Some Military Terms and Totals

Brigade = four battalions. Infantry division = 12 battalions, about 20,000 men.

(Source: The Times, August 29, 1914)

Battalion = eight companies, each of three officers, captain, lieutenant, and sub-lieutenant, five sergeants, two drummers and buglers, five corporals, 108 privates, and one driver with two horses for the general service wagon.

(Source: Chambers’s Encyclopaedia, 1895)

Approximate estimates of the peacetime military of the great powers of Europe (in thousands; war footing in brackets)

Austria 350 (1850), France 564 (2350), Germany 457 (3000), Great Britain 210 (717), Italy 280 (2000), Russia 870 (2900).

(Also: peace footing in thousands of Belgium - 52, and Servia, including reserves - 105.)

(Source: Chambers’s Encyclopaedia, 1895)

The BEF: ‘The British Expeditionary Force, composed of six divisions and a cavalry division, had a total strength of, roughly, 160,000 men, 60,000 horses, 490 guns, and 7000 vehicles. That part of it sent out in the first instance numbered only about 100,000 men, and consisted of a cavalry division and two army corps each of two divisions.’

From Private to Field-Marshal by Sir William Robertson (1921), page 203.