6994 I have been reading the War Diary of my FiLs 2nd AIF unit, the 18th Brigade 7th Div. It has amazed me that the sheer volume and seemingly never ending flow of orders etc that is transmitted up and down the 'Chain of Command'. All done with antiquated typewriters and duplicators. I doubt there would be much difference between a Brigade HQs Company in the US and Australian Armies. My question is just how many clerks etc would be in that HQs Company to compose, type, process and oversee the production and distribution of all that paper. Anybody have any idea? John
Someone can certainly correct me if I'm wrong, but I think those duties were tasked to the Communications Platoon of a given Headquarters Company. According to T/O 7-12, which laid out the makeup of a US Army infantry regiment's Headquarters and Headquarters Company (I know in your case we're talking about an Australian org of course) , there were 47 enlisted men working as part of that commo platoon, which included four Code Clerks, three Messengers, fifteen Radio Operators, and four Switchboard Operators, amongst the other specialties (truck drivers, cooks, linemen, etc). In addition, there were 15 total enlisted men in the Company HQ Administration section, that included one company clerk and five basic clerks to oversee all the personnel-related matters. I'm not sure of the extent to which they'd have had a hand in operational orders and their dissemination, but these were the men who dealt specifically with typing, paperwork, duplication and all that. Adam
From Trux's section on 21 Army group http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/23757-infantry-battalion/ Every document generated by the Brigade HQ would have been hand written, before being passed to a clerk for typing onto paper, with carbons to create copies. (or in exceptional circumstances dictated or typed) by a staff officer. The Staff courses to train British grade three (captain) staff officers started with an "In tray exercise" in which a member of the directing staff would present the student with new task every ten minutes or so, each requiring a document perfect English according to the templates laid down in staff duties. Pity the staff officers before the invention of the typewriter or carbon paper. Wellington;s Quartermaster General (COS) spent all night writing individual movement orders to each brigade in 1815. It is worth noting that since Ww2 the HQ and staff element has grown by Parkinson's law to the point where the ;last time the British Deployed a Divisional HQ it had similar size and rank structure to Patton;s 3rd Army had in 1945.
8760 Fascinating, thank you all. I never realised the scale of of the clerical 'bumpf' that goes into a military unit. The War Diary i am reading has copies of hand written reports, together with the typed final product. I wonder what happened to it all if a unit was over-run etc. It would be a gold mine of information. The one I am reading covers the return to Australia of the 18th Brigade and its initial jungle training in Sth Queensland. The training exercise was to repel an invasion after a failed Battle of the Coral Sea. After that they went to the Atherton Tableland in the far north, and soon after direct to Milne Bay in August 1942. Given the timing of Brigade activities, I am CERTAIN that MacArthur etc KNEW that an invasion of Milne Bay by Japan was planned. John
