Monday, August 04, 2008

Messes, Squads and Platoons

The following information is from Don Hagist on the RevList Yahoo Group.


The information below is my 'primer' on messes, squads, platoons and companies, based on reading a lot of period texts, courts martial, and other documents. To understand this well, we must first clear our heads by accepting these ground rules:

  • Regiments could do things the way they wanted, so there is no set of 'rules' that invariably applies.
  • There is no relationship whatsoever between squads and platoons, between messes and platoons, or between squads and messes. All of these entities could exist within a company, but were not necessarily logically related to each other.



That said:

  • A mess is a group of men who share the same tent and kettle (and other camp equipage issued in a quantity of 1 item to a group of men). In most cases the mess consisted of five men (in most cases regiments were issued one tent per five men). The mess might also include wives of married soldiers. These men eat and sleep together, but that might be all they do together. These men were all from the same company. They drew food together (although rations were calculated on a 'per man' basis, food was actually distributed per mess, and the men of the mess divided it up after cooking).

    On British company muster rolls (in the WO 12 collection), the names are often listed in groups of five. Some people interpret this to be a listing of the messes, but there is ample reason to doubt this interpretation (which I'll be happy to discuss if anyone is interested). More likely it was just to make the rolls easier to read. I don't know the derivation of the term 'mess'.

  • A squad was a group of men assigned to the care of a non-commissioned officer within a company. Military texts by Thomas Simes and Bennett Cuthbertson describe the assignment of squads as a handy way to make sure that each man has an NCO to oversee his hygiene and the care of his clothing and accoutrements. Cuthbertson' s writing on the subject appears below, and it is key to notice that he calls them Squads of Inspection, which gives a strong suggestion of the purpose of these squads.


    The texts often suggest dividing the men of a company evenly by the number of NCOs in the company. Simes suggests that squads be organized based on the rank in which men form (that is, three squads, one each for the front, center and rear ranks). Cuthbertson recommends forming squads based on the experience of the soldiers, so that each squad contains a good proportion of new men and seasoned men. The one actual squad roll that I've seen (from a company orderly book of the 28th Regiment of Foot) has the company divided into three squads in the following manner: The names of the men are written in three columns, proceeding alphabetically from left to right:


    Adams

    Baker

    Costello

    Downs

    Eagan

    Finnerty

    etc.


    Each column is a squad under an NCO (see my write-up on this in The Brigade Dispatch Vol. 21 No. 2). The squad has no tactical application whatsoever. We might assume that a squad contained a fixed number of messes, but there is no basis for this assumption. The two enties appear to be completely unrelated.


  • A platoon is a tactical subdivision of a company - in fact, they are often called 'subdivisions' (and a 'grand division' was two companies). Whether a company has two, three or four platoons depends upon which set of procedures you're reading. Whether they're commanded by officers or NCOs likely depends upon who was actually available on the field, but I would suspect the intent was to have officers commanding platoons. The only way to get a sense of what was 'typical' is to read a number of manuals and military texts, because different authors had different ideas about this.

Ich Dien!

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