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Old 12-18-2012, 09:54 AM
dragoon500ly dragoon500ly is offline
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Default We Build and Fight, Chapter Eleven

It is perhaps fitting that the U.S. Army, with an officer corps heavily influenced by the teaching at the United States Military Academy (the first engineering school in the United States), should be lavishly equipped with engineer troops and equipment. Every division was supported by a three-company combat engineer battalion, which was capable of performing most engineering tasks (including demolitions, obstacle emplacement, fortification and light bridge building) for the division. When necessary, a division’s engineers were augmented by additional combat engineer battalions from corps or army. Corps battalions were assigned to the command of an engineer group headquarters, which consisted of a headquarters and headquarters company, an engineer light equipment company and two to six engineer battalions. There are usually two to four engineer groups per corps and army. Combat engineer battalions tended to have a high esprit de corps; they rightly considered themselves to be elite specialists. In an emergency, the combat engineer battalion could act as infantry and did so frequently.

In addition to the combat engineer battalion there were also various bridging units; heavy ponton battalions (1-3 per army), light ponton companies (1-2 per group), and treadway bridge companies (usually one per armored division, but held at army level). The remainder of the engineer corps was made up of various specialist companies (such as heavy equipment companies, topographical and maintenance companies) and engineer general service regiments. These engineer general service regiments were indeed specialists, capable of building roads, airfields, bridges, and other permanent structures and were lavishly outfitted with heavy construction equipment, but, unlike, the combat engineer battalions, were neither well equipped nor trained for infantry action.

Some 40% of the Corps of Engineers were serving with the AGF, another 40% with the ASF and the remaining 20% with the AAF. By June 1945, 89 divisional combat battalions, 204 non-divisional combat battalions, 79 general service regiments and 36 construction battalions were in service.
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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