Peter Caddick-Adams - Fire and Steel: The End of World War Two in the West

FIRE AND
STEEL

ALSO BY PETER CADDICK-ADAMS

By God They Can Fight!: A New History of the 143rd Infantry Brigade

The Fight for Iraq: JanuaryJune 2003

Monty and Rommel: Parallel Lives

Monte Cassino: Ten Armies in Hell

Snow and Steel: The Battle of the Bulge 19445

Sand and Steel: The D-Day Invasion and the Liberation of France

FIRE AND
STEEL

THE END OF WORLD
WAR TWO IN THE
WEST

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Peter Caddick-Adams 2022

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022936918

eISBN 9780190601881

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

To A.L. LeQuesne
who taught me history
at Shrewsbury School (19741978)
&

Paul Beaver and Cate Pye
who have kindly accommodated, wined and dined
the wandering historian
during his many travels

Contents

Military folk worldwide, like many other communities, tend to adopt their own abbreviations, which they forget puzzle those outside. Military algebra, by which I mean the designation of divisions, brigades, regiments, battalions and so on, is particularly vexing to the uninitiated, hence this briefest of tool kits for your enlightenment.

Units of all the nations covered here followed much the same approach, in that their basic formation was the division. By 1945 German divisions had often shrunk to perhaps 10,000 and sometimes much less. Allied ones tended to vary between 12,000 and 15,000 men, depending on purpose (airborne, armoured or infantry). Divisions (usually commanded by a Major General, Generalmajor or Generalleutnant) were self-supporting, with their own reconnaissance, artillery, anti-aircraft and anti-tank, engineers, signals, machine-gun, supply, transport, ordnance (for repair), workshop (for vehicles), medical and military police elements.

All divisions were numbered, and often had a secondary title, which indicated where they recruited, for example 15th Scottish, 43rd Wessex and 53rd Welsh under Montgomery; or the 36th Texas and 42nd Rainbow (the latter drawing recruits from across the United States). Two divisions or more often many more made an army corps. Allied corps possessed their own heavy artillery (an AGRA, Army Group Royal Artillery in the Anglo-Canadian forces), anti-aircraft, armoured and reconnaissance units, a Mechanized Cavalry Group (in US corps), plus other assets.

Allied infantry divisions were broken down into three infantry brigades (regiments in US terminology), each of around 3,000 personnel, commanded by a Colonel or Brigadier (Brigadier General, or Gnral de Brigade). The Cottonbalers was the unofficial title of a US Army regiment, more formally titled the 7th Infantry. A brigade, in turn, comprised three battalions, led by lieutenant colonels, which remain the basic building blocks of military formations. Tank battalions (sometimes called armoured regiments) fielded around sixty tanks, infantry battalions contained 6001,000 riflemen, whilst artillery battalions (or regiments) comprised anything from nine to forty-eight guns, depending on type and calibre. Each generally included three infantry companies, armoured squadrons or artillery batteries, plus headquarters elements.

American and British airborne forces, with minimal transport, who deployed into battle by glider and parachute, fielded fewer numbers, as did British Commandos. The latter, all numbered, were split between the Navy (Royal Marine Commandos) and Army, each unit being the equivalent of a highly-trained, well-armed, but small battalion. Their US equivalents are Ranger battalions.

American battalions and regiments were numbered, while the Anglo-Canadians retained a variety of exotic and confusing titles for their battalions, evoking nineteenth-century antecedents. These included the 13th/18th Hussars, 22nd Dragoons and Staffordshire Yeomanry (all British tank battalions); 3rd Scots Guards (also a tank battalion); 13th Royal Horse Artillery (an artillery battalion); the Algonquin Regiment and the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa (both Canadian infantry battalions, the latter fielding machine-guns); and 4th/5th Royal Scots Fusiliers, 5th Duke of Cornwalls Light Infantry and (bizarrely) the 12th Kings Royal Rifle Corps (all British battalions).

Now, for some TLAs (Three Letter Abbreviations) and others, which have crept past the censors and into this volume.