Europa players might be interested in looking (not always too seriously) at some unusual Europa units. Doing so can give one some insight into the problems of researching, labeling and placing those nice little counters. But remember all this is "Unofficial", it is not THE TRUTH until the appropriate Europa revisions appear. But it might help some players until Grand Europa is finally complete. The presence or lack of these counters makes little difference to Europa, so you do not need to shudder at the thought of having to hand-draw yet more "revisions". Formations we can look at include among others, the Royal Marines and Commandos, the Royal Coast Artillery, the French Foreign Legion and this time the "second-class" engineers of the British Army.

THE PIONEERS

Before starting, let's make one thing clear - all this is my fault. I am supposed to know something about the British Army, with all its eccentricities, so blame me for something as dumb as leaving out a whole Corps from Fall of France and Western Desert. I said Corps - but those who know the British understand that this could mean anything - from a battalion to a whole Arm of Service. In this case it is the latter. (Not a minor mistake!) As for the missing units and I mean units, not one or two counters, the clue, as an observant Eurcpa player will have spotted is the incredibly sparse number of Engineer counters in the British OB. I thought we had got them all.

We had researched the area order of battles, as well as the official history of the Royal Engineers. Silly me! - for thinking that the British would be so logical as to call all their engineers Engineers. Instead they created new ones soon after the War started, called them something different - Pioneers, and hastily wiped them out of existence (after all they were hardly considered elite) as soon as it ended. Leaving no record, very little official mention, let alone recognition, and a nasty trap for an Europa researcher.

Fortunately, we did manage to create counters for some. They appear in Their Finest Hour, but should have been used in Fall of France. Alas, I managed to miss all the ones involved in the Desert War!

Before analyzing these Pioneers in Europa terms, et's consider why they were created. There are two main reasons, both very British in nature.

The first reason can be seen in the two different names - Engineers and Pioneers. Engineers in the British service were technical troops, highly skilled, and quite separate from the common herd of infantry and cavalry. Indeed, for most of their history they reported to a different boss, and had worn blue not the famous British red coats. The British had no equivalent of the German Assault Engineer, or Italian Guastatori. Only in the last years of the war did a few Engineers form a single Brigade of Assault Tanks. This does not imply that the Engineers were not combat troops - they were considered far too valuable to be thrown away in casual combat, or in performing simple tasks anyone could do.

Every Division had three squadrons (read company) of the Royal Engineers, heavily involved in bridging, demolition etc., with smaller numbers of even more specialized troops under Corps or Army Command. If any really clever construction was needed, such as concrete pillboxes, Engineers were used, but they were now called Sappers. These Corps and Army troops are the guys shown in existing Europa British counters.

But there were other "Engineers", called Pioneers. These existed in each infantry battalion, forming a small platoon attached to the battalion headquarters. Their job could essentially be described as "construction" building dugouts for the staff, laying wire, etc. They were clearly considered non-technical - we can imply this from the fact that their platoon commander was expected to be a sergeant, rather than a warrant-officer or officer as in all other platoons. So why not use these pioneers for the construction work that would be needed?

This brings us to the second reason for the creation of the Pioneer Corps I managed to miss - the "tribal" customs of the British Army in 1939. It must be remembered that the effective part of the Army -- the Regular Army -- was very small, and that available in Britain even smaller. Sticking to Infantry for this article (we could examine the rest of the British in 1939 Europa terms at another time), there were only 61 battalions of Infantry in the whole of the British Isles, including MG battalions and newly formed units of Guards and Irish. Notice also that most of these were well under strength. (The British still used the late 19th Century system of a two battalion regiment, with one battalion normally serving abroad, and kept at full strength at the expense of the one at home.) Obviously no one would waste these precious troops on construction work. In addition there were many battalions of the Territorials (a kind of National Guard).

But again there were many problems their strength had recently been doubled, which looked good on paper but meant that each unit now only had half the original cadre. And since Britain had no conscription until the middle of 1939 this mass of battalions contained virtually no trained soldiers. With the start of the war every moment of time would have to be spent on basic infantry tactics and weapons training (assuming that there were any weapons available). In the end, incidentally it was several months before the first Territorial units were considered capable of combat. As late as April , 40 some Brigades were sent to France where they were only considered capable of construction work. But they were not intended to be Engineers or Pioneers - they were sent to France because it was hoped that they would find France a more exciting place to train in than Britain. (In May of 1940 they did indeed find it much more exciting!)

Also any suggestion that infantry battalions should be put to work digging and road building ran up against the regimental pride of the British Army, for while they might be Territorial units, they also bore the proud titles of the Infantry Line Regiments, and would regard with disdain any suggestion that they might become Pioneers like their own, slightly disparaged, pioneer platoons.

The answer - simple and very British.

Take the large mass of soldiers now available through conscription. Those who for reasons of age and/or health were not considered capable of a full combat role, and use them for construction work. But do not make them engineers (the powers that be would be horrified!). Instead create a new Corps, give it a fancy title, but at the same time make sure that its troops are subordinate to the real fighting units. Hence the Royal Pioneer Corps.

More Royal Pioneer Corps

Introduction
Pioneers in Europa
Pioneers in Fall of France/Their Finest Hour

Related

Italian Engineers (see TEN #8)