Many Different Names; But Always Same Task

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30769, 5 June 1965, Page 5

Many Different Names; But Always Same Task

[Specially written for “The Press” by

MEREBIMUR]

THE Royal Army Service Corps has changed its name many times in 320 years. Beginning under the “Waggon-Master General to King Charles I” in 1638 as Royal Waggoners, it will next month become the Royal Corps of Transport. This is the latest reorganisation of services in the British Army.

In the new order, besides taking in the transport element of the R.A.S.C., the corps will include the Railway and Port Squadrons of the Royal Engineers and the greater part of the Army Air Corps. It will lose its clerks and supply personnel, for in future the clerks will be drawn from the Royal Corps of Signals, this being increasingly necessary with the use of telecommunication.

The Royal Army Ordnance Corps will become the Supply Organisation and the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers the Repairs Organisation.

Former members of the Royal New Zealand Army Service Corps are meeting in Christchurch this week-end for the second national reunion held since the Second World War. This article on the beginnings of the corps in Britain was written by an A.S.C. soldier of the First World War.

There will be much cross-posting involving thousands of officers and men, but only the R.A.S.C. will lose or change its title.

It has been recorded by some military historians that the Royal Army Service Corps began in 1888, and owes its origin to Sir Redvers Buller, who was Quarter-master-General at the time, but the history of Supply and transport begins much earlier.

Records of supply and trans- I port at the time of the Warsi of the Roses show that after! the Battle of St. Albans in; 1461. the troops of Queen I Margaret, the wife of Henry VI. were short of food. The i Queen ordered a convoy of waggons to go to London for provisions. On their return | with a good supply of bread.: meat, and fish, the convoy! was stopped by the civilians] at Cripplegate, waggons were! overturned and their contents ! taken by the people. Out Of Arrows Earlier still, records are I found of archers having run] out of ammunition (arrows) j procuring fresh supplies I from their waggons. The following transcription! of original documents con- < cerning supply and transport! controlled by the WaggonMaster General to King] Charles I can be claimed as j the real beginning of the Royal Army Service Corps. The first Royalist WaggonMaster to be appointed was Winter Graunt, in 1638, des-: cribed as a servant of the ] King. The earliest reference; to his military capacity occurs I in warrants for November, I 1642

“Warrants were read? in Parliament under the hand of', Master Graunt, Wayne-Master General, requiring one division on the Countrey about Mayden-\ head to bring in fifty carts on ! Thursday morning thither for removall of the Carriages of the Army, otherwise he had command from his Majestic to send our Dragoons to fetch both themselves and their horses tn ”

The supply of horses was of supreme importance to the King and to his opponents. In a proclamation from Reading dated November 28. 1642. King Charles requested the sending of “horses, gelding, mares, or naggs, to be used as Dragoons-Horses for our service, and the defence of i this country.”

Waggon-Master Graunt was; replaced by Captain Henri Stevens. Until the outbreak of the Civil War, Stevens had been living the uneventful life of a small county gentleman with some interest in the affairs of his parton and the neighbouring city of Oxford. Now he became involved in the struggle and in 1643 took up arms "at the King’s command.” On December 21. 1642. an agreement had been reached

between representatives of King Charles and a deputation of loyal county gentlemen and freeholders of Oxfordshire on the amount of a weekly loan to be raised for the support of six regiments of Royalist Horse quartered on the county. Receivers for the sum due from the various hundreds (military areas) were appointed, among them being “Henri Stevens. Gent.”, who was assigned the Hundred of Langtree. and the HalfHundred of Eweline, and the town of Henly-on-Thames. Before becoming WaggonMaster General, Captain Stevens appears to have been employed in the commissariat department of the Royal Army, and on November 1. 1643. King Charles informed Stevens:—

“Trusty and wellbeloved Wee greet you well. Whereas Wee have out of the Confidence of your fidelity and ability to serve Vs made choyce of you to be Waggon-Master General of Our Army, and seeing that for the present there is evident occasion for having a present number of Carriages to send Provisions to Our Army about Buckingham. Our will and pleasure therefore is and Wee doe hereby require and authorise you imeaiately by warrant or otherwise to provide so many carts as you shall receive Command for from Our Lieutenant Generali, for the Cartage of the said Provision thither, and so from time to time to continue the same as Dee shall direct, allowing for every Carinae the allowance of 6d. per Mile: or as they and you agree. Wee thereby assuring you, you shall have allowance for the same, and for so doping theise shall he your warrant Given under Our Signe Mani tall at Our Court at Orford this First of November, 1643. te T<> Our trusty and wellbeloved Henry Stephens, Eso.. Waggon Master Generali of Our Army.'’ In the 17th century there came into use a system by which the commanders received an allowance for feeding their troops. Later this system gave place to the employment iby the Treasury of civilians charged with the purchase of supplies. Cromwell made a serious attempt to put both his supplies and transport on a reasonable basis, but his arrangements were unsound. One civilian department dealt with food, two others with forage, while a military officer, the Waggon-Master General, supervised transport. This official merely provided hired waggons in addition to those already allotted: so it was not a transport operation in the modern sense.

