Indeed, by the time you get to an organization the size of an Allied division, you are really dealing with what amounts to a self-contained army. A full mechanized infantry division will be in possession of most everything you need to fight a war; all your combat arms, engineers, artillery, support services, antiair assets, EW, ordnance, transportation, field kitchens, the works. I remember the order of battle of some WWII divisions had “Mobile Laundry and Bath” companies, ''cause someone needs to wash the uniforms. There will be an HQ regiment with intelligence, admin, communications, you’ll find dentists and anything else you need. Field hospitals might be separate, depending on what country we’re talking about, but there will be medical assets. In a modern division, rotary air assets will be attached.
First on ‘corps’, in the WWII US Army sub-branches of the service and unit organization were different things. Men in engineering units were in the branch of Army service ‘Corps of Engineers’ but that corps was not an operational unit like the Marine Corps or like the numbered Corps (a group of divisions) within the Army Ground Forces. Engineering units were part of the various organizations in the Army Ground Forces. For example each Army division generally had an Engineer Combat Battalion. They reported to the division commander just like the infantry and artillery branch of service personnel in the division.
As to types of engineer units, there were many in the WWII US Army. As mentioned Engineer Combat Battalions were attached to divisions. They did mainly temporary front line engineering work (quick road repair, mine laying and lifting, demolition, etc). Engineer Combat Battalions were heavily armed, not so dissimilar in armament to infantry battalions, see below, and sometimes pressed into service as infantry, though maybe with some relation to their engineering tasks (for example covering minefields they had laid with fire to prevent enemy engineers clearing them).
The more ‘rear area’ engineering formations were quite diverse. They included Groups (of regiments), Regiment (of battalions) and individual battalions of many kinds including Amphibian (operating landing craft and vehicles), Aviation (airfield construction for the USAAF), Topographic (mapping), Water Supply, Construction, Railway Operating, etc.
Engineer Combat Battalions at least on paper tables of organization had a higher proportion of rifles and a lower proportion of (M1 type) carbines than infantry battalions did and a similar outfit of .30 cal machine guns, as well as .50 mg on vehicles, and rocket launchers as infantry. They did not have mortars however, unlike infantry companies (60mm) and battalions (81mm).
Construction and Aviation Bns for some reason also had a high proportion of rifles but only Construction Bns had a small number of .30 cal machine guns. All engineer units had some .50 cal mgs mounted as AA weapons on their vehicles. The types besides the first two had individual armament of carbines and pistols (official tables giving M1 Carbines as the armament of non-infantry often meant in practice, for much of the war, older type rifles such as M1917 or M1903, as can sometimes be seen in photographs, until there were enough M1 Carbines for front and second echelon units). Almost all WWII US Army personnel had some firearm issued, per official tables of organization and equipment.
Yes, it is very confusing because the word “Corps” has multiple meanings.
Sometimes it could refer to a Corps echelon, such as a unit with subordinate Divisions. (Eg “The 1st Cavalry Division is subordinate to III Corps.”) But it is also used to mean any group of soldiers with a shared profession (eg “The Officer Corps” or “The Military Intelligence Corps.”)
My dad was a SeaBee in Vietnam. As I understand it, his job mostly consisted of working with the locals to build civilian infrastructure. But one of his duties was to use a grenade launcher to blow up clods of turf floating down the river, because sometimes those clods concealed enemy sappers trying to destroy the bridge. So even though he definitely wasn’t one of the “first in” guys, he still at least sometimes carried and used a weapon, as part of normal routine operations.
Let us not forget the gravediggers (Graves Registration Units). My father was much impressed by them in Normandy during WW2. One explained he had dug his way accross North Africa, up Italy, and was now digging his way accross France. He didn’t mention weapons, but I am guessing they did not carry any.
Actually, yes there were armed, since as much as possible they made German POWs dig the graves, while they watched. After of course organizing, recording, marking etc.
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/burying-the-dead-in-wwii-the-quartermaster-graves-registration-service/
I can’t find any reference in the article you cite that Graves Registration Service members were armed. I may well have missed it - can you give a more specific cite?
