ARMY STORES.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 250, 21 October 1919, Page 7

ARMY STORES.

THE ANNEXE SUPPLIES. AN INSPECTION PENDING. HOSPITAL AND MTtiITABY GOODS MIXED. The pending arrival in Auckland of Bri-radier-General Richardson. Lieu-! tenant-l'olonel Avery. and .Major T.j MfeCristell, foreshadows an inquiry into ordnance service, and an inspection of stores. That three such important officers of the Department should come \ Xortli for this reason may seem to tho , ffeneral public to be akin to using a' steam hammer to crack a nut, but anyone who knows anything of the operations of the Ordnance Department—that is anyone who has been in the Army f.»r I a while—will readily understand the importance of '•ordnance inspection." rROVKDKNTIAL FIRES. '■Ordnance" labours under the disH'l bility of having always to avconrit for] shortages. There are no wheel- in this branch of the military machine that will] enable its officers to'simply report that stores have been "lost." It is necessary to show how they were lost. and. it possible, to show that they were destroyed. There was a tradition in the J Army that a fire \v;i~ a convenient method of account hit; for shortages. A harassed ordnance officer (so the legend went) would report to headquarters that ''Store No. So-and-so was destroyed by fire together with the following stores"—and the stores burned would usually tally with tiiose previously missing. 'TLEABE EXPLAIN." Xo doubt the Auckland branch of the Ordnance Department has had a bu-y time pret-eding the arrival of the fJ.O.C. and other high-placed officers. There is at least one matter that may ffive some concern, and may lead to an inquiry of a more or less 'iar-reaching character. When soldiers first began to arrive back from the war about Christmas of 1P1">. there wore a lariie number of typh'nM ca,>es and contacts. Ttiese patients were housed in the annexe, which Ivail to be fitted out for the purpose, and the fitting out was done by the Auckland Hospital Board, which charged the capital expense to the Defence Department. The fittings invluded beds. . blankets, sheets, mattresses, pillow-s, pyjamas, bed tables, and many other I necessary articles. The dual control of the annexe by military and civilian authorities did not work very happily, in that the civilian control overlooked the military obsession for accounting fur r.U stores. In regard to any articles that might be lost by the Hospital Hoard, it would be sufficient for that civilian authority to explain that they could not be traced. Not'so the Ordnaiire Department. They have their own special demand, beginning '"Please explain. -, for these occasions. MIXED BELONGINfi-S. It is understood that quite recently an official of the Ordnance Department who was sent to the annexe to •'audit" the stores found bhat very large numbers of various articles were missing. Forty odil beds, quantities of bedding, pyjama suits, bed table*, and other tiring* are, it is understood, among the stores unaccounted for. It \* -lip-gestcri that many of them were used, by error, in the general hospital, and that respective belongings of the Defence Department and Hospital Roar. 1 first got mixed in that way. Anothei sugsestion is that the patient-; Who first entered tlie annexe, including that largt batch who arrived by thr Maheno or January I. lfflH. tonic pyjamas an. singlets with them when they left tin institution. This explanation, how ever, doee not cover sucli articles a? bed- and bed-table., or even blanket: urn! other bedding. "What the Ordnance Department ivil do in these eircumstaiß'CH seems to In I a problem after the nature of the nni that postulates an "irresistrhle font encountering an immovable ma*s."