Labour Corps (United Kingdom)

Royal Pioneer Corps
Badge of the Royal Pioneer Corps (early version)
Active	1917–1921 (as Labour Corps) 1939–1993
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Branch	British Army
Role	Light engineering tasks
Garrison/HQ	Cuddington, Cheshire
Motto(s)	Labor omnia vincit
March	Pioneer Corps

The Royal Pioneer Corps was a British Army combatant corps used for light engineering tasks. It was formed in 1939 and amalgamated into the Royal Logistic Corps in 1993. Pioneer units performed a wide variety of tasks in all theatres of war, including stretcher-bearing, handling all types of stores, laying prefabricated track on beaches, and effecting various logistical operations. Under Royal Engineers supervision they constructed airfields and roads and erected bridges; they constructed the Mulberry Harbour and laid the Pipe Line Under the Ocean (PLUTO).

The first record of pioneers in a British army goes back to 1346 at Calais where the pay and muster rolls of the English Garrison show pay records for pioneers. Traditionally, there was a designated pioneer for each company in a regiment, when, about 1750, it was proposed that a Corps of Pioneers be formed. Nothing came of this for nearly two hundred years, until the Army Works Corps was established during the Crimean War in 1854.

The Labour Corps was formed in 1917 during World War I and employed 325,000 British troops, 98,000 Chinese, 10,000 Africans and at least 300,000 other labourers.

In September 1939 a number of infantry and cavalry reservists were formed into Works Labour Companies, which were soon made the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps (AMPC); a Labour Directorate was created to control all labour force matters. A large number of Pioneers served in France with the British Expeditionary Force. During the Battle of France an infantry brigade was improvised from several AMPC Companies under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel J. B. H. Diggle. Known as "Digforce", the brigade became part of Beauman Division and fought in defence of the Andelle and Béthune rivers on 8 June 1940 against the 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions. Digforce brigade and thousands of other BEF Pioneers were evacuated to England in Operation Ariel. An unknown number of AMPC troops were killed when the HMT Lancastria was sunk off St Nazaire on 17 June.