OC or CO

[nigelfe]

The simplest way to differentiate between Commanding Officer and Officer Commanding is to take a look at Rorke's Drift in January 1879. The Commanding Officer, was Major Spalding. Away on business he left Lt Bromhead as Officer Commanding. When the Zulu attack became obvious, Lt Chard by reason of seniority in rank, assumed responsibility for the defence and became de facto OC. Throughout the night Chard was on the spot and commanded the troops at his disposal. Even though he was absent, Major Spalding remained the CO with ultimate responsibility for the post and the troops.

In the absence of any senior officer available, the OC could be a 2nd Lt with a week's seniority. As I understand it, if he were killed it would pass down the NCO ranks and so the OC could reach as low as a Lance Corporal.

I think not.

Bromhead was acting OC B Coy 2/24. Spalding, a staff officer, was put in command of the Rorkes Drift base, a depot and hopital. His position was exactly as it is today for an commander of a patrol base in Afghanistan, he is in command of a position with troops belonging to various units each with their own CO. It is an entirely normal military situation in the field. He was the local commander but that does not make him (or the line of succession) the CO. B Coy's CO remained the officer commanding the 2/24.

[nigelfe]

Its useful to note that there are at least three relevant contexts.

Colloquel use (eg in artillery an OC is a BC)

Legal use (disciplinary)

Tactical use (command relationship/subordination)

The latter was fairly primitive (or simple) in WW1.

[Jack Sheldon]

I am not sure that I understand what you are driving at with your first and third 'uses'. In the case of the first, the term 'battery commander' was and is simply a functional description of a subordinate commander (i.e. OC) in a gunner regiment; just as 'company commander' referred to an infantry OC, and 'squadron commander' to OCs in inter alia the cavalry in former times or the Royal Engineers. Subordination in the tactical arena is a matter of the task organisation laid down in a particular set of circumstances. Thereafter, the right of the senior officer concerned to issue orders and expect them to be followed has always been based on the wording of his commission signed by the monarch, as was/is the obligation of the officer junior in rank to obey them.

Jack

[nigelfe]

Its quite usual in day to day use to refer to a coy or sqn comd as 'OC', but not in artillery where its always BC.

As I said in WW1 tactical relationships were simple. Today you have 'command', 'operational command', 'operational control', 'tactical command', 'tactical control', 'under command for daily maintenance', and various others all dealing with command relationships. For example a sub-unit could be under tactical command for local protection, but under operational command totally differently for their primary role. In other words tactical command relationships are divisible, it's not the simplistic world of who is senior.

[David Filsell]

I have become a little confused by all the complexities now recorded. But my understanding - and evidenced by an incident at 1st ypres - is that C O is a permanent appointment. Officer Commanding that of any commissioned officer temporarily - time indeterminate - who finds himself the senior in a formation and thus in command. Instance to mind is a man who went into the line a sergeant, when the bn was wiped out he returned to find that he had recieved a commission and was thus the only offiver and this OC. He reorganised the remanant of the bn and marched them off to reorganise. Or is this just to simplistic?

Best regards

david

[charlesmessenger]

David

Not so. As has already been stated, the CO is he who commands a bn/regt. If he is doing it temporarily, he is still the CO. OC is a sub-unit commander, whether it be sqn/bty/coy or a detachment of of less than bn size.

Charles M

[David Filsell]

Charles,

Thanks. In this case the regimental history appears to have used the wrong term!

David

[dfaulder]

I suspect that the terms were used loosely: Two examples from the final pages of the War Diary of the 14th Y&L

This note appears to have been added "after the event" by the battalion's (now former) Lt Col. Note O/C

And this is from the final page of the War Diary file. Note "Commanding"

David

[truthergw]

Any attempt to nail down the usage of CO and OC to a definitive, cut and dried list is doomed to failure. The CO was simply that. THE commanding officer, not just any officer. OC, as has been said, an officer in charge and OC will often be found in conjunction with IC. These were every day references which were fixed by context.The initials in question would not normally be used in any setting which was ambiguous. We can compare this discussion to one on the meaning of ' up north'.

[Ken S.]

Here are the commanding officer's signatures for Canadian infantry battalions 200 through 258 (except 201). All bust a few in my sample are signed by the commander himself, most include some sort of stamp identifying the battalion, and many of these use the abbreviation "O.C."

http://hamiltongreatwar.org/comm/005.html

[Chris_Baker]

Thank you all for your contributions to an interesting thread.

[green_acorn]

To add a bit of flesh to Jack's explanation of the disciplinary authority of an OC/BC/SC and CO; the first is a SUBSA for private soldiers, a Subordinate Summary Authority; the CO was a SUPSA, a Superior Summary Authority. From memory, and it has been 25 years since we had the British style Army Law Manual and using my own time as an example, all charges first had to be heard by a SUBSA, who could award penalties up to seven days Confinement to Barracks and a Loss of Pay. If the OC in his appointment as a SUBSA believed that the offence required a harsher penalty he could refer him to a SUPSA, normally his Bn or Regt CO who could award more time on CB (14 days), a harsher finacial penalty and up to seven days gaol/jail. As Jack said sometimes when a company/battery/squadron commander, who with his sub-unit, is operating independently of direct service (Army) chain of command would be granted the legal disciplinary powers of a commanding officer, that is the power of a SUPSA, this was the case for many years in the 70's with the Australian Army's Rifle Coy Butterworth where there was no higher Army Officer to hear charges as a SUPSA.

Getting back to Chris's initial question, I had a glance through the Field Service Pocket Book 1914 for an explanation, unluckily no joy. But in the pink advertising pages: Pay Duties of Officers Commanding Squadrons, Batteries, Companies, &c. which was published in May 1915 and republished from memory as a GHQ BEF "SS" document. This would imply that the term OC was officially applied to that level of command.

Cheers,

Hendo

[green_acorn]

PS:

I am guessing that the reason why an infantry or other company commander was and is always called an OC, is because of the inability to make a clear military abbreviation distinct from the common English usage of cc "carbon copy". food for thought.

cheers,

Hendo

[Ron Clifton]

Hello Hendo

I think it was more of a case of having one abbreviation instead of three (or more) for officers commanding companies, squadrons or batteries! (Also to distinguish a battery commander from a battery captain, who was the 2i/c.)

Ron

[green_acorn]

Ron,

Isn't that why the Battery Captain is a BK?

Hendo

[nigelfe]

Australia continued to use the AA 1944 for overseas discipline long after it was replaced in British Service (by AA 1957). However both referred to the powers of a Commanding Officer and of a Subordinate Commander. Unlike Australia today the details of who such a person could be was dealt without outside the Act (as with AFA 2006), either in a regulation or statutory instrument, IIRC the Defence Council can change the details as they want, in WW1 this would have been the Army Council for the AA. For Australia I think it was in AMRs, which also provided the military justice code for peacetime within Australia.

I wouldn't give much credence to things like signature blocks. As I've said before on other threads, in WW1 standard military terminology was often incorrctly used because that's what happens in mass armies with most being in it for the 'duration' only and training in formalities very skimpy. I'm not sure that there were such bureaucratic niceties as official patterns for signature blocks, I don't think the first edition of Staff Duties in the Field appeared until much later, and that's where such things would be defined, along with the proper layouts for all the different types of correspondence, etc, etc.

The term 'battery captain' was not used in WW1. From the time battery commanders became majors (c. 1870) until 1938 there was only one captain in a battery, he was known as 'The Captain' (previously used for the battery commander), once there were 4 he became the Battery Captain.