For the sake of completeness there's one other scenario that I would wish to mention that was common during both world wars, but especially the first one. When a battalion was completely disbanded as a result of no longer being viable (or even on some rare occasions inefficient) the officers were generally sent to another battalion of the same regiment, or at least within the same brigade, but there were also cases where an officer was sent to an entirely different regiment, where he took up the insignia of the unit he joined. The infantry in WW1 was enormous and far bigger than in WW2, which is why so much more use was made (i.e. on a greater scale) of native infantry from India, Africa and the West Indies in the latter. movement between regiments was relatively fluid. The system was not hidebound and there were occasionally exceptions, but the principles I've outlined were always followed wherever possible.
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