The records left behind by the Infantry General at the Army High Command contain scores, if not hundreds, of establishments for rifle, machine gun, cyclist, horse cavalry, mountain, light infantry, anti-tank, mortar, anti-aircraft, and infantry gun units. Recently, while rummaging through these, I ran across a series of equipment lists, all dated 1 August 1944, for the component companies of an outfit called a ‘fortress infantry battalion’ (Festungsinfanterie Bataillon).
In keeping with their designation, these units received little in the way of transport. Indeed, at a time when an ordinary infantry battalion rated a hundred and thirty-one quadrupeds, each fortress infantry battalion made do with sixteen. (Some compensation for this paucity of horsepower came in the form of bicycles, most of which were assigned to the most mobile, by far, of the component companies of the battalion, the ‘bicycle fortress rifle company’.)
Each fortress infantry company consisted of a small headquarters, a heavy (schwere) company, two foot-mobile rifle (Schützen) companies, and a rifle company mounted on bicycles. While the heavy company sported six heavy machine guns and twelve (!!!) medium (8cm) mortars, the rifle companies employed eleven machine guns (two of which were mounted on tripods) and eighteen ‘tank terror’ (Panzerschreck) 'rocket tank cylinders’ (Raketenpanzerbüchsen).
The equipment lists that I found made no mention of a battalion headquarters. However, in the course of prescribing the allocation of personal weapons and equipment, they provide the means of building reasonably accurate models of the component companies of the battalion. (By ‘reasonably accurate’, I mean that I was able to construct a spreadsheet for a rifle company that matched a personal weapon to every gas mask but one.)
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