What ever happened to regiments?

In 19th-Century novels and historical accounts, a soldier was always identified with his regiment – especially in Britain, where regiments had not only numbers but names, and, sometimes, distinctive uniforms.

When I hear the war news out of Iraq, they talk of the U.S. Army troops as being organized in divisions, brigades, batallions, and sometimes, companies, platoons, or squadrons (mechanized cavalry). Regiments are never mentioned. Was the regiment cut out of the military organization system at some point? If so, when, and why? How many men are (were) there in a regiment, anyway? How many in a division? Brigade? Batallion? Company? What is (was) the tactical function of a regiment as distinct from these other units?

There have been several recent threads that cover this, but may not be readily identifiable in a search. The Regiment is alive and well. Marines use the term ALL THE TIME. Army uses “Brigade” more, but it essentially the same thing.

Marines say “First Battalion, Tenth Marines” which is shorthand for “First Battalion, Tenth Marine Regiment” “3/7” is Third Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment. Marines do not identify so much with their Regiment as they do with the Marine Corps overall.

Rule of Three: Three Infantry Battalions to a Regiment, Three Infantry Regiments to a Division.

A two-part answer.

One. Regiments and Brigades are the same thing, a third of a division or three battalions. Tactical regiments exist in many services. A seperate armor birgade is called a regiment in the US Army (an armored cav regiment).

All brigades are called regiments in the American Marines. (Their seperate regiments are often called brigades) When you see a report from a journalist enbedded with the Third Battalion of the Eighth Marines, that is the Eighth Marine Regiment.

So in a tactical sense, they are more or less the same thing.

Now in an historic sense, the US Army has screwed its regmental system to a fare-thee-well. In olden times, soldiers served their professional lives in a single regiment. Regiments developed an esprit de corps (and more than a few eccentrities).

In WWII, for example, a division would have three tactical brigades, each of which was usually a single infantry regiment plus supporting troops.

That went away in the 1950 when the (US) Army went to a funny “Pentaomic” Division, which had five “battle groups,” smalled than a brigade/Regiment but bigger than a battalion.

As a result the regimental system was rethunk. The idea was a soldier would serve with a battalion of (say) the Seventh US Infantry Regiment (the Cottonbalers) in Germany and then rotate back to the US to serve in another battalion of the Seventh.

The two battalions would not have anything to do with each other except they would share a regimental designation. They would be in seperate divisions and corps. The regimental system became a fraud.

Added to this is the fact that modern soldiers like to move around. After a tour in Germany they want to go to Hawaii or Korea. Such mobility wrecks the idea of a regimental home.

As a result the (US) Army has a hodgepodge of battalions scattered willy-nilly all over the world with all sorts of regimental designations. Each unit has a regimental color with streamers for the battales found by the unit’s forebearers. The system tries to keep up the old traditions and prid with mixed sucess.

In the British military the problem has been a seemingly-endless series of consolidations.

The old Artist’s Rifles (raised in WWI) has gained a number (22) and is now the Special Air Service. The county regiments have been consolidated (as have the counties themselves). Still vestiages of the ol days remain.

When you see a British soldier wearing a hat that make you ask “Where did he buy that?” He is wearing the distinctive headgear of an old and proud regiment. Since the British Army is smaller now that it used to be, some or even many of the regiments are down to a single tactical battalion.

So the 43rd Foot might well be just a single battalion that serves in a brigade of the First British Armoured Division.

OK, get all that? Aren’t you sorry you asked?

G’dat

The regiment is still alive and well in Commonwealth usage. A regiment is an armour, artillery, aviation, engineers, communications, logistics, or special forces formation equivalent to an infantry battalion. (There is also a sense in which one or more battalions continue the name and traditions of an old regiment: for example Australian infantry battalions are all numbered battalions of the Royal Australian Regiment. This becomes very confusing when you learn that there are eleven armoured regiments in the Royal Tank Regiment, and sixteen artillery regiments in the Royal Regiment of Artillery.)

There was a day when a regiment consisted of “fifteen hundred Englishmen, the Colonel, and the Band”. But the British went over to a system in which each regiment had two battalions, on stationed overseas (eg. India) and the other at Home recruiting and training. The regiments were commanded by colonels, who stayed at Home in effective retirement or in staff positions, and the battalions in the field were commanded by lieutenant-colonels. Larger units would be formed when needed by ‘brigading together’ available battalions, and putting a brigadier-general (who out-ranked the colonels) in charge. This system was re-organised in the 1920s, if IIRC. Nowadays colonels have formal appointments to staff commands, and lieutenant-colonels command the subdivisions of a brigade (which are battalions in the infantry and regiments everywhere else).

I believe that in WWII the US Army still had an organisation uninfluenceded by European reorganisations of the preceding hundred years, with a complete Napoleonic hierarchy of platoons, companies, battalions, regiments, brigades, and divisions. This meant that the US had regiments about the size of British brigades, and ended up with divisions twice as big as anyone else’s. But I’m not sure about that.

Regards,
Agback

To the US Army Rangers, the idea of the regiment is still very important.

The Ranger regiment is distinctive in terms of it’s headgear, which up until recently (another rant for another day) was the black beret, worn exclusively by the Rangers. They now wear the tan beret to distinguish themselves from ordinary soldiers (at least in terms of dress- in terms of training and performance, they are light-years ahead). All Army special operations units have different headgear- Special Forces wear the green beret, Airborne wear the burgundy beret, Ranger wear the tan beret.

75th Ranger Regiment has an extremely high esprit de corps. If a soldier must leave the Ranger regiment for any reason, it is seen as a real step down in the world, even if the soldier goes to another “elite” unit.

Canada still uses named regiments, most of which date back to WWI or even the Boer War, our first foray into a foreign war. The local armoury is attached to the Hastings-Prince Edward regiment, know to its men as the Hasty P’s.

There are two main types of British regiment.

There are operational regiments, which are battalion-sized and generally restricted to particular branches of the military. Artillery, air defence, armour and SAS units all operate as regiments (well, the latter are a special case, but enough of that). For example, 1st Royal Tank Regiment is one of the British armoured battalions currently in Iraq. Another often mentioned in news reports is 7 Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, which is a light artillery battalion.

Infantry units fight as battalions, but retain a regimental ancestry. For example, 1st Battalion The Parachute Regiment is currently a battalion with a regimental administrative and ceremonial home. Where multiple battalions “belong” to the same regiment they may never fight alongside each other, but will generally be based together and then assigned to different brigades.

In both cases, British units generally fight as brigades within divisions. A mechanised infantry brigade may include an armoured regiment and two mechanised infantry battalions from a regiment. Confusing, eh?