The officers are employed sometimes with their men and sometimes apart from them. A large number of R. E. officers (between 350 and 400) serve in India, in connection with Native Engineer troops; others are employed either at home or in a colony on staff work, public works, Military Schools, the Ordnance Survey, military telegraphy and railways, Engineer Militia and Volunteers, and a host of other duties too numerous to mention. In fact, the Engineers form the Scientific Corps of the Army. The officers are trained in the R. M. Academy at Woolwich, and the rank and file are nearly all well-educated men, skilled mechanics and trained workmen forming the bulk of them. That their work does not interfere with their worth as soldiers has been shown on many a field, and individual instances of their gallantry are numerous.
Formerly the Corps was composed of a large number (about 40) of independent companies, split up and quartered throughout the Empire. Now they have been collated together and formed into different battalions and other units, according to their work.
The Corps is now composed as follows:—
(a.) A Bridging Battalion, consisting of 2 pontoon troops, each troop numbering 5 officers, 28 N. C. O.’s, and 183 men, with 20 pontoon- and 8 other wagons, and 190 horses. Each troop carries the material for 120 yards of pontoon-bridge.
(b.) 2 Field Battalions, each of 4 companies. The companies however still preserve their independence to a great extent, being quartered in widely divergent localities, according to requirements.
The 1st Battalion consists of the former Nos. 7, 11, 17, and 23 independent companies, and the 2nd of Nos. 12, 26, 37, and 38.
A Field Company consists of 7 officers, 26 N. C. O.’s, 184 sappers, etc., 70 horses, and 13 vehicles.
A proportion of the company, from one-fifth to one-third, is mounted.
These companies, as their name implies, are employed in digging, sapping, making field-works, and blowing up places, on active service.
(c.) A Telegraph Battalion of 2 divisions (in war, of 4 sections), the whole consisting of 6 officers, 15 N. C. O.’s, 224 men, 171 horses, and 22 vehicles. Their duties consist in laying lines of field telegraphs, and making themselves generally useful in their branch of science wherever they may happen to be.