Pionier Unit

[bob lembke]

I am reading the history of Infanterie=Regiment Nr. 31 "Graf Bose" , and in an attack the unit was supported by Pioniere. Below I will list three descriptions of the pioneer unit from the text:

Lt. Prien of the "2. F. Pi. K. 9." is awarded the EK I. (A Lt. Prien later shows up as the Provisions Officer of the I. Bataillon, I=R 31. )

Mention is made of " 1. Zug 2./F. Pi. K. 9. " .

Mention is made of " Pioniere (2./Pi. 9) "

As IR 31 was part of 18. ID and IX Armeekorps, I think I am on sound grounds to think that "Pi. 9." refers to Pionier=Bataillon Nr. 9, which in 1900 was the pioneer battalion of IX Armeekorps. Likewise, it is fairly certain that all three citations refer to the battalion's 2nd Company, and one to that company's 1st Platoon. But what does "F. Pi. K." refer to, specifically? "K" probably refers to Kompagnie. What about the "F"? "Feld"?

It looks like the pioneer battalion's 2nd company was closely associated with the regiment. What about a pioneer lieutenant ending up in an infantry unit? Or perhaps a brother?

The extreme German abbreviations are OK, and saved a lot of paper and printer's ink, but when they are used in a non-standard fashion, one is waist-deep in the swamp.

Bob Lembke

[Guest Rick Research]

As I understand it, these "Feld" units were the "excess" made up at the over-staffed outbreak of the war, doubling each pioneer battalion on mobilization.

There are references at higher levels to things like Ist Battalion Pioneer Battalion # and IInd Battalion Pioneer Battalion Same#. Obviously there couldn't be TWO battalions of the SAME battalion, so this was an early war designation make due.

[Chip]

Bob,

If I am not mistaken, the Feld Pion. Komps. were companies that were detached from the battalion organization and distributed to various divisions within the corps. So, for instance, the companies of the 9.Pion.Batl. I & II were distributed thusly in the fall of 1917. The 1. and 5. companies were with the 17.Division, the 2. company was with the 18.Division, the 3.company was corps troops. The 4.company went to the 17.Res.Division, and so on. There were supposed to be two companies per division, but apparently that did not always happen. The platoons would have been farmed out to the regiments as needed.

Chip

[Bernhard H.Holst]

Hello :

Thanks to Bob for bringing up the subject and to Rick and Chip for clarifying it.

I was somewhat puzzled by what seemed an odd unit numbering system while reading some Reichsarchiv battle histories .

Bernhard H. Holst

[bob lembke]

Thanks to all of you, who have all added to my understanding of this puzzling numeration.

In a similar vein, reading German sources on the Battle of Verdun, a pioneer battalion was fighting there, parceled out to several units to provide stiffening to assaulting units, and to add their bag of tricks, like geballtene Ladnungen u. Brandrohren to blow their way into a given fort, and I noticed that (working from memory here) there was Komp. 1./Pionier=Bataillon Nr. x, Komp. 2./ -----, Komp. 3./------, Komp. 4./-------, aber auch Reserve Kompagnie 2./Pionier=Bataillon Nr. x ! Maybe in this case the "excess" was used to form "Reserve" companies as well as "Feld" companies, or perhaps a company from the proper reserve battalion was sent to fight alongside the active line battalion, probably all fighting with infantry from the parent Armeekorps.

For me, the complexity of the organization of the German armies of the period adds to their interesting quality.

Bob Lembke

[Dave Danner]

Thanks to all of you, who have all added to my understanding of this puzzling numeration.

In a similar vein, reading German sources on the Battle of Verdun, a pioneer battalion was fighting there, parceled out to several units to provide stiffening to assaulting units, and to add their bag of tricks, like geballtene Ladnungen u. Brandrohren to blow their way into a given fort, and I noticed that (working from memory here) there was Komp. 1./Pionier=Bataillon Nr. x, Komp. 2./ -----, Komp. 3./------, Komp. 4./-------, aber auch Reserve Kompagnie 2./Pionier=Bataillon Nr. x ! Maybe in this case the "excess" was used to form "Reserve" companies as well as "Feld" companies, or perhaps a company from the proper reserve battalion was sent to fight alongside the active line battalion, probably all fighting with infantry from the parent Armeekorps.

For me, the complexity of the organization of the German armies of the period adds to their interesting quality.

Bob Lembke

On mobilization, existing reserve divisions generally received as pioneer units Reserve-Kompanien of the peacetime Pionier-Bataillone. Thus, for example, 18. Reserve-Division received 1.Reserve-Kompanie/Pionier-Bataillon Nr. 9 and 2.Reserve-Kompanie/Pionier-Bataillon Nr. 9. Other reserve divisions received a company, often the 4.Kompanie, of a regular Pionier-Bataillon.

The two waves of reserve divisions raised in late 1914 (Reserve-Divisions Nr. 43-54, Reserve-Divisions Nr. 75-82, and 6. & 8.bay.Res.Div.) were organized with 1-2 "Reserve-Pionier-Kompanien" (numbered 43 to 55 and 75-86; there is some difference among sources what the Bavarian Reserve-Pionier-Kompanien were numbered). In 1915, an additional five Prussian and 14 Bavarian Reserve-Pionier-Kompanien were raised. In 1916, another Bavarian Reserve-Pionier-Kompanie was created and four Reserve-Kompanien/bay. Pionier-Bataillone were renamed Reserve-Pionier-Kompanien.

The wave of new infantry divisions formed in early 1915 generally received 1-2 Pionier-Kompanien which were numbered by doubling the division number. Thus 52.ID got Pionier-Kompanien Nr. 103 and Nr. 104 and 56.ID got Pionier-Kompanien Nr. 111 and Nr. 112. For the divisions that got one company, it was the lower of the two numbers alotted. Thus, the 115.ID got Pionier-Kompanie Nr. 229, and there was no Nr. 230, and the 117.ID got Pionier-Kompanie Nr. 233, and there was no Nr. 234.