The 13th Company (Headquarters)
This post continues the tale of the organization of 13th company of the Grenadier regiment of the 32nd Wave of the German Army of the Second World War. This story begins with the following post.
Deep dives into the structure of company and platoon headquarters may strike some readers as an express train to the Land of Nod. Nonetheless, I spill much ink (both drawing and writing) on the subject such structures because they tell us much about the expectations of the people who designed units.
For example, the contrast between the small headquarters of the 14th (tank destroyer) company of a Grenadier regiment of the 32nd Wave and those of the 13th company of the same type of regiment suggest that the designers of those units presumed that each would operate in a very different way. In particular, while units armed with anti-tank rocket launchers would employ face-to-face communications, their counterparts in the 13th company would make extensive use of radios and telephones.
Of the twenty men rated by the company headquarters, fifteen served as communicators. Of these, eight laid wire, four carried portable radio sets, and three carried messages. (One of the messengers rode a horse. Another rode a bicycle. The third walked.)
Of the men who did things other than transmit information, two (the commanding officer and the first sergeant) led the company as a whole, two led the horses that pulled articulated carts, and one (who was provided with a bicycle) supervised the work of three medics, one of whom served in every platoon.
Communicators also formed a modest majority of the men (nine of seventeen) who served in the headquarters of each of the three combatant platoons of the 13th Company. Of these, three ran wire, three turned dials on radios, one led the squad composed of telephonists and radiomen, and two delivered messages.
In addition to communicators, the platoon headquarters rated two men who operated aiming circles, a man who measured distances (Entfernungsmesser), a position sergeant (Stellungsunteroffizier), a medic, a teamster, an armorer (Waffenmeistergehilfe) and, of course, a platoon commander. (Note the absence of a platoon sergeant, a type of non-commissioned officer who only appears in German establishments in exceptional cases.)
Four of the members of each platoon headquarters - the platoon commander, the aiming circle sergeant (Richtkreisunteroffizier), the position sergeant, and one of the messengers - rode horses. The teamster drove the two-horse wagon. Everyone else locomoted the old-fashioned way.
The organization of the headquarters of each platoon did not depend upon the weapons wielded by that unit. Thus, the headquarters of the third platoon of the 13th company (which wielded heavy infantry guns) rated the same combination of men, horses, and vehicles as the headquarters of the other two platoons (which employed heavy mortars.)
Sources:
General der Infanterie beim Chef Generalstabs des Heeres, Nr. 3160/ 44g vom 5.9.44, microfilmed at the U.S. National Archives, Captured German Records , Series T-78, Reel 763. (The link will take you to a PDF of this document on file at the Military Learning Library. To download, gratis, the full reel, visit this page on the WW2 Archive.)
Organizations Abteilung/Generalstab des Heeres Nr. I./44 g. K dated 1 September 1944, Bundesarchiv, RH 2 1295 (The link will take you to a page on the website of the Bundesarchiv.)
