Army Organization Explained: Squad to Army Group - Military History Handbook

This episode of the Military History Handbook explains Army organization. From the small squad all the way up to the million-men army group.
Serving as a historical example is Easy company of the 101st Airborne Division, famous from 'Band of Brothers'. Their place in the chain of command during the Normandy campaign is explained, starting with the Allied 21st army group and working our way down to Easy company, its platoons and squads.

The Military History Handbook is a beginner's guide to military history. Theory, terminology and more are explained in compact videos.

The Easy company example is based on the following sources:

Harrison, Cross-Channel Attack (1993).

Ruppenthal, Utah Beach to Cherbourg (1990).

Ambrose, Band of Brothers (1992).

Winters, Beyond Band of Brothers (2006)

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Introductory remarks
02:23 Overview
04:17 Detailed guide
20:00 Easy company example
27:28 Closing remarks

[baronvonjerch]

What's also worth noting is that "Corps" can also be used as the title of a whole arm; such as the Infantry Corps, Armoured Corps, Artillery Corps, Corps of Engineers etc. This is usually the case with an army that's just not big enough to have operational use for a corps. So, they use it for administration instead.

[dorianphilotheates]

From a serving Hellenic Army infantry officer: exceptionally well researched and presented — bravo!

[TheMajorActual]

This channel is criminally underrated.

[memirandawong]

I'm glad you used Easy Company as an actual example. Having watched the entire Band of Brothers series and heard interviews from some of the soldiers in those units, including Winters himself, this is a big help!

[leiladekwatro]

I find it interesting how this can possibly be used in a school setting. The number of soldiers in a platoon is similar to the number of students in an average classroom (20-40). This could make the teacher be equated to a lieutenant. If they handle an entire grade with multiple sections, they can be equated to a captain.

Since students already naturally form little cliques of their own consisting of 5 to 10 people, can schools utilize this behaviour to their advantage? Instead of just one class president and some class officers, who in my experience I barely even know since they are always from another clique apart from mine, maybe the classroom can be split into 5-9 people "squads" (students group themselves of course, not teacher assigned) where they elect their own leader (corporal), who they actually know on a personal level, to represent them to the class president (sergeant), who then reports to the teacher.

This way, individual students who are struggling can be addressed by their corporals who can report the problems to the teacher, so the teacher doesnt have to get overwhelmed by all 30-80 students and their own problems and woes. Conversely, if the teacher is having a hard time reaching the student, ( maybe due to the nature of online classes) the teacher can just go to the corporal or the sergeant and go "hey, can you tell x that he's failing english and to answer his damn emails or something. Maybe he'll listen to his friends and actually get his head out of his ass."

This, of course, is assuming the students cooperate with the system instead of bumming around and electing whoever, as those little shits are liable to do.

[betweenprojects]

British regiments were recruiting and training organisations. Each regiment being made up of multiple battalions. These could be regular battalions or reserve battalions. The battalions of a regiment were not deployed together but attached individually to different brigades for combat. Regiments were commanded by Colonels, brigades by brigadier generals. In this way even if there were devastating casualties in battle, the regimental structure remained intact to regenerate new battalions.

[bruced]

I wish there was a way to get players in the war gaming community to watch this. most have no concept of what you've cleanly laid out. yet, they try to simulate a battle or skirmish without the fundamentals of military theory. then they complain when the strategy doesn't work for the forces deployed.
very frustrating to watch

[yanmcrae]

Super helpful video to a non-military person who enjoys a bit of history. Easy company example was great.

[The_Professor_]

This is a great rule of thumb! People really tend to not realize the true scale of these operations and how important structure is to function.
There’s some difference between countries and branches obviously, this very well describes the WWII layout of army units. It can get really peculiar when traditional titles interfere with legitimate representation of a units strength, origin, and mission set. It’s one reason that multinational commands can be so difficult.

