BEHIND A DIVISION

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 261, 23 July 1918, Page 6

BEHIND A DIVISION

HUGE CORPS OF INDISPENSABLES.

(By Captain H. B. C. Pollard.)

Altttough overyone is aware that besides the actual troops in the frontline trenches there is a vast number of men behind the lines whose work, though not actually combatant at the moment, is nevertheless indispensable, yet few have more thou a general idea of their activities. \

An infantry division of the British Army has a wartime personnel of HJ.IM men and 5770 animals. This includes tho headquarters and brigade staffs, three infantry brigades of about 4000 men apiece, all tho artillery brigades and their ammunition columns, cavalry or cyclists, the engineers, the ambulances and R.A.M.C, and the Army Service Corps train. If one assumes that tho -whole division is in tho trenches' and that no brigades are resting, it. is fairly safe to say that a quarter of the personuel are employed on jobs behind the lines and are not actively engaged in killing the enemy.

Their work, however, is just as important, for the whole of these men aro employed'on tho task of getting up supplies of ammunition, food, water, and various essentials, or else in such tasks as collecting, caring for, and evacuating the sick and wounded. Boad-making, laying down and repairing signal lines, looking after animals, and such like tasks are just as essential as actual triggerpulling. The work of these men lies for tho most part in tho area immediately behind tho trench zone, and it must not bo thought that they are free from danger. This zone is subject day and night to artillery- bombardment and aerial raids. Roads and cross-roads aro swept with shell tire; and distant camps and hamlets subject to long-range bombardment. The protection afforded by the trenches and dugouts is missing in this zone, and it frequently happens that tho daily toll of casualties is far heavier in the back area than it is in the actual firing lino itself. Some idea of the multiplicity of daily duties performed in the back areas of a division may be afforded by a study of the various vehicles they use.

A division has a total of 1750 vehicles of various kinds. First come the staff motor-car 3 used by thu generals and thoir staff officers, the supply and requisitioning officers of the A.S.C., tho head of the Medical Service and other officers whose duties involve constant visiting. There are somo twenty motor-cars to a divsion. Next in importance oome the motor lorries, somo, seventy in number, most of which am of the largo three-ton size. These are used for the transport of rations, ammunition, forage, and -11 kinds of stores. ,

The motor ambulances number twenty-one to a division, though this figure is greatly augmented by other columns when heavy fighting is going on. The motor-cycles used by dispatch riders, junior engineer and artillery officers and A.S.C. subalterns accompanying lorry convoys, amount to fifty-two whilo the ordinary pedal cycles of a division—including those of the divisional cyclist company that forms the general's escort—number no fewer than 551. .

Apart, from these mechanical vohicles there is also the various horso and muledrawn transport. There arc fifty-two field kitchens, and one hundred and fortyseven cars. General Service wagons 224, ammunition limbers 192, General Service limbers 176, General Servico wagons for the baggage and general transport train 155, special vehicles, such as cable carts, water fitters, engineers' wagons, etc, 89. This total of vehicles amounts to no fewer than 1750 per division, and it must bo borne in mind that it has always been carefully kept down to the smallest number possible, and is only barely adequate to tho essential needs of the troops. Every new item of equipment, such as shrapnel helmets, gas masks, and all tho various new weapons and appliances of modern warfare, make fresh demands upon the transport capacity of a division, and indeed upon the number of men needed in the back area to keep these now things in repair or maintain their supply to the men in the trenches. At first, sight, a small addition may, seem to be a little matter, but when it is - realised that it.will affect the intricate, structure of organisation throughout a hundred or more divisions in the field) the mind is able to grasp vaguely how complex modern war organisation has become. Desrito these difficulties, it is the proud boast of the British that their armies are the best eouipned tho world has ever seon, and critical foreign comment is loud in praise not only of British equipment, hut of the excellent and flexible staff organisation which alone enables tho British to derive full benefit .from all innovations.