Military headquarters

“ Within the infantry and field artillery regiments, men from the combat arms were to handle all communications. The new division abandoned the train headquarters and military police organization, following the recommendation of the Superior Board, but retained a separate military police company. Given the many small separate companies in its structure (division headquarters, signal, tank, service, ordnance, and military police) , the division included a new organization, headquarters, special troops, to handle their administration and discipline. ”

“ Although the military districts are not tactical commands, they supervise and on occasion control all training programs. The military district commander is responsible for the combat preparedness of the units in his area. In wartime he probably would become a higher unit field commander, and personnel for his new headquarters would come largely from the military district headquarters staff. The military district headquarters would retain administrative and logistic responsibilities, as well as those involved with the wartime mobilization and preparedness of additional units for combat. ”

“ Freddy interrupted with a grin. "Important military people means staff headquarters. Yes, we're probably crazy, Dave. Both of us may be completely out of our heads, but I'll bet you the Bank of England against your oldest pair of flying boots that that spot over there is some kind of field headquarters for enemy troops in this area of the desert." ”

“ With his Staff he took up his headquarters in a section of Mena House for use as offices, with their living tents pitched close by. This was the chance to organize and dovetail one unit into another, work brigade in with brigade, artillery with the infantry, the Light Horse regiments as protecting screens and scouts. The Army Service Corps, Signallers, Post Office, all came into being as part of a larger unit for the first time. The troops became part of a big military machine, units, cogs in the wheel. ”

“ The complexity and volume of work which goes on at even a Divisional Headquarters, having dominion over about twenty thousand full-grown males, may be imagined; and that the bulk of such work is of a business nature, including much tiresome routine, is certain. Of the strictly military labours of Headquarters, that which most agreeably strikes the civilian is the photography and the map- work. I saw thousands of maps. I inspected thick files of maps all showing the same square of country under different military conditions at different dates. ”

“ From the outbreak of war and for nearly two years afterwards, the headquarters administration of the supply branch of our armies in all theatres except Mesopotamia and East Africa was carried out at the War Office by one director, five military assistants and some thirty clerks, together with one "permanent official" civilian aided by half-a-dozen assistants and about thirty clerks. ”

“ Provide such logistic support, including communications and transportation facilities, as may be required by the Military Armistice Commission and the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission and their Teams.
i. Each construct, operate, and maintain a suitable airfield in their respective ports of the Demilitarized Zone in the vicinity of the headquarters of the Military Armistice Commission, for such uses as the Commission may determine. ”

“ Behind each army corps, and some way in front of general headquarters, but also sufficiently far from the turmoil of the fighting, are the army corps headquarters, which are exactly like general headquarters, though on a smaller scale. ”

“ Our first occupation next day was to establish my own headquarters, for a military man does not feel at home until his little camp is set in some decent nook with the regularity and order which shows good system, and with the sentinel pacing before the entrance. ”

“ CAPTAIN PENDER, C.S.N.
Well up town, something above quarter of a mile beyond the massive, battlemented armory in which we of the Third Infantry have our headquarters, a side street, branching off from one of the main thoroughfares, ambitiously stretches away until it finds its farther progress barred by a high, stone-capped, brick wall. There it stops. ”

“ After a thorough consideration of Allied organizations it was decided that our combat division should consist of four regiments of infantry of 3,000 men, with three battalions to a regiment and four companies of 250 men each to a battalion, and of an artillery brigade of three regiments, a machine gun battalion, an engineer regiment, a trench-mortar battery, a signal battalion, wagon trains, and the headquarters staffs and military police. ”

“ We must remember that the fighting base is an ever-moving base, moved according to the exigencies at the front, now forward, now back. It is many miles behind the firing line, far from the sound though not the sights of war. Here are Headquarters, where the brains of the Army do their responsible work. To Headquarters comes information from every available source. The telegraph and telephone instruments tick and ring all day long. Motor cyclists bring their store of knowledge, and aeroplanes, most important of all informants, dispense their news. ”

“ General Headquarters, for instance, was a surprise to those who came to such a place for the first time. It was not, when I went there some months ago, a very long distance from the fighting lines in these days of long-range guns, but it was a place of strange quietude in which it was easy to forget the actuality of war— until one was reminded by sullen far-off rumblings which made the windows tremble, and made men lift their heads a moment to say: "They are busy out there to-day." There were no great movements of troops in the streets. ”

“ A few men would be at the observatory, at a pirate piece, with the infantry, or on detail at battalion headquarters. Yet reports on these men must be consolidated and at regimental headquarters at the usual hour. ”

“ The headquarters would be assigned to a permanent location and would maintain regimental history and traditions, keep records, display colors, trophies, and other properties, and perhaps conduct regimental recruiting and operate regimental training units. A proposal to centralize all infantry regimental headquarters at the Infantry Center at Fort Benning, Georgia, was tentatively approved by the Army Staff in 1959, but it was rejected the following year because of lack of funds, personnel, and appropriate on-post facilities. ”

“ In the organization of the Tank Corps, AEF, all tank units were assigned to the General Headquarters, Tank Corps. For specific combat missions, they were attached to armies or to subordinate elements and reverted to general headquarters control as directed. An army tank headquarters, designed to function with an army headquarters, consisted of a headquarters and a heavy artillery mobile ordnance repair shop. ”