In what’s slowly becoming my signature comment on this channel I’ll share some more modern (and American) points on the subject. The example I’ll offer here is of the American marine corps infantry (up to the battalion level)
First example is the squad, USMC squads are a 13 man squad (sometimes with additional attachments) or 12 strong in the 3 man team examples (this is seldom seen beyond LCR’s and the Recon community). This brings the average platoon to a strength of 40-60 men depending on readiness and attachments. Attachments may consist of machine gun teams/ squads, mortar teams/ squads, a combat engineer team, AA missile teams, etc.
Many of these assets exist at a company level. For example, the engineers are attached upon a unit deploying in a ratio of one squad per company (meaning one team per platoon). Engineers are often attached to their platoon directly for operations but are a part of the weapons platoon. The weapons platoon also consists of mortars, machine guns, and FIST sections.
Moving on to the battalion you have three line companies, a headquarters and service company, a weapons company, snipers, and often attached artillery batteries. The weapons company retains heavy assets such as CAAT, anti-armor missile sections, heavy machine guns, scouts/ snipers, 81mm mortars, etc. So the numbers actually balloon out quite a bit.
However as we all well know the numbers in combat often see units well under strength and lacking certain key assets. As we can see attached and detached assets can very quickly spoil our nice tables and layouts haha

[theromanorder]

Squad, enough for 1 man, but big enough to have an impact
5:30 platoon, 3 squads, small hq officer
6:35 company, 3 platoons,
Special wepons eg anti tank, exsplosive, morter and surply led by captin or major
7:55 batalion, 3 companies, 1 heavy wepon, 1 suport (transport, reapers, surplys)
Lieutenant cereal
9:04 reginent (American, German)
3 battalions 2 companies (anti tank ect)
10:25 brigade, (British) Conbined arms, the batalions can be changed (tank, infantry ect) brigader/colonel
12:25 division major general
3 regemts 3 batalion different types Conbined arms

14:20 corp Lieutenant general, large hq, 2-5 divsons, given or lose division depending on mission.
They use special technology but only when necessary.. (units are moved between corps depending on wherr needed)
17:50 2-3 courps, 100, 000+ men, general. Assignees units
Then army group, comands a theater, general ir feild Marshall, comands multiple armys sometimes multiple countries

[GUAYABAFELIZ]

Excellent video! Thank you for putting this information together. I am sharing this video with our newly hired civilians as an excellent starting point to learn Army Organization.

[johndoe]

Excellent video. Specially liked the linking of all the concepts at the end, with the example of the Easy Company. Great work!

[saif]

Thank you for this well researched video. Is there an actual book called the Military History Handbook or is this just the name of the series ?

[alexrowson-brown]

A regiment in BRITAIN is not typically a single battalion, some are now due to cuts but they should be multiple batallion unit.
Ceremonially units retain regimental title for history
A British regiment usually has single focus like light infantry, mechanised infantry etc so a brigade will be combined specialties such as the air assault brigade being made up of the parachute regiment and supporting units from royal engineers, RLC, and any vehicles needed

[grenadespoon]

Although the Corps in reference to the Marine Corps is a ceremonial title, the Marines Corps is indeed a Corps that consists of 4 divisions (6 in WWII).

[_Abjuranax_]

In WWII, US Army Divisions occupied a 12-mile front, or "divisions" that were marked on a map, and each mark separated it from its adjacent Division.

[mscar]

Please keep doing this kind of videos i have been looking for that since a while ago. Thank you so much. Subscribed

[henrik]

Something worth noting. In the US army cavalry, we still use the term troop to refer to a company sized unit, and the term regiment for us means battalion

[Stew]

New sub here, this is an outstanding explanation and video. Ty very much!

[christopherwood]

Note: the British Royal Regiment of Fusiliers is a regiment of 2 Battalions, one regular (1st Fusiliers) and one reserve (5th Fusiliers). in practice, however, the RRF forms part of the Queen's Division as follows:


Colonel Commandant ("honorary or ceremonial title relating to a [...] corps"): LtGen Douglas Chalmers
1st Battalion, Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment (Queen's and Royal Hampshire)
RESERVE 3rd Battalion, Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment (Queen's and Royal Hampshire)
RESERVE 4th Battalion, Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment (Queen's and Royal Hampshire)
1st Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers
- RESERVE 5th Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers
1st and 2nd Battalions, Royal Anglian Regiment
- RESERVE 3rd Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment
1st Battalion Duke of Lancasters Regiment
1st Battalion Mercian Regiment
3rd Battalion Ranger Regiment
Royal Gibraltar Regiment

(Previously:
Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment (Queen's and Royal Hampshire) (PWRR);
Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (RRF);
Royal Anglian Regiment (R ANGLIAN))

The inevitable result of this, in my estimation, is that the commander of the Queen's Division has greater, direct command over the individual Battalions.