There, the ammunition is taken off the cars, and piled in assorted stacks separated by intervals of fifty metres; stacks of cases for the field artillery, stacks of big shells, stacks of fulminate cases, and stacks of powder-bag cases.
The Army-Corps Parks are entrusted with the supply of the Divisional Parks, with which they are connected by small railways of 60-centimetre gauge.
3. Divisional parks. As we have taken the division as a unit and examined its component parts, we shall likewise take the Divisional Park as a type.
It has complete autonomy, and has the means of distributing munitions for the artillery and the infantry to the batteries and regiments of the division. It possesses, too, reserve guns, and has the equipment necessary for repairing wheels, wagons, gun-carriages, brakes, motor-cars, etc.
Let us examine the part taken by a Divisional Park in the preparation of an action.
As it is continually supplied by the Army-Corps Park, its duty is the maintenance of a sufficient reserve for the batteries and regiments of the division. The reserve should be complete when a battle is about to begin.
Field artillery and infantry should be supplied with munitions by wagon-trains. In fact, as soon as the soil has been badly ploughed by shells, only horse-drawn vehicles can circulate. The frequent necessity of planting new batteries has been the cause of a considerable reduction in the number of the wagon-trains. They have been replaced by motor-cars that drive as near the batteries as possible. The latter then send their wagons to meet the motor-cars and bring the shells to the points selected by the officer commanding the batteries.
The ammunition for the heavy artillery is brought on railways of 60-centimetre gauge to the battery supply-shelters, whence 40-centimetre gauge tracks, equipped with small hand-trucks specially detailed to each battery, take it directly to the guns. These supply-shelters, solid enough to resist the enemy’s shell-fire, are constructed by each battery as soon as it has completed and occupied its allotted emplacement.
During the preparation the transportation of supplies offers few difficulties so long as the fire of the enemy is not very severe. As soon as the ground begins to be torn up, construction-gangs must be summoned for the purpose of keeping in repair all the ways of communication. Each battery has its own organized reserve of munitions or supply-shelter, from which to draw the necessary shells during the first days of the operation, and the parks endeavour by all possible means to keep on feeding these reserves.
Ammunition for the trench-guns is conveyed to the entrance of the trenches by similar little hand-operated railways, and cartridges and grenades for the infantry are distributed in the same manner.