WAR NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 189, 19 January 1915, Page 7

WAR NOTES.

HOW 3,500,000 MEN ARE FED Russian staff and transport officers must be tired men. Imagine the little tent, the jaded officer, the more weary telegraph operator, and the nightly pile, of telegrams. There are 70 army corps —3OO brigades at least; and nightly each brigade must have its route and roads allotted, and Poland is not rich in roads, though it is full of swamps, bogs, forests, marches and lakes. There are. for instance, 250 miles of bog at Pinsk, and it does not meet the case to say that the lagoons and marshes will be' frozen over. A staff will not send artillery skating out on ice if it can help it. It must be one long nightmare for the transport, too. The Russian infantryman receives an issue of more than Jflb. a dav. in food, ammunition, equipment and forage. That means that more than 15,000 tons msut be dragged after the army daily—over the morasses, remember—and the roads cleared of empty vehicles, so that the motors coming iip on the following day can get through. And when the brigade or division halts for battle, side roads and cross roads must be found for the lorries, so that they do not block the path for the reserve artillery and battalions getting forward to the front. Even this 15,000 tons per day does not include the contents of the artillery caissons, the pontoons of the engineers, and the hospital stores and turnout.