LIEUT-GENERAL SIR G. H. FOWKE
(Adjutant-General, B.E.F.)
Of the branches of the Staff, the Quartermaster-General's was far the greatest, for under it came all the transport and supply services. This was the formidable list:
Director of Agricultural Production (Brig.-Gen. the Earl of Radnor).
Director of Army Postal Services (Brig.-Gen. Price).
Deputy Controller of E.F. Canteens (Col. E. Benson).
Director of Engineering Stores (Brig.-Gen. Sewell).
Director of Forestry (Brig.-Gen. Lord Lovat).
Director of Hirings and Requisitions, and President of Claims Commission (Major-Gen. Rt. Hon. L. B. Friend).
Controller of Labour (Brig.-Gen. Wace).
Director of Ordnance Services (Major-Gen. Sir C. M. Mathew).
Paymaster-in-Chief (Major-Gen. Sir C. A. Bray).
Director of Remounts (Brig.-Gen. Sir F. S. Garrett).
Controller of Salvage (Brig.-Gen. Gibb).
Director of Supplies (Major-Gen. Carter).
Director of Motor Transport (Major-Gen. Boyce).
Director-General of Transportation (Major-Gen. Crookshank).
Director of Veterinary Services (Major-Gen. Moore).
Vice-Chairman Imperial War Graves Commission (Major-Gen. Ware).
Director of Works (Major-Gen. Sir A. M. Stuart).
Nor does that finish the list, for subsidiary directorates under the Director-General of Transportation were:
Director of Construction (Brig.-Gen. Stewart).
Director of Docks (Brig.-Gen. Wedgewood).
Director of Inland Water Transport (Brig.-Gen. Luck).
Director of Light Railways (Brig.-Gen. Harrison).
Director of Railway Traffic (Brig.-Gen. Murray).
Director of Roads (Brig.-Gen. Maybury).
The Transportation Directorate was, so to speak, a sub-branch of the Staff. It had a great standard-gauge railway system which kept 900 locomotives running, which in one day could send 196 trains from the Bases to railheads (this irrespective of trains on lateral lines) and in one week once moved 439,801 troops and in one month 1,539,410 troops. Its railway system was constantly being pushed forward, being duplicated, and being furnished with "avoiding lines." Further, Transportation had a light railway system which carried 174,923 tons a week. Those were only two of its activities. On inland waterways, Transportation carried 293,593 tons a month, and it worked, in addition, a coastal barge traffic, a cross-Channel barge service, and a cross-Channel Ferry. Of roads, it maintained about 4,106 miles and was always making new ones; and it took 4,400 tons of material—much of it imported by sea—to make a mile of new road.
These figures are impressive enough in themselves and yet give little real sense of the full task of the Transportation Services. That can only be realised when it is kept in mind that practically all the work had to be carried out under conditions of shock and violent movement. It was not a matter of peacefully carrying on a routine business. At every point there was a constant liability to interruption and destruction by enemy action. At every hour there was some new development requiring some change of method, of destination. The vast machine had to be as elastic as it was powerful.
Yet that was only one sub-branch of the Staff.
It will be of interest to note how all the directorates of the Q Branch of the Staff were co-ordinated so that the man at the top could keep control and yet not be smothered under a mass of detail. Under the head (Lieutenant-General Sir Travers Clarke) of this Branch of the Staff were two deputies (Major-General Ford and Major-General May). Under these deputies were five Brigadier-Generals, and under them nine Lieutenant-Colonels, and these Lieutenant-Colonels divided between them 82 subjects. A table showing the distribution of these subjects was circulated throughout the Staff, and most matters got to the right officer from the beginning, and if they were of a routine nature were dealt with at once without further reference. Very important matters, or new questions arising, went up to one of the Deputies and were referred, or not, to the Q.M.G. as the circumstances dictated. Attached to the Branch and directly under its head was an officer who had charge of all orders and all publications. Nothing could be sent out as an order from the Q.M.G. Branch, or nothing printed as an instruction from the Branch, until it had gone through his hands; and it was his duty to see that one section of the Branch did not tread on the toes of another, that orders and publications did not overlap, and that an order in which several directorates were interested was drafted in accordance with the views of all of them.