December 7, 1916 
LAND & WATER ' 
33 
tlie supply columns. And the ratios of these " divisional 
troops " relatively to each other and to the Division have 
also to be kept a more or less constant quantity. Drafts, 
reinforcements, casualties — these are the things that 
occupy the A.G.'s staff, night and day. 
Concerning casualties much might be written. It 
took a long time for the courts of law to define what an 
" accident " is in the case of a workman, but no one has 
ever succeeded in exhausting the meaning of a casualty 
in the case of a soldier. If a soldier's wife has twins it is 
entered in the Pay Records as a " casualty " ; if he 
gets convicted by a court martial, that also counts as a 
" casualty." This, perhaps, is not unreasonable as in 
both these cases the soldier always says it was his mis- 
fortune, not his fault. A wound is, of course, a casualty, 
but so is a bite from a transport mule or a fall from a 
motor-lorry. Perhaps it was by. some such liberal inter- 
pretation of what constitutes a casualty that the in- 
genious Hun succeeded in satisfying himself that our 
casualties on the Somme were stupendous. 
The A.G.'s branch also includes the A.P.M.'s and their 
military police. Among the A.P.M.'s are many smart 
officers from the Indian and Siamese police services. I 
know one who is the very image of Kipling's Strickland. 
The force is deservedly unpopular, which when you 
come to think of it, is as it should be. 
Supplies 
The saying that an army moves on its belly is as old 
as Napoleon. The German materialist has put it in his 
own sensual way by a metaphysical pun, " Man ist was 
er isst " — " man is what he eats." I should think it ex- 
tremely probable that the German's heart is in his stomach. 
I remember a German officer telling me once that no 
man could make a good officer unless he periodically got 
drunk. That is German logic which always takes the 
form of a perversion of truth. The English soldier can 
and will fight on an empty stomach ; he has often had to . 
do it when isolated in a shell hole and cut ofi from ration- 
parties. But the A-S.C. always delivers the goods and the 
process of delivery from the day they are unloaded by 
the dockers' battalion at the Base, vput on board the 
supply train, discharged from the unsealed trucks at 
railhead, carried up to the trenches by the supply columns, 
and handed over to the CO. M.S. at night to be distributed 
among the sections, is a triumph of efficiency. It involves 
an enormous use of stationery — way-bills, loading tables, 
indents — but the whole system is directed towards one 
aim, which is achieved, that not one pot of jam or one 
tin of bully-beef shall go unaccounted for. 
The dockers' battalions, like the labour companies, 
are now a commonplace, but in the early days of volun- 
tary service they required not a little tact. The A.S.C.. 
solved the problem by making the stevedores and fore- 
men into sergeants and corporals, and, of course, putting 
them and the men under military law. One of the men 
knocked a foreman down once ; he did not do it twice. 
He learnt that what in the East End is a common assault, 
punishable with a fine of 40s., is a capital offence on 
active service, and he was lucky to get off with hard 
labour. But there was very little trouble. Some wise 
man gave a certain labour leader a commission in the 
A.S.C. and put him in charge of the battaHon and all 
went well. Much might be written about the organisation 
of those fleets of land " tramps " — the supply columns 
of 72 motor-lorries whose strength nearly equals a com- 
pany and who never go anywhere without a travelling 
workshop, and a crew of artificers, who with dynamo, 
lathe, and tools, and spare parts, can repair anything 
from a tyre to an engine. Many a time have they helped 
me and my car out of a hole. 
The Q.M.G. can supply you with anything from a 
motor-lorry to a toothbrush, provided you give him a 
receipt for it. His are the greatest " Stores " in the 
British Empire ; he is an outfitter, a provision-dealer, 
and a hardware retailer. He supplies the soldier with 
all his garments, but officers say that he does not cut 
trousers very well and most of them prefer to get their 
" slacks " in the West End. He is also a butcher and a 
baker. His bounty is supplemented by Requisitioning 
Officers whose Imprest Accounts remind one of the 
business-books of a hay and corn merchant. Motor 
Transport is a kind of side-show of the A.S.C. ; it hoards 
petrol as though it were the widow's cruse of oil, and if 
you want a car out of the " pool " for joj'-riding, you 
cannot get it for love or money. 