Indisputable Rule Cromwell had appointed Thomas Richardson as Waggon-Master General. General George Monck was probably the Cromwellian general with the best appreciation of the importance of good military supply. He realised that—in the words of Fortesque—military discipline depends upon regular feeding and regular feeding of an army depends on military discipline. The two factors are interdependent. Without discipline there

can be no distribution. Without just distribution there must be a waste of victuals and the inevitable consequence of waste of victuals is a waste of men. Monck was uniformly successful not only on land but also at sea. He said: “Generalship consists, above all, less on the mastery of strategy and tactics than on the maintenance of supplies and morale.”

The Duke of Marlborough, realised this and while not much is known of his supply arrangements, except that they were organised by Sir Soloman Medina, they enabled Marlborough to carry out the exceptional flank march which ; led to the victory of Blenheim. Civilian “sutlers” played a prominent part in the feeding . of the troops. I Much of the experience ■which finally led to the formation of a military supplies service was gained in India. Robert Clive began his career as a writer in the East India Company, but soon became involved in the almost constant warfare that went on in the Madras Presidency in the middle of the 18th century. In 1751 he found himself a commissary in the Presidency Army. Devastated Land

He had to keep marching columns supplied with food and forage in a country which had been devastated 1 by successive invaders. He (had to find oxen, camels, and ; elephants to convey the supplies and the guns through | a country where roads were | few and great rivers had to be crossed. | Meanwhile, in Europe, I Britain was engaged in the i Seven Years War—the last [in which an English King (George II) commanded troops in the field. The British armies in these campaigns were nearly always operating in friendly country. I Even in the Civil War the countryside, apart from the [areas of some big landpolders. was for Cromwell ! rather than the King. This | ruled out the easy way of i feeding soldiers—living on the country—practised by [ many Continental powers, and later brought to a fine art by Napoleon. It forced i the generals to develop an ! administrative machine to cope with the problems of 'first obtaining the supplies and then transporting them ito the soldiers.

This machine was sometimes full of imperfections and much trial and error was required before the British soldiers could depend on being well fed and supplied in whatever part of the world they were campaigning. By 1794 Britain was becoming increasingly involved in the wars of the French Revolution and there was a pressing need for some form of organised military transport. In March of that year a warrant for the raising of a Corps of Waggoners was issued by the Government. This corps gave particularly good service in the Peninsular War.

Wellington, in common with all outstanding commanders, gave the closest attention to his supply arrangements, as records prove. It is strange, that such matters as supplies and transport were so badly handled by those responsible for it in the Crimean campaign.

In the Maori Wars the difficulties of the Commissariat Staff Corps were stupendous. There were no roads, and the country provided no food or forage—nothing, in fact, but fuel. The commissariat had literally to carry everything to the mouths of all ranks—not only bread and meat, but groceries and vegetables. From the base the operation extended to a distance of 180 miles, which was traversed partly by land, partly by water.

Treacherous Rivers The rivers were narrow, changeable, and treacherous, often running over submerged forests, which made navigation both difficult and dangerous. Not the least of their embarrassments was that in the course of 180 miles there were 10 changes from watercarriage to land carriage, involving great labour and great waste. Besides, the hlue-jackets who were necessarily employed in this work, thinking themselves entitled to some compensation, at times got down on the rum.

At the outbreak of hostilities of the Second Maori War in 1861, the Commissariat Staff undertook the duty of transport themselves. They began by forming two companies, with something over 300 pack animals and draught animals. By 1864, when matters had become more serious, some of the Military Train, (as the supply and transport were then known) came out from Britain to take over the transport. The Commissariat officers protested and declined to have their system upset. They designed and built their own boats and trained their own crews, so as to dispense with the services of the blue-jackets. They ended with a total strength of 13 companies, afloat and ashore, comprising 1500 officers and men. and more than 2200 horses and draught bullocks, besides boats on the rivers.

When it is remembered that all supplies. except occasionally a few slaughtered cattle, had to be brought from other countries, that none of the harbours on the west coast were safe, and that the whole of the organisation for the storing and sending of supplies inland had to be improvised, yet even so the Commissariat managed to feed the troops in the field—not merely with biscuit and salt meat, but frequently with fresh bread, baked in field ovens.