This post continues a series begun with …
According to the German description of ‘a Canadian parachute rifle battalion’ that sparked this series, the unit consisted of a headquarters (6-23), a large headquarters company (10-228), and three small rifle companies (5-112). (The first number within parentheses indicates the number of officers authorized, the second the number of enlisted men.)
The first of the following diagrams employs German organizational symbols, from the set approved in 1943, to depict the elements of this unit. The second uses the version of present-day NATO symbols developed by organogram-meister Leo W.G. Niehorster.1
A comparison of the two diagrams uncovers a number of differences, both small and large, that separate the two ways of depicting the structure of military units.
One minor difference that strikes the eye concerns the sequence of unit designations. While the letters that distinguish line companies in the NATO-style diagram begin on the left and end on the right-hand side of the diagram, their German counterparts run the other way. (The latter practice echoes the way that German draftsmen placed units - and, indeed, formations - that bore numerical names.)
Moving from the trivial to the substantial, the German approach to organograms pays a great deal of attention to the number and types of weapons wielded by a particular unit. It also makes it easy to distinguish between units of various sizes. (The symbols for battalion are larger than those for companies, which exceed, if only by a little, the size of the glyphs that stand for platoons.) 2
The NATO system, however, highlights hierarchy. Thus, it allows one to grok, at a glance, the relationships that commands to each other. At the same time, the graphical language blessed by Brussels-based bureaucrats utilizes the same basic boxes to indicate the presence of organizations of all possible sizes. Thus, if the reader wishes to distinguish a fire team from an army group, he must consult the little marks that sit on top of most of the one-size-fits-all rectangles.
Source
National Archives and Records Service, Series T-78, Roll 763, Folder H19/55 (1 November 1944)
For More about Tactical Symbols
In the course of documenting the structure of organizations that fought in the Second World War, Dr. Niehorster has developed the most elegant dialect of NATO symbology I have yet to encounter. He also offers, free of charge, handy guides to the several systems of tactical documentation used by German soldiers and downloads of many of the books he has written about the structure of various units and formations. You can find the aforementioned works at niehorster.org.
The subtitle of this piece pays homage to Marshall McLuhan. For more about the work of that remarkable man, visit The Whirl of Reorientation and The McLuhan Newsletter.
Wow, references to McLuhan, Niehorster and Heinlein all in one post!
And the message to the Wehrmacht was that the Canadian Army was fully capable of fielding airborne units designed to ruin their whole day.