Replies

Quartermasters of WW2 (an American report)

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-conflicts-periods/ww2/qm-ww2.htm

Anticipation is key to good logistics. Yet, at times, Quartermasters had little advanced warning of what was to come next, hence almost no time to prepare. The 7th Quartermaster Company, for example, underwent several weeks of intense planning and preparation in late summer 1944 getting ready for the projected Yap campaign. The company did not learn until mid-September – after the division was already at sea! – that the plan had been radically altered. Instead of attacking the small island of Yap, they found themselves heading hundreds of miles west to a much larger and more heavily defended Leyte.

Loss of Food. For much of the war the Pacific Theatre experienced persistent heavy losses of food, resulting in unbalanced stocks in certain areas, chronic shortages elsewhere, and routine cycles of “feast-and-famine” among some unit messes. The problem of food loss – which some observers claimed ran as high as 40 percent at times – stemmed from a number of sources:

Class II and IV supplies usually did not enjoy high-priority status for overseas shipping. Among commanders, delays in receipt of clothing and equipment did not seem to arouse the same level of anxiety as that caused by almost any perceived shortage in food or petroleum products. The latter were deemed bona fide “war stoppers” and took first priority. As a result, Quartermasters in the Pacific often found that their requisitions for clothing, footwear, cots, tents, mess equipment and the like, in effect, had been placed on the back burner. When initial issue stocks wore out, it sometimes took exceeding long for replacement goods to arrive. On such occasions, troops necessarily bore a certain amount of hardship and discomfort.

Tentage and canvas material seemed to suffer the worst. In the course of heavy campaigning, combat divisions sometimes found that virtually their entire allotment of tents had become damaged or completely deteriorated in relatively short order. In fact, there was a chronic shortage of tents throughout the war. Moisture-saturated stocks got mouldy and leaked. Even when they arrived in the field in sufficient quantities, they often failed to serve the purpose for which they were intended. A group of Australian observers in mid-1943, for instance, concluded that almost all the tents in New Guinea leaked. Field Quartermasters used various expedients to try to “tropic proof” canvas goods to reduce mildewing, but had very limited success.