The term "logistics" itself did not even enter common English usage until recently, but was already accepted parlance in the French and German languages, as discussed by US Navy RAdm. Julius A. Furer in his written work, "Administration of the Navy Department in World War II"...He explains the official definition of logistics as applied for military purposes:
"Design and development, acquisition, storage, movement, distribution, maintenance, evacuation and disposition of matériel; induction, classification, training, assignment, separation, movement, evacuation and welfare of personnel; acquisition or construction, maintenance, operation, and disposition of facilities; and acquisition or furnishing of services. It comprises both planning (including determination of requirements) and implementation."Sales professionals will always tell you that nothing moves anywhere until somebody, somewhere sells something...But when something must move, that same salesperson can't wave a magic wand, nor ask Scotty to beam it down; he instead turns it over to the logistics department...The Bureau of Labor Statistics (another title in dire need of a PR agent) defines this task as:
"Logisticians analyze and coordinate an organization’s supply chain—the system that moves a product from supplier to consumer. They manage the entire life cycle of a product, which includes how a product is acquired, distributed, allocated, and delivered."Thus the title takes on an air of responsibility quite beyond that of a delivery boy...In recent years, the profession has renamed itself as Supply Chain Management, with educational institutes offering advanced degrees in the field...In the midst of WWII those charged with moving needed supplies to the front line were normally a little too busy to worry about what others were calling them, being more concerned with transporting military goods to those who were awaiting them, without getting themselves shot down, sunk or blown up...Some, like US Navy F1/C William V. Johnson, were involved in the business of transportation over water of the vital goods...Others, such as his brother-in-law, US Army S/Sgt Benjamin E. Young, were links in a different part of the same chain...
Sgt. Young was assigned his duty with the Army's Quartermaster Corps, charged with the distribution of scarce goods arriving by Army transport ship to soldiers, some of whom may have survived the trip there on the same vessel...That destination was the very furthest point west on a map of North American US flagged territory, the island of Attu in the Aleutian chain, and the closest part of America to the Japanese main islands...In an interview with this author, Sgt. Young related a lesson he had learned on Attu concerning volunteering...Recalling some of his first days after reaching the Camp Swift, Texas training center with a newly formed Quartermaster detachment, but long before he attained more experience resulting in more stripes being sewn to his jacket sleeve, he said he was waiting for his daily job assignment, when a senior NCO asked whether any of the new arrivals knew how to drive a truck...
Believing that sitting inside a truck, and away from the never-ending, bone-chilling wind was preferable to any duty outdoors, he raised his hand along with some others... The "trucks" they were assigned turned out to be two wheeled handtrucks, to be used in offloading cases of goods from pallets deposited on the dock from a cargo truck, and then wheeled into a warehouse for storage...He said during this "truck driving" experience he wrenched his back picking up a case of soap, but did not report it, not wanting to be thought of as a slacker...This was a source of recurring pain for the remainder of his life...He often thought he had missed an opportunity for a small medical pension following his discharge, but instead accepted the valuable lesson learned about volunteering...He stated it was the last time he ever raised his hand for anything ever again...
The Quartermaster Corps was not only important, it was imperative to any forward progress advanced by the Army...Imagine for a moment the real-life counterpart to any battle scene ever depicted in any war movie ever produced by Hollywood...A battalion of combat-hardened soldiers seeks cover in bomb craters to return fire against an enemy ambush...Their officers direct machine-gun and mortar fire against known enemy emplacements...Their tank support units move up cautiously across a possible minefield...Soldiers reload their weapons with fresh magazines and ammo belts...Medics rush from one wounded infantryman to the next applying sulfa powder, morphine and bandages, while exhausted GI's drink from their canteens...The battalion slowly advances until the remaining enemy withdraws...
As the smoke clears, and the noise dies down, the tanks and armored troop carriers have halted, their fuel exhausted...Soldiers keep watch for a return by the enemy, some aiming empty rifles downrange because they shot up all their ammunition...They search through their field packs for a few K-ration scraps, and shake their nearly empty canteens...Medics are reduced to tearing strips of uniform from dead battle victims to use for bandages and tourniquets...Radios, mortar tubes and other weapons have been destroyed or damaged in battle, requiring immediate replacement...When the supplies and equipment they carried with them to the battlefield are gone, do the survivors turn around, and walk back to base to get more?...
No, they look behind them for arriving supply trucks loaded with replacement ammunition, fuel, water, food and medical items, allowing them to regroup and advance...An Army division on the move across country needs 500 to 700 tons of provisions brought to it's position daily to sustain the move forward...Rick Atkinson, in his book, "The Guns at Last Light" (the third volume of his Liberation Trilogy), said that one quarter of all Army personnel on European soil three months after the Normandy invasion in 1944 were attached to the Quartermaster Corps, whose only job was supplying the needs of the other 75%...At the same time, those QC troops had to draw from their own supplies to sustain themselves...
Without the guys behind the lines, the war would be over for the guys at the front at the end of the first day of battle...But without the air and sea transports making their endless loops across the oceans, the guys behind the lines would soon be sitting in empty warehouses...And if it weren't for the dedicated civilians at the home front producing the goods, their safety protected by that part of the military still on home soil, the transports would also be empty...
More articles concerning Warriors and Militaria...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments and critiques are always welcome, and will be reviewed before publication...They will not be seen immediately...Keep it clean please...