British Infantry Division 1914/1916 – Visualization – Organization & Structure

Basic Numbers of a 1914 British Infantry Division

In 1914 a British infantry division consisted of about 18100 (18073) men. The division was equipped with 5600 (5592) horses. 24 Machine guns, 54 18 pounder field guns, 18 4.5 in howitzers and 4 60 pounder heavy field guns. (Source: Richard Rinaldi: Order of Battle of the British Army 1914 and others see links below)

Organization of 1914 Division

Now in terms of organization and structure, the division in 1914 consisted of 3 Infantry brigades, which themselves consisted of 4 Infantry battalions each, which consisted of themselves of 4 rifle companies and 1 MG Section each. Furthermore, the division had one cavalry squadron for recon, one signal company, 3 field ambulances, 2 Field Companies of Royal Engineers, 3 Brigades of the Royal Field Artillery each with 3 Batteries, one Brigade of Field Artillery with 3 Howitzer Batteries and finally one Heavy Battery of the Royal Garrison Artillery.

Now, you probably noticed there are no regiments in this structure, and in case of the artillery, there are also no battalions. Furthermore the number of Artillery Brigades is 4, in contrast a German Infantry Division in 1914 had only 1 Artillery Brigade. Yet, those 4 British Brigades have a total of only 72 guns, which is exactly the same number as the German Brigade, which had 4 Battalions. So basically, a British Artillery Brigade is about the same as a German Artillery Battalion in 1914. Now, let’s take a closer look at one of the three Royal Field Artillery Brigades.

Royal Field Artillery Brigade

Such a Brigade consisted of three Batteries, each of this batteries had 6 18 pounder field guns. In total the Brigade consisted of 772 Men, 23 Officers and 748 Horses. Yet, the mainstay of an infantry divisions are always the infantry or rifle companies, so let’s take a look at those.

Rifle Company comparison with German Infantry Company

Each rifle company consisted of 227 Men and in total there were 48 Infantry Companies, which means that almost 11000 (10896) men of the 18100 (18073) served in the Rifle Companies. Similar to the number of artillery pieces in a German Infantry Division from 1914, the number infantry companies was also 48. Yet, a German company had 270 men. Although the total number of men in both division layouts was almost exactly the same, the German division had an additional 2000 men more serving in infantry companies than the British.

Organization in 1916

During the war there were many reorganizations in terms of the division layout. Let’s take a look at original 1914 layout and see what had changed til September 1916. The cavalry squadron, the MG section and the Royal Garrison Artillery Battery had been removed. Meanwhile one additional Engineer Company was added, furthermore, each infantry brigade had now one MG Company and one Light Mortar Battery attached. Additionally, there was one Battalion of Pioneers, 3 Batteries of Medium Mortars and one Battery of Heavy Mortars added. Which is similar to the German developments that also increased the number of machine guns and added mortars to their infantry divisions.

Accuracy

Now, take all these values with a grain of salt, because usually every division was a bit different even without considering combat losses. Furthermore, I combined several different sources here and the author of my main source notes the following: “However, the number of discrepancies among the sources is amazing; even two official history volumes give different numbers for a Regular infantry division in 1914.” (-Richard A. Rinaldi: Order of Battle of the British Army 1914, p. 432)

Related

German Infantry Division 1914/18 – Visualization – Organization & Structure

Infographic – German Infantry Division 1914/1918 – Organization, Structure & Numbers

Sources

Books

Richard A. Rinaldi: Order of Battle of the British Army 1914 (amazon.com affiliate link)

Bruce Gudmundsson: The British Expeditionary Force 1914-15 (amazon.com affiliate link)

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Online Resources

Nafziger Collection

British Army WW1 – Organization (Wikipedia)

Infographic – German Infantry Division 1914/1918 – Organization, Structure & Numbers


infographic_german_infantry_division_1914_1918

German Infantry Division 1914/1918 Organization & Structure- 1,049px × 2,499px

Video

German Infantry Division 1914/18 – Visualization – Organization & Structure

Sources

Stachelbeck, Christian: Deutschland Heer und Marine im Ersten Weltkrieg (amazon.de affiliate link)

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German Infantry Division 1914/18 – Visualization – Organization & Structure

Infographic – German Infantry Division 1914/1918 – Organization & Structure

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German Infantry Division 1914/1918 Organization & Structure- 1,049px × 2,499px

