Courtesy of a link provided by fellow author Rolf Nelson on Gab, here's a letter written by the Duke of Wellington during the Peninsular campaign to the bureaucrats back home in London, England.
A letter from the Duke of Wellington to the British Foreign Office in 1812 during the Napoleonic wars in Europe
Gentlemen:
Whilst marching to Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying with your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship from London to Lisbon and then by dispatch rider to our headquarters.
We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles, and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty's Government holds me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit and spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence.
Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for in one infantry battalion's petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion as to the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensive carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstance since we are at war with France, a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall.
This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty's Government, so that I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either one with the best of my ability but I cannot do both:
1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountant and copy boys in London or, perchance,
2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.
I can only imagine the choler and spleen with which the bureaucrats greeted that missive! Napoleon may have said something to the effect that "an army marches on its stomach" (although that's questionable), but as anyone who's ever served will confirm, military paperwork is far more important than food - to the bureaucrats, anyway - and it never ends!
I'm reminded of the occasion during South Africa's Border War when a military transport aircraft was lost. It was a relatively light aircraft by modern standards, capable of carrying no more than two or three tons of cargo. However, by the time every stores officer and quartermaster in the operational area had finished "writing off" all the stores they'd lost long ago, but still had to carry on their books for fear of being held personally responsible, the aircraft had reputedly been carrying over 135 tons of freight when it went down - about nine times its permissible maximum gross weight! Strangely, the investigative board never turned a hair, but signed off on the impossible cargo manifest with nary a murmur of complaint. I suspect at least some of its members were, or had been, stores officers themselves, and understood the exigencies of the situation . . .
Peter
13 comments:
It is written in the stars... For each service member, NCO & Officer there must be an equal number of REMF's!
I recall a quartermaster responding in horror and confusion to the order demanding he issue our infantry battalion brand new gear, “But they’ll actually *use* it!”
😅😅😅
Dad's HAWK battery went to Vietnam in 1965 and setup the SAM site at Cam Rahn Bay protecting the hospital, air base, and ammo dump. One day Dad was wondering around the Air Base scrounging (they couldn't get sand bags to build bunkers with when they got there, so he scrounged empty 20mm ammo cans...they make great bunkers when filled with sand), and one of the Air Force supply sergeants asked him what they were sleeping on up on their hill. Dad told them they were still sleeping on the ground, to which the supply sergeant told him to go get a couple deuce and half's, he'd give him bunks and mattresses for everybody in the battery. The battery CO, seeing the deuces come in loaded up freaked and told Dad to take them back, "I can't pick those up on my property books!!!" The First Sergeant and all the "off duty" NCO's had a meeting with the CO and the 1SG said, "Captain, you see these NCO's? They run your battery, not you. The bunks stay, or your battery doesn't operate. We're in a combat zone, lose the property books - if anyone asks about something, it was lost in combat." Needless to say, the bunks stayed. :)
Heard a similar story about a helicopter lost during the war in Vietnam. As Sgt Armstrong remarked "No wonder it crashed, it was overloaded by 400% of max takeoff weight."
Re your lost military transport plane: That is a story as old as armies. I remember being told of an army transport mule that drowned in a river crossing during on indian war in the mid-19th century. Just as helicopter lost in VN, as reported by Pyotr, that mule reportedly carried all the gear that the entire regiment was short. No wonder it drowned!
My grandfather was stationed in the Philippines during the 1920’s. He was assigned to a Field Artillery unit; at that time, his unit still had some mules assigned to carry equipment in the mountainous terrain.
During equipment inventories, should any piece of equipment be missing, after extensive searching, the unit Quartermaster would write up a Report of Survey. The report was generally something along the lines of “Equipment was lost during a field exercise when pack mule AC38644 fell off the side of a mountain; the piece of equipment could not be retrieved.”
This particular Quartermaster proceeded to list that exact excuse on numerous Reports of Survey, until the day the Commanding Officer got a letter from the War Department. The letter requested the specific breeding lineage of pack mule AC38644. The War Department wanted to breed as many mules like AC38644 as possible, since “on one particular day that pack mule AC38644 fell off a mountain, it appears to have been carrying over 3700 pounds of equipment.”
The Commanding Officer instructed the Quartermaster to find a different cause for lost equipment.
Look for Allamagoosa by Eric Frank Russell - I found a PDF copy here:
https://projectavalon.net/Allamagoosa.pdf
It is 17 pages long so not a long read but if you have been in the military, it will raise a smile.
Phil B
In defense of the bean counters Wellington was said to have played rather fast and loose with finances. For example the Lines of Torres Vedras were constructed, supposedly, without consulting London. W was spending without authorization the equivalent of billions of dollars in todays money.
Since he won, all was forgiven.
I heard a similar story about 2 helicopters lost in a sandstorm in the Middle East in 1991.
Apparently, they decided to not dig them up when it became possible because so much equipment was listed as lost on them.
I recall some incoming indirect fire at a certain large LSA in Iraq. When the enemy rounds were complete, we went out to survey things.
A generator, with trailor, had been hit and was burning. When an NCO was tasked with reporting the combat loss, several heads got together and edited the document.
This arty hit by the enemy destroyed several Hardigg Cases of equipment, tents, spare HMMV parts, weapons, and ordinance. Fortunately for the unit, Big Green was able resupply all those items in short order.
I remember reading the mule story, also - a variant happening during a field exercise in the 1930s.
My own supply room story - I was trying to teach the younger troops a proper news-gathering techniques, including always having a spiral steno notebook to make notes on. Went to the unit supply room (this was on an Army post in Korea in the 90s) and asked for six notebooks for my students. The Supply Sgt. said - "No can do; what if I get inspected and I turn up short six notebooks?"
Me: "Well, it's for professional purposes and a legitimate request." Supply Sgt. "Come back the day after tomorrow, I'll have the six notebooks for you."
Me. (eying the shelf behind him, where I could see a stack of steno notebooks.) "So, the purpose of this supply room is to have stock on display for a random inspection? Not to actually supply items for the unit?"
Supply Sgt. (With relief) "Yes, exactly." Me: "Well, thank you very much for making that clear."
I went down the hill to the main post PX and bought six steno notebooks out of my own pocketbook for my class.
In the British Army, there was a popular acronym in the late 80s, FOFAD which stood for 'F*** Off, Fire At Donnington'. Donnington was a supplies depot.
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