Introduction
The purpose of this website, (if I ever manage to overcome
my technological inadequacies and it sees the light of day), is to share my
fascination for one of the most powerful periods in history: the Second World
War.
There are countless sites devoted to this era, covering a
host of different aspects. But
that’s the nice thing about the Internet; supply and demand doesn’t enter
the equation, you can put a site up because you have something to say.
Whether anyone wants to listen is almost irrelevant.
It is nice though…
So what is this site about?
I thought it best to start with what I know, and perhaps more importantly
what interests me. I’m not overly
fascinated with Generalship. There
have been umpteen tomes written about Patton, Montgomery, Rommel and Eisenhower.
Your local bookstore and library can probably furnish you with a volume
which describes in detail what breakfast Eisenhower enjoyed on D-Day, or what
cigarettes Rommel preferred to smoke. My
interest lies in the men who served under such leaders.
Way under. Right at the
front actually: The Infantryman.
Many years ago (more than I like to recall), I got it into
my head to do something with the masses of small toy soldiers I had collected.
I decided I would try to organise them into something equating real
formations. In hindsight, it was a
bad decision. I naively assumed
that as WW2 was such a relatively recent conflict, there would be tons of
information readily available detailing the structure and composition of all
levels of unit organisation for the combatants.
Truth is, there is a surprising dearth of detail available for the casual
researcher. What published sources
there are more often than not are vague or contradictory.
Some are just plain wrong.
What started as a subsidiary hobby eventually mutated into
a near obsession for absolute detail on the subject. What I eventually had to admit was that there are no
absolutes down to the level of detail I wanted.
But I haven’t half found a load of stuff! It’s been collected from a variety of sources.
Published works were my first chance to study the subject.
When they came up short, I started to write to museums, both at home in
the UK and abroad in the US. There
are also some decent sources on the Net.
For those who have studied the subject before, most of
these pages will probably be old news. I’d
like to think though that there might be a few surprises tucked away for even
the most well versed reader. What I
hope though is that this is one of the few places where you can find information
on the forces of more than one country. I’ve never seen a book entitled ‘Everything you wanted to
know about Small Unit Organisation during WW2 but were afraid to ask’.
If anyone reading this has, please give me the ISBN!
I intend to add a bibliography of all the published sources
quoted in these pages, with ISBN numbers for those who may be interested.
Likewise hyperlinks to any pages, which have impressed me!
That’s almost enough rambling. I’ve added a separate page to qualify the detail included
elsewhere in this site. That’s
best read in conjunction with the various descriptions.
Part of my aim in doing this is to provide a web page which
I would have loved to find while idly browsing the Web.
Part is to share what knowledge I have with those who may be pursing
similar lines of research. Part is simply to achieve Internet immortality!
But if at least one person stumbles across this site, and while reading
through it suddenly stops and says ‘well, I never knew that’, it’s been a
worthwhile effort.
Hope you enjoy it!
Infantry Weapons of World War Two
Infantry Tactics of World War Two