Intro – Basic Numbers of 1914 Division

In 1914 a German infantry division consisted of about 18000 men. The division was equipped with 4600 horses. 24 heavy Machine guns and 72 light field guns. (Source: Stachelbeck: Deutschland Heer und Marine im Ersten Weltkrieg (S. 120) – amazon.de affiliate link)

Organization of 1914 Division

Now in terms of organization and structure, a German Infantry division in 1914 consisted of 2 Infantry brigades, which themselves consisted of 2 Infantry regiments each, which consisted of themselves of 3 infantry battalions and 1 MG Company. Furthermore, the division had one artillery brigade, which consisted of 2 artillery regiments, which consisted of 2 artillery battalions each. Additionally in some cases there were also cavalry, engineer and medical units attached.

Infantry Company in 1914

This structure is quite abstract, so to get a better grasp on it in terms of men, let’s get one level lower. Each Infantry battalion consisted of 4 infantry companies. Since a division had 12 infantry battalions there was a total of 48 infantry companies. Such a company itself consisted of 150 men in peacetime, yet was increased to 270 during wartime. This meant that around 13000 (12960) of the 18000 men served in the Infantry companies.

This Layout was soon changed for various reasons. One was to get a more uniform structure, the structure of 2 subunits levels was replaced with a structure of 3 sub-units. This structure of 3 was still the determining in World War 2 infantry divisions. (Note that changing this structure didn’t necessarily lead to a change in total men or equipment, for instance the numbers of guns for a battery was changed from 6 to 4. (S. 123-124))

Changes during the War

There were many other changes throughout the war concerning the division layout, some were to deal with the change in necessities of the war and others about strategy. To note a few changes, there was the addition of a permanent medical company in 1916 and the increase engineer companies throughout the war. But probably the greatest change was in terms of equipment.

Comparison 1914 – 1918

To give you a short impression on how much an early-war Infantry Division was different from a late-war Infantry division, let’s revisit the initial numbers and compare them to a division that was intended for offensive operations in 1918, the so called “Mob-Division” or “Angriffsdivision”.

The early war division had around 18000 men, whereas the late war had 15000 to 16000 men, note that the second number is an estimate by an expert on this topic.
In terms of horses there was a decrease from 4600 to 4300, since the attack divisions received more horses than regular divisions the number of horses in overall decreased to greater extent than this display might suggest.

In terms of light machine guns there was an increase from 0 to 180.

Furthermore, the number of heavy machine guns also increased from 24 to 108.

Whereas in terms of light field guns the number of 72 was halved to 36.

Yet, there was a significant change in other artillery weapons, whereas the early war division relied solely on light field guns the 1918 division had: 12 heavy artillery guns, 18 light mine launchers and 6 medium mine launchers. Note that the mine launcher in German is called “Minenwerfer” meaning literally “mine thrower”, which is the old German name for a mortar.
(Source: Stachelbeck: Deutschland Heer und Marine im Ersten Weltkrieg (S. 120) – amazon.de affiliate link)

End Note – Visualization of the men to machine gun ratio

As you can clearly see, the number of machine guns increased substantially by more than 10 times from 24 to 288 machine guns, thus several times multiplying the amount of firepower of the division.

To illustrate in 1914 there was one machine gun for every 750 men. Whereas in 1918 there was a machine gun for every 56 men.
The number of artillery pieces in total didn’t change and stayed at 72, but the number of types was increased and thus resulted in a far more versatile artillery force. The heavy artillery provided more firepower and the mortars allowed for short range indirect fire in close coordination with the infantry, thus the overall flexibility and effectiveness of the division was increased without increasing the total number of artillery pieces itself.

Sources

Books

Stachelbeck, Christian: Deutschland Heer und Marine im Ersten Weltkrieg (amazon.com link)

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Bernhard Kast is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Disclaimer amazon.de

Bernhard Kast ist Teilnehmer des Partnerprogramms von Amazon Europe S.à.r.l. und Partner des Werbeprogramms, das zur Bereitstellung eines Mediums für Websites konzipiert wurde, mittels dessen durch die Platzierung von Werbeanzeigen und Links zu amazon.de Werbekostenerstattung verdient werden können.

Online Resources

Reorganization of the German Army, 1914-1918

Artillery of the Great War