It is useful to know the structure of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front before getting involved in the story of transport and supplies.

The BEF was formed up of five armies, with the Second Army roughly covering the area between Ypres and Hazebrouck, the First Army down to Arras, the Third Army down to the Somme, and the Fourth to the south of the Somme, with Fifth Army in reserve.

Each army consisted of two corps and in the corps two divisions. The regulating stations allotted to each army were 1st Army Abbeville, later Boulogne, 2nd Army Riviere Neuve (Calais), 3rd Army Abbeville, 4th Army Romescamps. Daily trains left the regulating stations having travelled from an allotted supply depot with enough stores for two divisions for 24 hours, and here additional wagons would be added to the train. The trains were made up of wagons containing the following: mechanical spares, petrol, coal, ordnance, mail, five wagons of oats and four of hay, two wagons of groceries, two of bread and one of meat.

From docks forward
At the beginning of the war, depots were set up for the holding and distribution of stores for the BEF, but they were temporarily abandoned due to the retreat from Mons and the withdrawal towards Paris following the German advance in 1914. Supplies were diverted from the Channel ports to Nantes and St Nazaire. Once the BEF were able to regain ground and stabilise the position, everything was moved back to the Channel ports.

Frozen meat was sent from England but, owing to the limited availability of cold storage, the meat ships were used as temporary stores until purpose-built ones were ready at Boulogne and Le Havre. There was a reserve of preserved meat should the demand for frozen meat be in excess of what was in storage.

It became obvious very quickly that the UK was unable to keep up with supplies to France as well as hold reserves at home for the troops there, so the government made contracts with countries in the Americas and Australia for regular supplies, which were shipped directly to France and inspected there before distribution. There was an attempt to hold sufficient reserves in the stores to cover the occasions when supplies were lost or held up by enemy action at sea. It is worth adding that frozen sausages were not a great success!

Bread was an important part of the daily diet and field bakeries were to be found near the front and at the base camps to ensure a regular supply. At the base camps, Aldershot ovens were used to start with but were replaced in 1915 when steam ovens and automatic bread-making machines, made by Baker & Son of Willesdon, were installed at the cellulose factory at Calais, which had the capacity for bulk baking and storage of hundreds of loaves required each day. More of these machines were installed at the other bases and run by the Army Service Corps (ASC), as were the number of butchers in the area. Bread ration in France was reduced from 1¼lbs to 1lb, and supplemented by 2oz of rice daily, and 2oz of oatmeal twice weekly on the recommendation of medical staff later in the war.

Condensed milk, dried peas and biscuits were stored in sheds at Calais, together with bacon, which was both popular and readily available. Cheese was also part of Tommy’s ration, but reduced when supplies of Dutch cheese ceased, until cheese was available from New Zealand, Australia and Canada.

Sugar was in short supply but the allowance for those in the field was to be no lower than 3oz. To ensure this it had to be reduced to 2½oz for those on the front line and 1oz for others.

Occasional failure of fruit crops reduced the allowance of jam, but in turn increased the sugar allowance.

Potatoes were another staple of the diet, but there was some difficulty in supplying sufficient quantities from home, so additional amounts were sourced from Ireland, Jersey and Italy.

Stacks of crates of tinned goods, resembling small hills, were located near the docks. A Supplies Purchase Department was based in Paris, with the job of obtaining local goods, and this department rapidly expanded with branches around Europe. There was a wide variety of goods that the department would obtain, from dried fruits to pigeon food, and strawberries to champagne!

There was no point in having food with no one to cook or organise meals. As the number of troops increased cooks became in short supply, so cookery schools were established with each army and on the lines of communication. The main schools were at Rouen, Boulogne, Calais, Étaples and Le Havre, and in all some 25,277 men were trained in the art of cooking. It is also worth noting that the diets of the colonial troops were catered for.

Ports
The main ports used by the BEF were Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne, Le Havre and Dieppe, together with Rouen on the River Seine and to a lesser degree St Valery sur Somme.

Sea ports could be closed for days for fear of the loss of shipping when German submarines were patrolling the Channel, but by the end of the war the ports had handled 5,269,302 tons of ammunition, 5,910,000 tons of hay and oats, and 3,713,208 tons of general supplies. The grand total of all supplies amounted to 27,566,245 tons.

Coal was shipped from Britain to the north Channel ports but, to save on rail transportation on the Western Front, arrangements were made whereby British coal was shipped directly to Le Havre and Rouen for use in Paris, and in turn the BEF was allotted coal from the mines in the Pas de Calais region.

Postal service
This was a vital service for those anxiously awaiting news of loved ones at the front, and they, for the most part, found comfort from the receipt of letters and parcels; a chance for their minds to escape to the familiar things they had left behind. Served by the army base post offices at Le Havre, Boulogne and Calais, the Royal Engineers (RE) Postal Section (special reserve) peace time strength was 300 officers and men, all of whom were General Post Office employees.

It was soon found they had too few men to deal with the workload as demand increased and the men were required elsewhere. Postal workers at home were asked to volunteer and an advert was placed in the Post Office Circular calling for female sorters, clerks etc with a minimum of four months’ experience and aged between 20 and 40, to serve for 12 months or the duration of the war. Those with husbands serving in France were not eligible to apply as the Army Post Office processed the particulars and belongings of men who were wounded or lost, and it was therefore a sensitive position to hold. The women were to be enlisted in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and the first draft arrived in France in May 1917.

The women who went to France were relatively young and lacking in any long-term experience in the Post Office at home, and they soon found out that life in the Army Post Office was to be far more intense. They had to quickly get used to a routine that wasn’t too unfamiliar, but more varied than the specific departments they were used to back home. Dealing with postal orders, telegrams, currency exchange and the intricacies of the army censorship system had to be learned by all of them. Working hours were long, usually from 7am to 11pm, and hazardous when enemy aircraft decided to visit the neighbourhood.

The basic route of correspondence was that a letter written in the field would be handed to a junior officer who would censor and stamp the letter. This would go to the field post office, which was portable and travelled with the division or brigade, and took the form of a black metal box, its location indicated by a red and white flag. All the post would arrive at a railhead before going on to the Army Post Office at a Channel port for shipment to Britain, usually via Southampton or Folkstone, and could take as little as

12 hours or up to three days to be delivered, depending on any action taking place at the time.

The Christmas period was always busy and in the winter of 1917 around 19,000 mailbags travelled across the Channel to France each day, peaking to half a million bags prior to Christmas, which equates to 100 trains of 30 trucks in length delivering to railheads, and for the mail to reach the various field post offices required 6,000 lorry loads.

Troops were always writing home asking for clothes, food, toiletries etc to be sent out, and the Army Post Office dealt with it all, from a pair of gloves to a Fortnum & Masons hamper.