Kempton, Chris. Locations of the Regiments and Battalions of the British Army, 1st August 1914 and 1st September 1939. Milton Keynes, UK: The Military Press, 2006

ISBN 0-85420-956-5
iv + 56 pages

Introduction; maps

   Chris Kempton, author of the excellent Loyalty & Honour series about the Indian Army, this time around offers a little booklet (5.75" x 8.25" and 56 pages) much less ambitious than his previous set. The author organizes his booklet this way:

• Introduction (4 pages)
• Cavalry, August 1914 (3 pages)
• Cavalry and Armour, September 1939 (5 pages)
• Infantry, August 1914 (12 pages)
• Infantry, September 1939 (11 pages)
• Listings by location, 1914 and 1939 (21 pages)
• Maps (3 pages)

   For the cavalry, armor, and infantry listings, Kempton lists each regiment of the British Army (British in the narrowest sense, excluding Indian, Commonwealth, and colonial forces), and for each regiment he shows each battalion and its location at the outbreak of war. Here's an example of one infantry regiment, the East Surreys:

The East Surrey Regiment

1st Battalion: Colchester. 11th Brigade, 4th Division
2nd Battalion: China. Shanghai.

   For the "Listings by Location," Kempton recapitulates the same information, but organized by location rather than unit. He combines 1914 and 1939 but distinguishes dispositions by using italics to denote 1939 deployments. Here's an example of the first few locations (excluding the 1914 data). Note how 2nd East Surrey Regiment shows up again.

Bermuda
1 company 2nd Battalion The King's Shropshire Light Infantry

Burma
Maymo
2nd Battalion The King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry
Rangoon
1st Battalion The Gloucestershire Regiment

China
Shanghai
2nd Battalion The East Surrey Regiment
1st Battalion The Seaforth Highlanders [Ross-shire Buffs, Duke of Albany's]
Tientsin
1st Battalion The Durham Light Infantry

Cyprus
1 company 1st Battalion The Essex Regiment
Detachment 1st Battalion The Sherwood Foresters [Nottinghamshire & Derbyshire Regiment]

   The final section includes three maps (world, UK, and India) with all the locations mentioned in the listings.
   All in all, Kempton's book is perfectly useful, and it's a keeper as far as we're concerned, but it's also likely to have a lesser audience than his earlier work.

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Philson, Alan. The British Army 1939-1945: British Expeditionary Force Organisation and Order of Battle 10th May 1940, volume 1. Milton Keynes, UK: The Military Press, 2005

ISBN 0-85420-930-1
vi + 170 pages

Introduction; Notes on Sources; Abbreviations; tables

   Closer to the stereotypical book from Military Press, this is the first volume of a series covering the British Army on the European continent in May 1940. Philson begins his series with a survey of units directly under control of General Headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force. Although the author notes that many of the records of the BEF were lost during the somewhat unleisurely return trip to England, he seems to have collated a huge amount of data between these covers.
   Sometimes the line between order of battle material and tables of organization and equipment material can become blurred, but Philson comes down distinctly on the TOE side of the line. More than that, he seems almost to have frozen 10 May 1940 in time and conducted an unhurried inventory, practically down to the level of individual buttons and rolls of toilet paper, of the manpower, weapons, equipment, and supplies of the BEF.
   To begin with, the author provides an outline OB of the BEF showing GHQ, corps, divisions, LOC areas and sub-areas, etc. This, however, extends no farther than the level of individual divisions. Philson then plunges into a detailed accounting of GHQ troops, including four Air Intelligence sections, with War Establishment numbers and figures for actual strength. No. 1 Air Intelligence Section, for example, comprised three officers and six other ranks, which was slightly over its establishment strength and significantly stronger than the other three sections, all of which were under establishment strength. Besides the likes of GHQ chaplains service, postal directorate, printing and stationery directorate, and the army blood transfusion service, Philson goes on to list each regiment and battalion (such as 1st Army Tank Brigade) directly controlled by GHQ. This extends to armored car units, armored brigades, artillery, infantry, signals, supply and transport, etc and mostly includes numbers for personnel plus weapons and equipment.
   Here's a partial example for AA units, excluding a full page of tabular figures for personnel (both War Establishment and actual):

Anti Aircraft Units

AA Operations Room

HQ 1st Anti Aircraft Brigade

HQ 1st AA Regiment (Base & Forward Defence)
15th, 17th Batteries with 16x 3" mobile, and 16th Battery with 8x 3.7" mobile.
HQ 6th AA Regiment (Base & Forward Defence)
2nd, 12th Batteries with 16x 3" mobile, and 18th Battery with 8x 3.7" mobile.
HQ 85th AA Regiment (Base Defence)
174th, 175th, 220th Batteries with 24x 3.7" mobile

Attached units:
1st AA Brigade Signal Section.
85th AA Regiment Signal section
1st AA Brigade Company RASC (RASC 38)
1st AA Brigade Workshop RAOC.

