US Combat Engineer 1941–45

Osprey Warrior #147

by Gordon L. Rottman, Adam Hook (Illustrator)

At its peak in World War II (1939-1945), the United States Army contained over 700 engineer battalions, along with numerous independent brigades and regiments. The specialized soldiers of the Engineers were tasked with a wide variety of crucially important tasks including river bridging, camouflage, airfield construction, and water and petroleum supply. However, despite their important support roles, the engineers were often employed on the front lines fighting beside the general infantry in the desperate battles of the European theatre.

This book covers the role of these soldiers, from their recruitment and training, through their various support missions and combat experiences, forming an account of what it was truly like to be a combat engineer in World War II.

Genres: War

64 pages, Paperback

First published July 9, 2006

About the author

Gordon L Rottman served for 26 years in the US Army in Special Forces, airborne infantry, long-range reconnaissance patrol, and military intelligence assignments in the Regular Army, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve. He has worked as a Special Operations Forces scenario writer for 14 years at the Army' s Joint Readiness Training Center, Fort Polk , Louisiana where he developed training exercises for Special Forces.
Gordon began writing military history books in 1984 and is currently a full-time author. He has written 50 books for Osprey.He is married with four children and lives in Cypress, Texas.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gordon Rottman has performed a service to readers of World War II history by writing about a branch of the Army which has not received its due from publishers and writers. As Rottman says, the engineer units have served in every conflict and have been invaluable to every operation's success. This book concentrates on the type of training engineers received, the equipment they used, and their combat record in the European theater. The early part of the book, concerning recruitment and training, shows the type of training common to every soldier who served in the war, thus making the book useful to more than those interested in the combat engineers.

Rottman is listed as a 26-year Army veteran, having started his career in 1967 in the Special Forces. He is a prolific writer of military subjects, with at least 50 Osprey Publishing titles under his name. This book contains the usual high quality of Osprey offerings, with a strong emphasis on graphic material in the form of well-researched photographs and unique illustrations. In this volume, the excellent artwork is from Adam Hook.

Osprey is headquartered in the UK, and the book's use of language sometimes shows the influence of the editorial process from England. Whilst it doesn't matter to me who does the book's proofreading, I'm still trying to figure out where "the need for 'remediable' training" (p. 14) comes from.

It was interesting to learn that the U.S. Army had over 700 Combat Engineer Battalions in service in World War II. This reflected the need to have engineer units available to perform service wherever the fighting was happening, as well as to provide general construction work. Thus, we learn that the engineers were both a combat and a service support branch. The former type fielded a battalion to support every U.S. division, and performed such tasks as mine and booby-trap clearance, obstacle breaching, bridge construction, route reconnaissance and maintaining roads. These engineers were proficient in the use of explosives and demolition equipment, and also had to know how to use the infantry's weapons; at times they would have to drop their tools and pick up arms to fight alongside the infantry when things got hot in combat.


The regimental system with a fixed number of component battalions was eliminated in favor of the forming of separate battalions which could be more fluidly moved around as components of engineer groups as the situation on the ground required. One advantage of the wartime training system was that new recruits could continue training with the same group they started service with, going from the 13-week Army Mobilization Training Program, shared by all branches of the service, and move on to more advanced unit training, where the soldiers would be assigned with their basic training friends in the same companies and platoons. This would have ensured strong unit cohesion among personnel when they were deployed overseas.

Soldiers received training in their specialties from the beginning, with combat engineers, for instance, learning and cross-training in such subjects as demolitions, bridge construction and reconnaissance even in basic training. After basic, the training continued perpetually on the unit level. The Army therefore didn't need to maintain as many schools for providing AIT, or Advanced Individual Training, such as today, as all combat engineer candidates are now trained at one location at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

I enjoyed the many insights the book provided into the methods used by the engineers to maintain the Army's progress in the war. Rottman supplies several realistic scenarios depicting the daily challenges encountered by engineers and infantry units traveling together as the Army advanced through France and Germany in the fall and winter of 1944-45, namely the obstacles caused by rivers and German barricades and roadblocks; essentially, the American engineers would be occupied in defeating the defensive work of their German counterparts, the Pioneers (Rottman has an Osprey title under his name on "German Pioneer 1939-45").

Especially interesting were the descriptions of how the war was conducted as American units had to advance across the countryside, town after town. Many routes had to pass through the center of towns, so the Germans became adept at barricading streets leading from the main road in order to funnel the advancing allies into killing points where their advance units would be confronted by well-placed defending snipers, machine guns and tanks. One very simple, effective barricade was a stockade-like chain of vertical logs which would be capable of even stopping an advancing tank from turning off the main street. The engineers would thwart this defense by placing two 48-pound boxes of TNT against the stockade and detonating the charge, often while under fire. Such challenges, and risks, marked the daily life of soldiers on the front lines for months.

This is a very worthwhile book for the reader of World War II militaria or, more specifically, for those interested in how the front-line engineers performed their duties.

[Andrew Brozyna · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a story that my grandfather told that amused him quite a bit. The war was over and he and thousands of other GIs were waiting in le Havre, France to be shipped home. He got to talking to an infantryman and a combat engineer. The infantryman was bragging about how he had been fighting the enemy in Germany, unlike these rear echelon guys. The engineer then asked "Did you cross a bridge to get there?" "Yeah," responded the infantryman. "Well, who do you think put it there?!"

The US Army engineers built bridges, removed enemy obstacles and mines, demolished blockades, and were sent into combat when needed. Gordon Rottman's book, US Combat Engineer 1941–45 is a useful introduction to this resourceful service.

The US military was not at all prepared for its entry into the war. Rottman explains how the Civilian Conservation Corps gave millions of American men the skills that would serve the armed forces well. The CCC was President Franklin Roosevelt's pre-war social program that put the nation's unemployed to work planting trees, fighting fires, cutting trees, running telephone wires, building roads, bridges, dams and parks. All this outdoor activity improved physical fitness, taught skills, created teamwork, preparing men for military life. The Army engineers in particular included a large percentage of men who had worked in the CCC.

Rottman provides an excellent overview of the wartime draft*, creation of new military units, training, and general military life Stateside. He spends a good 40 pages (out of 62) of his book on this subject. There is also a description of daily Army life in the field in Europe. These sections make the book valuable to anyone studying the WWII US Army, as they are applicable to nearly any unit outside the engineers. Perhaps it would have been better to include less general Army info, and more specific engineer info. I had been wanting to read more about Army life in the States, so for me it was welcome.

The last third of the book details the engineer's relationship with the infantry, their duties, their equipment, vehicles, and their role as combat infantry. Rottman ends the book with three fictionalized scenarios to provide sample missions typical of the engineers. The first is an account of building a pontoon footbridge for an infantry assault. The next scenario details a company's demolition of a German blockade in a city street. In the last example we learn how the engineers would tackle a German roadblock—by detecting and removing mines and booby traps, then hauling away felled trees.

Osprey's US Combat Engineer 1941–45 is a welcome introduction to the engineers. It's descriptions of daily army life are appropriate for any US Army unit serving in the States and Europe. There are 7 full page color illustrations by Adam Hook, noted military artist.

*On page 8 the author states that draftees were not offered deferment on compassionate grounds—caring for sick parents for example. However, I would like to suggest that it would be more accurate to say that the draft boards did not officially postpone men's service for this reason. I've spoken to two WWII veterans who said their local draft board allowed them six months to continue supporting their sick parent. I realize two is a small sample number, but it seems sympathy by local draft boards may have allowed some boys to stay home a bit longer than the rules would allow.