“ The officers of the Quartermaster-General’s department, besides their duties with regard to the moving of the army, or the detachments of it, had often to undertake independent work at a distance from headquarters, and sometimes remote from the theatre of war. ”

“ You wonder at the men of the 3rd Brigade who stormed it and the ridge on your right. The idealness of the Point for machine guns to repel any landing, seems only too evident. You pass the Army Corps headquarters—a line of dugouts, well shielded from the sun with canvas and blankets. Above is the wireless station, with its widespread aerials on a bare hill—deserted except for a few casual men who had burrowed deep and took their chance—and immense searchlights for signalling in a cavern in the hill. Near at hand, too, is the Army Post Office, in a low wooden building, one of the few at Anzac. ”

“ The command of the main Union force, organized from the volunteers who were pouring into Washington, devolved on Irvin McDowell, a major in the regular army, now promoted to be brigadier-general, who established his headquarters at Alexandria, across the Potomac from Washington, there directing the defence of the capital, and thence advancing to Bull Run. ”

“ If the order referred to should not be published from the Adjutant-General's office, you will read these instructions as your authority to assume command of all the troops in North Carolina, dating all official communications, "Headquarters Army of the Ohio." Your headquarters will be in the field, and with the portion of the army where you feel yourself most needed. ”

“ The Signal Officer and I were sitting in the Headquarters Mess, sipping an eleven o'clock cherry brandy, and wondering why the General and the Brigade Major had not returned from their tour of the trenches. Headquarters were situated in Gully Ravine, that prince among ravines on the Peninsula. From my place I could see the gully floor, which was the dry bed of a water-course, winding away between high walls of perpendicular cliffs or steep, scrub-covered slopes, as it pursued its journey, like some colossal trench, towards the firing line. ”

“ Nothing less than complete and absolute supremacy would satisfy Great Headquarters, who in planning the drive were high in the hope that the fresh divisions of American soldiers could break through the Hindenburg Line and by hammering, hammering, hammering at the enemy force him into peace terms before the coming of winter. ”

“ As the army moves backwards or forwards, general headquarters is moved from one place to another; but it is always far enough in the rear not to be disturbed by the guns of the enemy, and in such a position that it can easily be in touch with every part of the fighting line. It often happens that the commander wishes to be in closer touch with the operations that are going on, or perhaps he desires to meet his generals in order to consult with them, and to receive their reports in person. ”

“ March denied the request because the Army was to maintain training centers. Unlike the infantry, which incorporated the machine gun into the regiment, cavalry maintained separate machine gun squadrons of three troops each because of the perceived immobility of such weapons compared with other divisional arms. A headquarters for special troops was authorized, under which were placed the division headquarters troop, a signal troop, an ordnance maintenance company, and a veterinary company. ”

“ There was always something going on at headquarters. Either General Franklin, or the old, almost feeble-looking, but grand E. V. Sumner, or Couch, would be there as visitors, and before they would leave probably other corps commanders in the uniform of Major-Generals, with swords, and followed by their Staffs, would dash up to the fence, dismount, and strut in, with swords rattling on the frozen ground and reverberating in the big hallway.
I saw Burnside every day, and several times a day. ”

“ The Regular Army and the National Guard were to furnish the regimental combat teams and the Organized Reserve Corps the combat support units. By early 1948 the combat elements had been organized, and the formation of most other units had been authorized, including the headquarters company of the division. The War Department determined, however, that the 106th Infantry Division was not needed and never added it to the reserve troop list. The division headquarters company was inactivated in 1950, but most other units remained active as nondivisional organizations. ”

“ A company packs up its tin box of papers and the balance of its imprest account and is ready to move at a moment's notice, with or without transport. The move of Battalion Headquarters is a little less simple, and Adjutants have been known to look worried when moves were frequent and unexpected. Brigade is the first formation with a tendency to split into advanced and rear headquarters. Brigade Headquarters transport is of respectable dimensions, though still horse-drawn, and so able to tackle pontoon bridges and the viler roads which lead thereto. ”

“ The large bodies that back them are generally quartered together in extensive barracks, from which any number of engines and men can be turned out according to the nature of the call. Then there are cities where every section has its own well-built station; others where one or two sections are housed together, according to circumstances, and perhaps as many as half a dozen located at headquarters. If groups are formed, the headquarters of the group or district has, perhaps, two sections, while each of the other stations has only one. ”

“ When dawn came it was found that we were under observation from the Boche trenches, and that Battalion Headquarters was only a matter of 250 yards from the front enemy trenches, and overlooked by Wervicq Church, where the enemy had an Observation Post. Not that there is anything particularly daring about this fact, but Battalion Headquarters is always the centre of attraction for thousands of runners from rear authorities, asking for the quantity of jam, etc., when the real thing to be considered is the enemy artillery and the preparation for the coming attack. ”

“ I took courage when the party began to move off toward the house, and, as they passed my loophole, I discovered, to my astonishment, that one of the three who had come up the road was none other than the young man I had seen in General Patterson's headquarters, accompanying the old gentleman, and both of whom were so cordially entertained by our General's staff. Here he was, a direct messenger from headquarters of our army, meeting, by a concerted signal, a Rebel officer in the enemy's country. ”