HQ 2nd Anti Aircraft Brigade

HQ 2nd AA Regiment (Base Defence)
4th Battery with 8x 3.7" static, 6th Battery with 8x 3.7" mobile.
HQ 60th AA Regiment (Base Defence)
168th, 169th, 194th Batteries with 24x 3" mobile and 210th battery 73rd AA Regt. with 8x 3" mobile
HQ 51st Light AA Regiment, 151st, 152nd, 153rd Batteries with 24x 40mm, 24x LMG.
172nd Battery, 58th Light AA Regt. with 12x 2pdr
Two troops of 173rd Battery, 58th Light AA Regt with 8x 2pdr.

Attached units:
2nd AA Brigade Signal Section.
2nd AA Brigade Company RASC (RASC 56)
2nd AA Brigade Workshop RAOC.

HQ 4th Anti Aircraft Brigade

HQ 4th AA Regiment (Base & Forward Defence)
1st, 3rd Batteries with 16x 3" mobile, 27th Battery with 8x 3.7" mobile and 21st Battery 8th AA Regiment
(Base Defence) with 8x 3.7" mobile.
1st Light AA Bty (12x 40mm).

Attached units:
4th AA Brigade Signal Section.
4th AA Brigade Company RASC (RASC 92)
4th AA Brigade Workshop RAOC.

HQ 5th Anti Aircraft Searchlight Brigade

HQ 1st Searchlight Regiment, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Batteries with 96x searchlights.
HQ 2nd Searchlight Regiment, 6th, 7th. 8th batteries with 72x searchlights.
HQ 3rd Searchlight Regiment, 9th, 10th; 11, 12th Batteries with 96x searchlights.

Attached units:
5th AA Brigade Signal Section.
5th AA Brigade Company RASC (RASC 197)

   The remainder of the volume, amounting to eleven more chapters, contains a plethora of War Establishment tables for an endless variety of formations. These almost invariably specify exact numbers of personnel of each rank, their duties, their equipment, their vehicles, their weapons, and even the number of rounds on hand. The tables for personnel for military prisons, for example specify all the positions and note an extra cook should be added for every additional 75 prisoners. Furthermore, "All ranks on the establishment of a camp may be found from personnel unfit for general service with fighting units." Similarly, notes for the Mobile Bath Unit indicate one of its 3-ton, 4-wheel lorries "transports the hot air disinfector."
   This is, frankly, more detail than just about anyone is ever going to need, but there's no denying that Philson's compilation trumps the lot when it comes to TOE data for the BEF.

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Kennedy, Gary. British Army of World War Two War Establishment Tables: Northwest Europe June 1944 - May 1945, volume I: The Infantry Division. Milton Keynes, UK: The Military Press, 2005

ISBN 0-85420-961-1
viii + 139 pages

Abbreviations; Introduction; Sources and Acknowledgements

Appendices: British Infantry Divisions Northwest Europe 1939-1945; Weapons of the Infantry Division; British Army Rank Structure

   The first volume of Gary Kennedy's new series about the British Army in Normandy covers much the same ground as Alan Philson's volume on the BEF. This is also very much a TOE volume rather than an order of battle, and Kennedy focuses on official War Establishment tables rather than the actual strength and structure of forces in the field in contact with the enemy.
   The first parts of the book cover overall organization of the infantry division, summaries of personnel and individual weapons, personnel allocations, vehicle summaries, notes on vehicles, support weapons summaries, and "Notes on variations in divisional artillery." These are tables filled with rows of units and columns of personnel and weapons. For example, three tables cover "Support weapons summary, Infantry Division" with one each for June 1944, December 1944, and May 1945. Each table contains about forty rows of data with columns showing numbers for Vickers, PIAT, 2-inch mortar, 3-inch mortar, 4.2-inch mortar, 6-pr gun, 17-pr gun, 17-pr SP, 25-pr gun, and 40-mm gun. This enables the reader to discover at a glance that the divisional machine gun battalion held 36 Vickers, 17 PIATs, and 16 4.2-inch mortars.
   Beyond all those preliminary figures and notes, Kennedy devotes more than a hundred pages to War Establish tables for a wide array of units:

Headquarters of a division
Divisional headquarters defence and employment platoon
Machine gun battalion
Reconnaissance regiment
Infantry divisional signals
Headquarters of an infantry brigade
Ground defence platoon for an infantry brigade headquarters
Infantry battalion

   For each of those units the WE information covers a variety of dates. For example, for the infantry battalion, organizations for 30 April 1943 and 12 November 1944 are documented, each with at least a dozen pages of data, mostly in tabular format but with quite a few notes. Here's a sample of part of the 1944 document for an infantry battalion:

Four rifle companies (each)

Company headquarters

Bicycle 1: Orderly (R)

Bicycles. 2-3 (each): Batman (R)

5-cwt car, 4x4: Major (P), Driver, IC (S)

15-cwt truck, 1 - 4x2, GS: Storeman (R), Driver, IC (S)