Works 
But the most marvellous thing about the army, ne.\t to 
its faith, is its works. We have our own fire-brigades 
and fire-engines at the Base, our own trench-railways and 
rolling-stock at the Front. We build reservoirs, construct 
feed-tanks, and lay pipe lines. The pioneer battalions 
" site " trenches, build concrete emplacements, dri\-e 
tunnels, and construct earthworks. Most of the men so 
employed are miners, and miners, as any company officer 
will tell you, make the best workers and the toughest 
fighters in the world. These things are generally ordered 
by the R.E., which can do anything from thinning a Nor- 
mandy forest to laying a field-telephone. The R.E. has 
now a Forest service with experts in the art of forestry on 
its staff. Indents for fascines, poles, pit-props, scantlings, 
pickets and sleepers are prepared and a kind of balance- 
sheet of the supply and demand is worked out in the shape 
of a " Forest Return " like a temperature chart. The 
readings of that chart are like a record of operations. When 
there is a Push on the curve of demand rises ; when there 
is a pause, it sinks. Each forest is carefully surveyed with 
a view either to clearing or " stripping " or thinning, 
according to the age, position, and character of the timber, 
and an estimate is worked out as to its prospective output 
per month. Then a felling and conversion column gets to 
work upon it and beech and oak are scientifically cutsO •'C? 
that the " stool" may coppice and yield a new growth.': .= 0^ 
The trees go to the saw-mill to be cut up into " defence 
timber " for dug-outs, trench-railways, and wire posts; 
the brushwood is woven into fascines. 
The R.E. has, perhaps, carried speciaHsation of function 
further than any corps in the army. It has a chemical 
" corps " with laboratories presided by over an eminent 
physicist, assisted by a physiologist and a staff of trained 
chemists, and what they do not know about the lethal 
arts and the toxic sciences is hardly worth knowing. 
They have a museum of fuses, shells, bombs, which would 
delight the heart of a connoisseur, and are for ever seeking 
out new inventions. The chemists study the preparation 
of gases ; the physiologists observe their pathological 
effects. Of course, they work hand in glove with the 
R.A.M.C, and, like a bacteriologist, they no sooner dis- 
cover the bacillus of a gas (if I may be permitted such an 
outrageous metaphor), than they set to work to discover 
the anti-toxin. Periodically little buff-coloured manuals 
are turned out by the R.E. Printing Co., recording the 
results of these researches. Of the making of army books 
there is no end. 
The R.A.M.C. co-operate with the R.E. in other 
directions. When we billet ourselves in a town an officer 
of the former goes out on patrol holding his nose. A few 
hours later he is joined by a fatigue-party, also jjiolding 
their noses ; they usually carry large quantities of 
chloride of lime and are accompanied by a tank like a 
vacuum cleaner. With this they rudely disturb the 
sanctities of private life until the Town-Major or the 
Camp Commandant is satisfied that the requirements of 
the Pubhc Health Act have been complied with. The 
R.A.M.C, by the way, have a passion for post-graduate 
study. At one Base the O.C.'s of the Hospitals have 
formed a Medical Research Society and read papers on 
shell-shock, the treatment of wounds, and such things. 
And in the laboratories the bacteriologists wage a cam- 
paign of intimidating " Frightfulness " against microbes. 
The R.E. are a mighty pubHshing firm. Their literature 
is admirable, but their cartography is le dernier cri. 
From the great staff maps which adorn the walls of every 
H.Q. office, down to the little oil-paper plan of his own 
particular parish which every company officer carries 
in his map-case, there is no hmit to these surveys. In ■ 
this kind of belles lettres a first edition is neither rare nor 
valuable ; a map is useless unless it is brotight up to date, 
and with every yard of ground gained a new map has to 
be brought out, the trench-lines corrected, and the 
new rectangles corrected to the nearest decimal. Thanks 
to our aviators and the French ordnance-maps the land 
beyond is no terra incognita, and the production of new 
maps keeps pace with the acquisition of new territory. 
There are other things of which the less said the better. ■ 
