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AMMUNITION COLUMNS 
FOR 
MOUNTAIN OR I kR EGULAR 
WARFARE.* 
BY 
CAPTAIN G. F. MAC MUNN, D.S.O., R.A. 
A LL Mountain Gunners will welcome Major H. C. C. D. Simpson’s 
paper on “ Ammunition Columns for Mountain or Irregular 
Warfare ”, as drawing attention to a matter which has long called for 
organization and legislation. 
Ammunition columns are units which are very easily extemporised 
by energetic officers and staff, given that the establishments and equip¬ 
ment are ready tabulated, and that equipment, cattle and personnel are 
available. Once the necessary tables are in existence, it only remains 
to assign the personnel , and draw the equipment and cattle from the 
departments concerned, who will receive orders to issue; forty-eight 
hours should then suffice to have the column in good working order. 
If therefore Major Simpson’s proposals lead to the settlement and 
authorization of the necessary establishment and issue of tables, with 
provisions of equipment in the mobilization stores, the question will have 
been satisfactorily settled. 
Major Simpson dwells on the constant and varied nature of opera¬ 
tions in Africa, in both mountain and jungle country, and evidently 
wishes for an Ammunition Column Organization, suitable or adaptable 
to employment in such operations; I therefore venture to think that 
his tables are not perhaps of sufficiently an elastic nature, to suit the 
motto “ Ubique ”, and would suggest an organization which would allow 
of columns being formed to suit any combination of arms, and which 
would allow of any complete unit being easily detached, which so often 
happens in irregular warfare, when forces are divided up and bifurcate. 
Again in some countries mules are available, in others, bullocks etc. 
while in others, two-wheeled carts can go' anywhere and have double 
the carrying capacity that their draught animals would have under pack. 
* Being notea on a paper by Major H. C. C. D. Simpson, bearing the same title published in “ Proceed¬ 
ings” R.A.I,, Vol, XXVI, No,.4. 
