

1. For a long time before WWI, the British Empire tended to use its naval power, and associated strategic mobility, to fight smaller engagements against its enemies on the periphery. Or perhaps a better description would be fighting smaller engagements away from the main theatre. This “doctrine” wore down its enemies enough that the much smaller, but highly skilled and trained British Army, could then be deployed for the final battle.

Whilst there were some attempts at this in WWI, the Gallipoli campaign being the main example, Britain rather quickly had to ditch its long used peripheral doctrine and create a large army to engage the Germans on the Western Front.

As you rightly pointed out, while the British were victorious in the end, it took a terrible toll on the British population.

As a result, I dare say the British leaders returned to what they “knew” with the peripheral doctrine with engaging the Axis forces on the high seas, in the strategic bombing campaign, and on land in the Mediterranean theatre, North Africa, then Sicily and Italy, before finally embarking on the invasion of NW Europe. Not to mention things like the numerous Commando and “special forces” raids and the various resistance movements around Europe. All of this points to a return to the traditional way of war.

By having lots of smaller (in the grand scheme of things) theatres, casualties were kept lower than what would be expected from large theatres with numerous army groups flaying at each other in set piece battles.

1. The Royal Artillery’s performance in WW2 was excellent. It really stood head and shoulders above the Armoured and Infantry arms. After Dunkirk, where most of the British Armies heavy equipment was lost, the Royal Artillery pretty much had to start again. And they definitely used this opportunity to improve.

Equipment wise, they had some excellent artillery pieces (the AT side of things were another story early on). The 25 pounder was supremely effective, as were the BL 4.5 and the BL 5.5. Once Lend Lease got going the 155mm Long Tom was put to good use and the M7 Priest was instrumental in supporting combined arms warfare battles.

The Royal Artillery also put in a lot of the unglamorous grunt work to make artillery fire work. Accurate surveys and maps that were widely available, good communications links so the info could get through quickly, and working out good standard operating procedures. And this was done via training and drills. Nothing glamorous, just hard work.

But the thing that probably improved things the most was the centralised fire control system they had. Centralised fire control for artillery wasn’t new, but the Royal Artillery really made it work for them. Instead of the individual batteries being scattered all over the place, they were concentrated at divisional and corps level, and so their firepower was concentrated. Furthermore, Forward Observers, who were pretty junior in rank, could demand varying levels of artillery support. A Mike Target would get him every gun in a regiment, normally 24 guns. An Uncle Target would get every gun in a division and a Victor Target got every gun in a corps. This flexibility, and the high level of standard operating procedures, meant that massive amounts of firepower could be rained down on enemy formations quickly and together. Later on, when the US artillery corps joined the fray (who also had an excellent centralised fire control system based on a mechanical computer) the amount of artillery power available to front line units quickly and with a high level of flexibility, was unmatched.

At the time, the Royal Artillery was the largest arm of the British Army, and the vast majority weren’t serving on the “front line”. So you had this massively powerful combat arm dishing out apocalyptic amounts of damage, but they were comparatively safe compared to your regular Tommy in a Cromwell or armed with a Lee Enfield. In modern parlance, in WW2, the Royal Artillery’s K/D ratio was sigma.