War Diaries Talk

Good place to get an overview of the structures in the WW1 army?

  • kcrane by kcrane

    Can anyone recommend a good online source to get an overview of the structure of the army in WW1 - what was a division, what was a regiment, how big is a unit? Same question with relation to ranks, what is the relative seniority and did all parts of the army use the same ones?

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  • MatthewIWM by MatthewIWM moderator in response to kcrane's comment.

    The Long Long Trail has some really good information about the structure of the army in the First World War, as well as some good links to other resources on the subject:

    http://www.1914-1918.net

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  • David_Underdown by David_Underdown moderator

    Matthew has beaten me to the Long, Long, Trail link

    Generally, for infantry the battalion was the basic unit, each battalion had a parent regiment, but that was more of an administrative unit, battalions of the same regiment didn't generally (or at least necessarily) fight together. The strength of a battalion was (theoretically at least) about 1000 men of all ranks. Some of those were drivers or medical personnel attached from the Army Service Corps and Royal Army Medical Corps. For most of the war, four battalions were grouped to form a brigade, and 3 brigades to a division. Divisions had additional units attached, such as artillery and engineers. Divisions were then grouped into Corps, and Corps into Armies, and again you had further artillery, engineer and other units attached at those levels. Cavalry was similar, but for historic reasons Cavalry Regiments are not divided into battalions, so regiments are grouped to form brigades (regiments were also rather smaller than battalions, and due to the need to look after the horses, if they were used dismounted the fighting strength of a cavalry division was closer to that of an infantry brigade). Corps could have both infantry and cavalry divisions making them up.

    Ranks were generally the same across the army (though artillery, engineers and ordnance have some slight peculiarities). First of all you have the Other Ranks (non-commissioned), from the bottom (I'm giving general descriptions here, sometimes specialists would have slight variations on these titles):

    Private, lance-corporal (here artillery also had lance-bombardier and bombardier, engineers/ordnance had 2nd corporals - these generally wear one stripe - at this period, it changed after the war), then corporal (two stripes), serjeant (three stripes) then staff serjeant, then you get into the realms of what became Warrnat Officer II during the course of the war, Company Quartermaster Serjeant (CQMS), Company Serjeant Major (Troop Serjeant Major in cavalry), then into Warrant Officer I, Regimental Serjeant Major and various other appointments)

    Commissioned (officer) ranks
    Second Lieutenant, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant-Colonel (below this are the ranks you'd find within an infantry battalion), Colonel, Brigadier-General, Major-General, Lieutenant-General, General, Field Marshal.

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  • rsgrayson by rsgrayson scientist

    I definitely agree that the Long Long Trail is a great place to start (and finish in many cases).

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  • makfai by makfai

    Always thought it odd that a Lieutenant was junior to a Major BUT a Lieutenant-General was senior to a Major-General. Only the British!

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator in response to makfai's comment.

    Not at all - you simply need to understand the origin of the rank. Major General originates from Sergeant Major General. History is everything in the British Army 😉

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  • makfai by makfai

    Clear as mud 😦. But am glad to see I am not only one confused http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_major_general

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    Moved thread

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