2. The Supply and Transport Services
The early forces in Europe subsisted merely by individual plunder, each man obtaining his food and forage as he could. Later, the central power provided certain places where supplies were collected by force. The next step in supplying armies was taken when it was found that the local resources could be drawn on to furnish supplies on payment. This provided a more certain and effective supply, and demanded fewer troops to be employed in collecting. This change had a far-reaching result. The fact that cash had to be paid for these purchases caused Supply to come under the Civil Finance Department. Hence we find in Cromwell’s army this Service controlled by the Treasury, as it continued to be down to the Crimean War, with ill results for the army.
Transport was required to carry the supplies from the districts whence they were collected to the area occupied by the troops, where they were stored in magazines. The next step, therefore, was to increase the mobility of the army by providing additional Transport to move supplies from these magazines up to the fighting troops.
The train which carried supplies was, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a mass of hired or pressed country carts and wagons, driven by wagoners on foot, and difficult to manage or move near the enemy. It was found that, unless organized under military control, the transport was not very efficient, and by the epoch of Napoleon both the Transport and the Supply Services had become more and more military in organization. But they were both still Civil Services, owing to the hold the Treasury had over them, from the fact that both entailed constant expenditure during war.
During the nineteenth century the Train which provided transport became in all armies a Military Organization, with enlisted drivers under regular officers; while Supply continued to be organized as a Department under Civil officials, as it still is abroad. This system tends to produce difficulties, as the Combatant Military Train Officers have to move Supplies under the instructions of the Civil Supply Officials, and in foreign armies it is found difficult in war to make both work in co-operation. The tendency is, in fact, to bring about the close union between these two Services, long since found desirable in England. In all armies there are Transport and Supply Columns formed from the Train with the addition of Supply personnel. In England alone are both provided from one Corps, the Army Service Corps, and the description of the British Transport and Supply Services given in [Part II]. illustrates what is perhaps the best organization of these Services for war.
3. The Medical Organization for War
In the Middle Ages there was no medical organization with armies, nor were there even any surgeons. The sick and wounded were left to shift for themselves, and were tended, if at all, by private persons out of charity, or in monasteries, for the monks alone possessed any knowledge of surgery and medicine in those days.
Rudimentary provision for surgery in armies is found in the organization of the German mercenaries of the sixteenth century, where a surgeon was appointed by each Captain for his Troop of Reiters or Company of Landsknechts. Later, a Surgeon was attached to the Regiment, and medical care, from being purely a matter for the Captain to organize, became a Regimental responsibility. By this time the practice of surgery had long passed from the hands of monks into those of the barbers. Thus in the seventeenth century the Prussians had Feldschere, Field Barbers, attached to Companies and Regiments for surgical duties. There also began to be during the sixteenth century a certain number of what we should call Staff Surgeons, attached to the Higher Commands, who were supposed to supervise the Regimental Surgeons. The latter gradually became better educated, while the Company Surgeons under their supervision remained merely rude subordinates.
During the seventeenth century the sick and wounded were treated in tents pitched in the rear of the camp as long as the army was stationary, and tended by some of the women who accompanied it. When it moved, they were handed over to local authorities, or left in the villages near the fighting. An effort was then made in most countries to establish hospitals in the chief towns in the theatre of war, into which the wounded could be collected for better tending. By the eighteenth century Army Surgeons were allotted to these hospitals, which seem first to have been organized in France, where, however, they were managed by contractors. The abuses of this system led to the hospitals being placed under the Intendants of the Army, a change which effected little improvement, as the Intendants, through ignorance and apathy, hampered the action of the medical department, and delayed any improvement in it. France was the first country to organize any sort of mobile hospital, the germ of our field ambulance. One ambulance wagon was provided per 1,000 men, and in battle, dressing stations were formed in rear, to which wounded found their way, or were carried on stretchers. Stationary hospitals were also established in rear, and the modern system of evacuation of wounded to the rear was rudely organized. The same idea was started in Austria, and, in a less developed form, in Germany.
During the eighteenth century we find an organization of Regimental Surgeons, with attendants and stretcher bearers, and a provision of field equipment carried in wagons. Thus units corresponding to Field Ambulances were gradually organized in the armies of France, Austria, and Prussia. There were larger organizations of the same nature at Head-Quarters of the Armies, and of the Higher Commands when these were introduced in France during the Napoleonic Wars. These Field Ambulances had ambulance wagons, and other wagons carrying the dispensary and kitchen, and the necessary equipment, stores, and supplies, and were manned by a Corps of Hospital Orderlies and Stretcher Bearers. In rear of these units were stationary hospitals under military control. The Austrian organization was nearly as good as in France, but that of Prussia and other States lagged considerably behind them. In fact the Prussian troops had no medical organization, beyond the provision of regimental surgeons, at Jena, nor at Eylau, nor even at Waterloo.