Recently reading the headlines about Band of Brothers coming from HBO tho Netflix and it got me thinking:
– how does the US military divide up it’s soldiers? (Eg regiment vs troop vs platoon vs squadron)
– are there different rules for each branch of the military?
– I’ve only ever heard of the 101st airborne division but not other ones… Was there a 100th division? 99th division, etc? Why is the 101st so famous?
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The US Army structure works like this:
A Field Army, commanded by a General or Lieutenant General, consists of multiple Corps.
A Corps is commanded by a Lieutenant General and contains about 20,000-45,000 troops, split up into multiple Divisions.
A Division can have 15,000 troops or so but it varies depending on operational needs, and it is usually commanded by a Major General. A Division is split up into multiple Brigades.
Below Brigades you have Battalions, then Companies, then Platoons, and finally Teams. The lower down you go, the smaller the group and the lower the rank of the person in charge.
> I’ve only ever heard of the 101st airborne division but not other ones… Was there a 100th division? 99th division, etc? Why is the 101st so famous?
The US Army had a lot more divisions during WW2 because of the massive number of troops they mobilized. Not every division existed (to try to fool the enemy, you might have divisions that only exist on paper, or you might skip a few numbers to try and trick them into thinking you have more divisions than you actually do.) The reason the 101st is so famous is because they participated in D-Day and some other major operations in the Western theater of WW2, and unlike many other divisions they were not disbanded at the end of WW2.
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