Catering for Army

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 307, 29 December 1939, Page 2

Catering for Army

ELABORATE ORGANISATION BEHIND THE LINES Concealed in little towns and villages, scattered through a bolt of Franco which stretches for many miles behind the British front, are the workshops, the supply depots, the post offices and hospitals which serve the fighting troops. The Army relies on the French civilian organisation for practically nothing. The reason is that the whole Army—the services behind the lines, as well as the figting men—must be ready to move at a few hours’ notice. An elaborate collection of workshops, which are equipped to repair anything from a wrist watch to tank, must be able to pack up and be on the road within 24 hours. A field bakery, which can produce 90,000 loaves a day aud is now producing 72,000 a day, must bo able to load all its gear on to lorries and reestablish and recamouflage itself perhaps 100 miles away within eight hours or so. One such field bakery is established on a village green well behind the front lino. Every day its 48 portable ovens turn 30 tons of flour into bread, and about 100,000 loaves are stored in its 12 canvas storerooms at any given moment. The ovens stretch for about 150 yards along the green. In this unit are some of the first of the compulsorily enlisted militiamen to reach France. When war broke out the militia was combed for all the bakers it contained, and most of these are now in France. In a concert hall in another village is a post office which handles mail for formations which total several thousand men. It is one of five or 20 post offices throughout tho British area. Tho warrant officer in command was a signaller in Mesopotamia in the last war, and a few weeks ago he was in charge of tho post office at Henley-on-Thames. To-day his sorters and telegraphists, who were also working in English post offices a few weeks ago, carry gas masks and rifles, and the po3t office they manage could be folded up and sent off to another village concert hall- in a few hours. Even the steel and canvas pigeon-holes that line the walls are collapsible and can be folded flat and piled into waggons and whisked away.