The closest I could find actually seems to imply that they were unarmed non-combatants:
Scrolling down further, there’s a photo of “An African American litter team from the 3200th Quartermaster Service Company, 24th Quartermaster Battalion.” The lead litter bearer appears to be unarmed, while the rear bearer appears to have a weapon slung over his shoulder (from the bit of the barrel seen, I think an M1 Carbine?). So it appears that at least on occasion they carried weapons, but under the Geneva Convention, even non-combatants are allowed to carry small arms for self-defense.
I also didn’t see any reference in the article to GRS members making German POWs dig graves, either. Even if they did, though, that doesn’t necessarily indicate that the GRS members were armed. The POWs could have been guarded by MPs or infantrymen while the GRS members supervised the grave digging.
The Geneva Convention (I), Chapter II, Article 17, discusses Graves Registration Units, but as far as I can find, unlike medical personnel and chaplains, it doesn’t actually specify that GRS members are non-combatants.
I’m very curious about this now. Does anyone have a good cite for whether GRS members in WWII were routinely issued weapons, or if they were normally unarmed, or considered non-combatants?
GRS carries weapons, according to their TOE. Quartermaster Graves Registration Service | WW2 US Medical Research Centre
Photos are not useful for understanding this kind of thing. Any photo is just a limited snapshot of whatever they happened to be doing at that time. It is totally normal for a soldier to set down their weapon or hand it off to a buddy if they are performing some kind of labor.
The only people who were not issued any kind of weapon were Chaplains. We can really simplify this conversation by understanding this point: Every soldier was liable to come under attack at any moment, and everyone had to be ready to defend themselves. Medics, engineers, gravediggers, intelligence analysts, accountants, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. If you weren’t a chaplain, you had a gun. Any exception (eg Desmond Doss) was exceedingly rare and therefore noteworthy. This continues today. Go to a FOB in Iraq or Afghanistan and everyone has a gun. They might go the entire year without ever firing a shot, but they have one and they carry it everywhere they go.
The Geneva Conventions don’t say a damned thing about who does and does not carry weapons. The US Army does not arm chaplains because that is a choice WE made. Some nations do choose to arm their chaplains. The Geneva Conventions have nothing to do with it.
The word “non-combatant” has a very narrow and specific legal meaning. Using it to describe every REMF or support role is incorrect and creates unnecessary confusion.
Thank you for the specific reply about GRS units in WWII. The TOE indicates 118 M1 Carbines for 130 men, so they were indeed armed, but only with “self-defense” weapons. They also don’t have quite as many carbines as men - in WWII, did officers’ side-arms appear on TOEs? I’d assume so, but if not, maybe that’s the discrepancy? In any event, I appreciate the information.
Frankly, I did not appreciate the rest of your post, which seemed unnecessarily and bizarrely confrontational. I’m not going to try to respond to the points you made, which mostly seemed to be trying to counter arguments and correct statements that I never actually made, other than to say two things. First, I never stated GRS members, much less that “every REMF or support role” were non-combatants - I asked if anyone had a good cite on whether they were considered as such. Second, I have, in fact, been to an FOB in Iraq. Since I never saw or interacted with WWII-era GRS units while there, my experiences there seem entirely irrelevant to the point under discussion.
Not in ww2. If you had the rec cross on your arm, you didnt carry a weapon.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule25
Red Cross, sorry.
Basically if you wear the red cross, you can’t carry a gun and are protected. Obviously, in areas where the Red Cross/Crescent is not respected, you carry a weapon.
well going off the GRS, there were 250 men to a company, and they got 125 carbines and 125 hand guns for the company.
That doesn’t leave many unarmed, does it.
Do you have a different cite that the one JB99 gave? That cite indicates a 130 man company with 118 carbines.
(I think I figured out the discrepancy between the unit strength and assigned weapons - the company included a 12-man medical detachment. They were probably unarmed, which I believe was SOP for medics in WWII. The rest of the unit would have been armed).