15-cwt truck, 2 - 4x2, GS: Company-serjeant-major (R), Corporal, driver, IC (S)

15-cwt truck, 3 - 4x2, GS: Clerk (R), Driver, IC (S)

(Trucks 1-3 carry between them the stores, tools and greatcoats of the whole company)

Carrier: Driver-mechanic (R)
LMG, 3 PIAT
2-inch mortar (for signalling)

Marching - Captain (P)

(1 Company-quarter-master-serjeant carried in transport of administrative platoon)

Three platoons (each)

Headquarters

Bicycle: Orderly (R)

Marching: Subaltern (P), Serjeant (R), Batman (R)

Mortar sub-section

Marching: Lance-corporal mortarman (R), 2 mortarmen (S, R), (with 2-inch mortar)

Three sections (each)

Marching: Corporal (S), lance-corporal (R), 8 privates (7R, LMG)

   Kennedy's material differs from Philson's in one important aspect. The data for 1940 has been collated from a variety of sources and reformated by the author. On the other hand, the data for Normandy is presented in the same format as the original documents. "As far as possible the actual format of the tables has been adhered to, including spellings and punctuations of the day, such as Serjeant instead of Sergeant.... The occasional typographical error or numerical oversights found in a small number of tables have though been corrected to avoid confusion."
   In any event, this is another case of extremely detailed information, far beyond anything we've previously seen for the Brits in Normandy, including clerks, masons, butchers, sanitary dutymen, snipers, and shoemakers.

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Niehorster, Leo. United States Armed Forces Order of Battle, 7 December 1941, volume 2: US Army: Air Force Combat Command and Chief of Air Corps. Milton Keynes, UK: The Military Press, 2006

ISBN 0-85420-693-0
75 pages

About the Author; Introduction; Terms and Abbreviations; Symbols; organigrams; Bibliography; Index

Appendices: Convoy 4002; Organizational Notes; USAAF Aircraft; US Army Installations

   Being based in the UK, Military Press understandably leans toward books on British forces, but they don't ignore German or—to a lesser extent—US material. We previously reviewed volume one of Leo Niehorster's three-volume set covering the organization of American ground, air, and sea forces as of 7 December 1941. That book dealt mostly with ground forces, all the way down to the level of ROTC facilities.
   In the second volume, recently arrived from Military Press, Niehorster turns his attention to US air forces, but the structure remains much the same. Unlike Philson and Kennedy who utilize tables and notes, Niehorster relies almost entirely on precise organigrams (organizational diagrams) and unit symbols, making this a much more graphics-oriented approach. In addition, this is definitely an OB book rather than a TOE volume.
   As in the first volume, the author begins at the top and works his way down. The first organigram here covers the "Unites States Armed Forces High Command" including the President and Commander-in-Chief, Secretary of War, Secretary of the Navy, Joint Army & Navy Board, and so on. The second organigram provides more detail for the Secretary of War and the chain of command immediately beneath that office. The third organigram shows the structure beneath the Chief of Staff of the US Army. As with the first volume, symbols in organigrams with a shaded background mean at least one more table exists with further detail about that unit. In this case, the Air Force Combat Command, subordinate to the Chief of Army Air Forces, is shaded in exactly that fashion.
   Thus, in the next organigram the Air Force Combat Command is the top-level unit, with subordinate headquarters including First, Second, Third, and Fourth Air Forces, Fifth Air Support Command, 1st Photographic Group, and so on. Of course, the four air force symbols and the air support command symbols are all shaded, so Niehorster gives separate organigrams for each of those units.
   First Air Force and its subordinate units, for example, spread over six pages including 1st Bomber Command, 1st Interceptor Command, 1st Air Support Command, 1st Air Force Base Command, and eleven individual airfield commands. Components include not only assorted bomber, fighter, recon, transport, and weather air units, but also aviation signals, aviation ordnance/maintenance, aviation chemical, aviation engineers, and so on. All the symbols, by the way, are carefully laid out and identified on one of the preliminary pages at the beginning of the book.
   Here's a fairly typical page with two organigrams:

   All the units and bases covered here are within the continental United States. Air units outside the forty-eight states were included in volume one with ground forces.
   Because this series truly represents a snapshot of the US armed forces on 7 December, Niehorster includes (as he did in the first volume) a complete cargo manifest of the units and aircraft at sea aboard convoy 4002, the so-called Pensacola Convoy.
   The organigrams are very crisply executed and readable and actually make a pleasant relief from the relentless tables and notes of Philson and Kennedy, but of course Niehorster's material more readily lends itself to this visually pleasing approach. Delivering all the information as straight text would have probably reduced the size of this volume considerably, but it's doubtful anyone will complain. As to the content, there's plenty of meat at hand. As with volume one, it appears the state of US forces on 7 December 1941 has not previously been compiled at such a level of detail and completeness.
   The next volume, by the way, will cover the US Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard and bring the series to a conclusion.

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   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from the Military Press.
   Thanks to Military Press for providing these review copies.