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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

With what were they supplied?


Mathias97

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Hi

Whilst reading in the War Diary of the 8th York and Lanc, I saw this:

''Supplied carrying pouches? for rat??ns? SA? Boms''

post-105686-0-94063000-1452370997_thumb.

To be honest, I can't make it out, so I would be pleased if any member could help me.

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Pouches for rations, small arms ammo and bombs etc

Edit

Beaten to it!

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supplied carrying parties for rations...

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Parties.

Battalions, when out of the line, would regularly provide the carrying parties to take stuff to the front - in this case they were taking rations, small arms ammunition and grenades (bombs)

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Have read in some accounts by soldiers that they worked harder when out of the lines "resting" than when in the front trenches! The many carrying parties they were called upon to provide were truly hard & tiring. They were carrying as said ammo, grenades, rations, water, wire rolls, heavy stuff for a tired man to haul & under fire too. Not much resting when on rest out of the line!

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  • 4 years later...

I'm a bit late to the party, but...

 

"... about 300 prisoners.

     During the morning & afternoon the Batt [ie: battalion] supplied carrying parties

 for Rations SAA [ie: small-arms ammunition] Bombs [ie: hand grenades, universally known at this period a sbombs or Mills bombs, and possibly including rifle grenades], etc to the front line NE of MARTINPUICH.

     Our casualties..."

 

The communication trenches started as much as two-and-a-half to three miles behind the front line trenches and every round of ammunition for rifles, machine guns and trench mortars, every grenade, every bite of food and drop of water, every inch of barbed wire, every wiring stake, duckboard, sandbag, sheet of corrugated tin, length of timber for shoring up a dugout or revetting a trench wall - in short every single item needed in the trenches - had to be carried by hand along the winding, zig-zagging, traversed, muddy trenches to the front line. Over the four years of the war this amounted to millions of tons of gear, all moved on "shanks' pony".  The vast majority of this work was done by the battalions "resting" between their stints in the firing line, in addition to all the other labour and training they had to do.

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