The Battle of the Bulge: Britain's Untold Story

[Slipdigit]

Originally Posted by Owen D

Just arrived.
One error straight away.
Photos of Churchills labelled 29th Armd Bde.
Er...no they had Shermans.
Maps are rubbish, don't show any British units at all. Just general "Bulge" maps.
I'll get stuck into it later at work.

I hate books with maps like that, or have they have maps with locations on them not mentioned in the text and those locations mentioned in the text aren't on the maps.

[Owen]

page 149 he talks about 2 F & F in their Crocs, rubbish, 2 F & F had Shermans, 1 F & F had Crocs.

[plant-pilot]

Originally Posted by Von Poop

I have this feeling I shall be long dead before my required timescale to ever understand army organisations is reached...

What's wrong with you VP? The organization of the British Army has always been quite simple, if a little off topic, but I'll simplify it for you.

Some cap badges are grouped into Corps and sub-divided into Regiments, others are grouped into Regiments and subdivided into Battalions.

Each Regiment (or battalion) is allocated to a Brigade, which is part of a Division and in turn part of a Corps. But not the same kind of Corps as the Corps that is split into Regiments.... that's different. It is a bit of a tradition that Regiments (or Battalions) of the same cap badge don't serve in the same Brigades.... but that's not a hard and fast rule.

Now each Regiment (or Battalion) is given an Orbat (Order of Battle) so that everyone in it knows how many of them there are, where they should be and what they should be doing. You just have to be careful that you follow the right Orbat as they are different for peacetime and war.

Once you are at war and have been built up to your wartime Orbat, things might change for different operations due to Atts and Dets. That means your Orbat can get bigger if you have other units attached. Then you get a + after your unit name on the commander's map, and that's good, or some of your Orbat gets detached and put on someone else's Orbat. You then get a - after your unit name on the big map, and that's not at all good.

It's all to do with Orbats, Atts and Dets, and it's called organization, which the army are by all accounts very good at (?)

So, when you read in a history book and it says that a unit was involved but the picture doesn't show the equipment (or uniform) you were expecting, you really have to find out if it was THE unit, the unit - or the unit +, in which case what units or sub-units were attached, in what strength and what equipment did they bring along to the battle. I'm not saying that it is the case this time, but it sometimes brings up pictures or reports of units using equipment that they shouldn't have been at the time.

[von Poop]

So that's all perfectly clear then .
I can handle the basic structures; Regiment, Battalion, Brigade, Division, Army etc. It's the sheer level of detail people retain regarding actual wartime specifics that never ceases to amaze me.
The detaching and re-attaching always seems deliberately put there to confuse me too, I get in a hell of a mess sometimes trying to work out who was where & when and yet some people just seem to grasp it straight away... I think of them as 'The Regi-mentalists', (they know who they are ).

I suspect it's down to any number that isn't in some way associated with a vehicle immediately falling out of my head.
That, or the other possibility; that the military might just be intentionally obtuse...

Imagine that!

[Slipdigit]

PLant Pilot's explanation

[plant-pilot]

Originally Posted by Slipdigit

PLant Pilots explanation

Well I certainly glad to be able to have helped


The military 'obtuse'? Never!

[Owen]

That page 149 of the book I refered to describes the attack at HUMAIN.
Maybe some of Crocs from 79th Armd Div were attatched to 2 F & F ?
Anyone else know anything about the fighting at Humain?
The 34th Armoured Brigade were sent down to the Ardennes too, I suspect the mis-captioned photo is if them.

[Owen]

As a final and fitting gesture of Allied cooperation it may be noted that CCR, faced with a stubborn hold-out detachment in a large chateau east of Humain, called on the flame-throwing Crocodile tanks of the Scottish Fife and Forfar Yeomanry to apply the finishing touch to the fight for Humain.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_22.htm

Has to be 1 F & F from 73rd Armd Div.
They had Crocodiles.
They would be the ones in that video of the Bulge that Paul posted last week.

Oh look I was right.
2d Armored Division
ATTACHMENTS
Sq B Br 1st Fife & Forfar Yeo (Br 79th Armd Div) 25 Dec 1944 - 18 Jan 1945

[Owen]

The Churchill in the photo labelled 29th Armoured Brigade is actually 34th Armoured Brigade as it has a 53 with a white line under the tac sign.

Which makes them Churchills of 147 RAC.
34th Army Tank Brigade

[Paul Reed]

I had a veteran of that unit with me at Cambrai last November. He fought in the Ardennes; he was telling me they wore just about anything and everything they could find, it was so cold.