Field Gun Batteries
The Mobilization of a Field Artillery Regiment (Part 1)
On 2 August 1914, the 47ème Régiment d’Artillerie de Campagne (47th Field Artillery) began the process of mobilization. With the aid of recalled reservists, requisitioned horses, and equipment brought out of storage, it brought existing units up to war strength and, soon thereafter, began to form new units of various sorts.
The first beneficiaries of this process, the first nine batteries of the regiment, formed the business end of a first-line field artillery regiment. Known by the same name as its parent organization, this 47ème Régiment d’Artillerie de Campagne provided the 14ème Division d’Infanterie (14th Infantry Division) with its artillerie divisionaire (division artillery). (Because of this, the regiment appears in some documents as AD14.)
In most respects, the next three batteries formed by the 47th Field Artillery — the 24th, 25th, and 26th — looked a lot like the first nine units of that sort. That is, each rated the same number and types of men, horses, wagons, and guns. Indeed, the three batteries of this series differed from their predecessors in only one respect. Where the senior batteries filled their ranks with men on active duty prior of mobilization and relatively young reservists, the junior batteries made greater use of reservists who had been strolling on civvie street for a longer period of time.
The 24th, 25th, and 26th Batteries belonged to the category of batteries de renforcement (reinforcing batteries). As such, they which would soon report for duty with a freshly-formed reserve infantry division. In particular, they would form one of the three three-battery groupes de renforcement (reinforcing groups) of the divisional artillery (AD57) of the 57ème Division d’Infanterie de Réserve. (At this point in time, a French field artillery groupe corresponded to an American ‘battalion’, a British ‘brigade’, and a German Abteilung.)
The terms batterie de renforcement and groupe de renforcement date from a time when the authors of French mobilization plans arranged for the assignment of six additional batteries to each of the twelve-battery field artillery regiments assigned directly to army corps. Shortly before the outbreak of the war, Joseph Joffre took these units out of those formations and placed them in reserve infantry divisions. When, however, he did this, he declined to provide either the reinforcing batteries or the groups made out of them with new designations.
Source
René Surugue Le 47e régiment d’artillerie, les 232e et 247e régiments, le dépôt (Besançon: Imprimerie Jacques et Demontrand, 1919) pages 12, 56, and 108
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