The Headquarters Companies of Infantry Battalions (1940-1942)
The Headquarters Companies of Infantry Battalions (1940-1942)
Battalion: An Organizational Study of United States Infantry
The estate of the late John Sayen has graciously allowed the Tactical Notebook to serialize his study of the organizational evolution of American infantry battalions. The author’s preface, as well as some previously posted parts of this book, may be found below, in the section marked “For Further Reading.”
The headquarters company of the US Army infantry battalion of 1 April 1942 towered over the headquarters detachment of the unit of the same type authorized by the tables of organization of 1 October 1940. Where the former organization rated four officers and forty-eight men, the latter weighed in at nine officers and one-hundred and thirty men.
Making sense of the thinking behind this expansion would require a good deal of digging in various archives. Some clues, however, can be found in the “missing link” in the evolution of the two organizations, the headquarters company of the infantry battalion adopted by the US Marine Corps on 28 March 1941.
Within each type of headquarters company (marked “1941” and “1942” on the diagram), three elements - the battalion headquarters section, the company headquarters section, and the communications platoon - were organized in much the same way. At the same time, each headquarters company also possessed unique elements. The Marine Corps unit, for example, had a medical section (of two US Navy doctors and twenty men of the US Navy Hospital Corps), a small supply section (of six Marines), and an intelligence section (of twelve Marines.) The Army unit had an “ammunition and pioneer platoon” and an anti-tank platoon.
With four officers and sixteen men, the battalion headquarters section of the Army headquarters company dwarfed the battalion headquarters section of the Marine Corps headquarters company (six officers and eight men.) Nearly all of this difference in size resulted from the presence in the Army battalion headquarters of an intelligence sergeant and six scout-observers. (The Marine counterparts to these intelligence specialists were all assigned to a separate intelligence section.)
In both organizations, while the battalion headquarters section supported the battalion as a whole, the company headquarters section catered to the needs of the headquarters company. Thus, it provided a home for the company first sergeant, the company supply sergeant, and the men who turned cans of Spam and boxes of powdered eggs into hot meals. (The number of such food service specialists in each company headquarters section depended upon the overall number of men in each company. Thus, while the company headquarters section that supported the 135 officers and men of the Army headquarters company rated six cooks, its Marine Corps counterpart, which provided services to 69 people, made do with a mess sergeant and his two assistants.)1
The communications platoons of the Army and Marine Infantry battalions came close to qualifying as twins. Each consisted of a small headquarters, a message center, a radio and visual panel section, and a wire section. With a platoon commander, communications chief, five drivers, and a spare (“basic”) private, the Army headquarters was larger than the Marine headquarters, which consisted entirely of a platoon commander and a technical sergeant (signal electrician.)
The Army message center of 1942 bore a striking resemblance to the Marine Corps message center of 1941. Indeed, the only difference between the two eight-man units lay in the internal division of labor between clerks and messengers. (Thanks to the presence of two additional men, both of whom rode motorcycles, the ten-man Army message center of 1940, the only communications unit in the Army infantry battalion authorized that year, outweighed its successors by a modest margin.)
The radio and visual panel section of the Army communications platoon consisted of five soldiers: a corporal (section chief) and four radio operators. The Marine version of that unit rated seven Marines: a sergeant (radio chief), two corporals (radio operators), and four privates (radio operators.)
The wire section in each of the communications platoons was made up of eight men: four linemen (who strung wire), three switchboard operators, and a leader. (In the Army wire section, there was but one non-commissioned officer. This was the section leader, who ranked as a corporal. In the Marine Corps wire section, there were two non-commissioned officers, the sergeant in charge of the section as a whole and the corporal in charge of the linemen.)
The Army infantry battalion of 1942 lacked an organic medical element. Nonetheless, it could count on the attachment of “battalion detachment” from the medical unit assigned to its parent infantry regiment. This detachment, which consisted of two officers and thirty-six enlisted men, was nearly twice as large as the medical platoon of the Marine infantry battalion of 1941.
The six-man supply section of the Marine infantry battalion of 1941 was too small to do much more than manage the paperwork associated with the requisition, reception, rationing, and return of various items of equipment. The ammunition elements of Army infantry battalions, however, were charged with transporting the matériel in their care. The ammunition section of 1940 consisted of two nine-man ammunition squads, each of which was issued with a half-ton truck, and a section leader. The ammunition and pioneer platoon of 1942 broke down into three eight-man squads and a five-man headquarters. (The latter possessed two three-quarter ton trucks.)
As used in the title of the ammunition and pioneer platoon, the term “pioneer” described neither a combat engineer, a pick-and-shovel man, nor an axe-wielding woodsman. Rather, it described what might be called the land-locked counterpart of a stevedore: a man who moved boxes from train car to truck, from truck to ammunition dump, and ammunition dump to another truck.
The anti-tank platoon of the Army headquarters company of 1942 looked a lot like one of the three anti-tank gun platoons of the anti-tank company of the Army infantry regiment of the same vintage. That is, it operated four 37mm anti-tank guns, each of which was towed by a 1/4-ton truck (“jeep.”)
For Further Reading:
Marvelous to say, a fourth food service specialist, with the title of “mess corporal,” served in the battalion headquarters section.