Over the weekend I dipped into the Royal Engineer History, Volume 5, which covers the Great War to check on a couple of bits of info.
While doing that I took a bit of time to have a look at the chapter that covered the Mounted Field Squadrons and Field Troops that were part of the Cavalry Divisions and Brigade. The initail part of the Chapter was pretty damning by the author about the use and activities of these RE units. The over arching view was that the units were a waste of man power and resources and contributed very little to the war effort or to the army and divisions as a whole.
The author then went on to say that the units wasted so much of their man power with looking after the horses and as such could only supply a small fraction of the unit into the field.
The authors suggestion was that 1 in 4 troops were wasted by always being required to manage the horses, while this is technically correct it is not the whole time – as suggested by the author – this ratio was only when a unit dismounted to carry out a task or to go into the ground role based on 1 man required to hold (horse holder duties) 4 horses.
This would not be the case when it came to established bivovac areas or in rear areas, where horse lines could be established. where these would be established the man power required to look after the horses would be significantly less probably a working party of 1 in 10 or even less.
The author goes on to state the evidence that a Field Squadron could only put a maximum of 70 men into the trenches to support a Division Contribution of 1500 soldiers. This is the figure that seems incredibly low – 1/3 of the Field Squadron strength and even lower for the Cavalry Division strength which would be at nearly 9000.
The quoted figures look a little bit more realistic if the numbers are looked at in terms of a Cavalry Brigade. A Royal Engineers Field Troop in a brigade would be 77 personnel strong and the Brigade as a whole would be able to muster 1500 personnel for the trenches (based on a war time 3 regiment cavalry brigade) – this also allows for the Brigade Gunners not to be included or the Regimental QMs staff.
This is an area that I feel the RE mounted units have been unfairly slighted and I want to delve into this a lot more, not just comparing Establishments stated in the various manuals but to look at unit diaries and what was actually put on the ground.
I have a feeling that things may be a bit different when I start digging into things compared to what was stated in the RE History Volume.
