page_title: 549th Engineer Light Ponton Company
section_title: Capabilities
hierarchical_section_title: 549th Engineer Light Ponton Company / Capabilities
caption_attribution_description: English: Bottom half of a composite image captioned: "RIVER CROSSING AT DORNOT. Infantrymen (above) carry assault boat down to the Moselle, and (below) members of 2d Battalion, 11th Infantry, cross the river at Dornot."
context_page_description: The 549th Engineers Light Ponton Company was a combat engineer company of the United States Army during World War II. Operationally attached to the 1150th Engineer Combat Group, it served under XXI Corps of the Seventh Army in action in France and Germany in 1944 and 1945.
  The 549th was primarily a highly mobile pontoon bridge construction unit, which also provided both M2 assault boats and a selection of infantry support bridging, ferries, and rafts. It was created on 14 January 1943, but was not committed troops until training began five months later at Camp Hood, Texas. The company was composed of black American troops and NCOs, with primarily white senior officers.
  The 549th's bridge building, assault troop ferrying, and other combat capabilities were drawn on for the assault of Saarbrücken on the Saar River at the Siegfried Line, the crossing of the Main River and capture of Würzburg, and the Danube at Dillingen, then continued on towards Austria as three separate platoons.
  In the European Theater of Operations it was often just ahead or behind the 289th Engineer Combat Battalion during the months of March, April, and May 1945.
context_section_description: The 549th was primarily a bridge construction unit. As a combat engineers, though, they could be called upon to deliver a number of diverse services when needed.  These included, but were not limited to:
  Bridge (mobile, floating, fixed)
  Conducting river crossings by ponton/raft, motor-powered assault boats
  Demolition
  Placing/de-arming munitions, including mines
  Port & harbor maintenance and rehabilitation, including beachheads:
  Vehicle maintenance
  Fighting as infantry when needed
  Primarily the units were devoted to the construction of various pontoon bridges and the deployment and operation of ferries, rafts, and assault boats
caption: Engineers ferried infantry and special forces troops in craft such as this M2 assault boat
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