I have tried to ask this question many times and each time when I think I have the wording right I am timed out before it is posted!!! So here goes...... I can recognise some geographical affiliations or patronage but is there any rationale to the way that regiments and battalions are named or numbered? To complicate things further my Dad was in a service regiment (REME / RASC, or was it the other way around?), going from North Africa to Italy via Sicily 1943-1946. His Service Record shows him at the 7th Bulk Field Petrol Centre. So was it the 7th Bulk Field Petrol Centre established (I've read about the 6th)? I understand that there was no 7th Army (why if there was an 8th?) .... confused.
Hi Nana The naming and numbering of units was/is complicated by a unit's history, affiliations and amalgamations, sometimes over centuries. For example, if you look at a well known regiment on wiki you will see how it has changed over time. Within a regiment, the numbers of battalions raised during a war increased, and technically* each number ran sequentially. Sometimes they were also named, usually aftera famous officer or location. This is confused by the fact that a unit may have been raised on paper (i.e. the orders have been given to raise said unit but no physical action has been taken) but then the order is cancelled. If a subsequent unit was raised using the next number along, then it would be too comlicated to renumber all the units - for example, unit 2, 3 and 4 have been raised, 5 was ordered to be raised, as was 6 and 7. If the order to raise 5 was rescinded, but 6 and 7 did become active then the sequence of units would be 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7. Armies (8th etc) during WW2 appear to have used a continuation of the system of WW1. There were First, Second etc armies raised during WW1, but some were disbanded, whilst others continued. To complicate matters, some units were raised and/or numbered purely for deception. In WW2 the Fourth Army no longer existed but the British did pretend that it had been resurrected just to fool the Germans into believing they had more forces in Northern Ireland than there really were
