A 'Combatant' Corps in Singapore

What follows is an account written by an unnamed RAOC soldier in the Changi Prisoner of War Camp on 6 March 1942.

‘It is known that the RAOC had been reclassified as a ‘combatant’ corps in the latter part of 1941 and it is therefore probable that these operations were the first in which they were called upon to take a ‘combatant’ role since attaining that status.

Prior to hostilities, the RAOC provided the main part of a force known as the “Alexandra Defence Force”. This force included a few RASC and Signals details but was commanded by OC, RAOC Singapore. Its role was the occupation of prepared defensive positions around the Alexandra depot area but only when the depot was in danger of direct attack. It had previously been ruled that if deployment was ordered, the position would be that purely Ordnance activity would be impracticable. This did not prove to be the case.

On Saturday January 31st the Johore Causeway was blown up, thus placing the island in a state of siege. On Thursday February 5th, No 4 Ordnance Store Company RAOC arrived from the UK with 16 officers and 367 other ranks, bringing up the Regimental strength to approximately 50 officers and 800 other ranks.

On Sunday February 8th, the Japanese landed on the island and at about 6.30 am on Wednesday February 11th, the deployment of the Alexandra Defence Force was ordered. All positions were manned by RAOC men divided into five companies. Forty-two L.A. positions were manned in addition to six L.A. positions with twin AA guns on concrete mountings. At this time the front line was about 1 1/2 to 2 miles in front of our positions and was being held by the Loyals and Beds & Herts. The deployment was quick and efficient and during the next three days the positions were maintained although ‘A’ and ‘B’ coys were shelled heavily at times, but owing to the wide dispersion there were few casualties. considerable experience was gained in overcoming administrative difficulties in the field. During this period a totally inadequate staff had been retained at the Base Ordnance Depot and other units no doubt suffered when trying to obtain stores ungently. Sufficient staff for Ordnance work should always be retained under all conditions.

At about 4.30pm on Friday, February 13th, The Loyals and Beds & Herts were ordered to retire onto our positions, in which the RAOC force would also remain. At 6pm the Deputy Director of Ordnance Services ordered all Workshop and thirty selected store personnel to report to the docks for embarkation. At 7pm DDOS ordered destruction of the depot. The difficulties in carrying out these orders were obvious as all ranks were in the line to which the infantry had not yet retired. It was therefore decided that all RAOC should be withdrawn except LA gun crews; such workshop men as arrived in time were dispatched to the docks and men from the stores side were directed to the work required in connection with the destruction of the depot. This was completed at midnight when all ranks, in formed parties, were directed down the main railway line to Singapore railway station where they were reformed.

After reporting to 1st Infantry Brigade on the morning of February 14th instructions were received to move three companies to positions behind the much weakened Malay Regiment to the left flank of the whole line (Keppel Golf Club area). The remaining two companies were placed in reserve positions about four miles from these left flank positions (Tiong Bahru area). These two companies maintained these positions with slight alterations until the “cease fire”. As their chief role was defence of two cross roads in rear, they received much shelling. On the left flank, almost as soon as companies had reached their positions, fresh orders resulted in “E” coy being moved into the front line alongside and on the left of the Malay Rgt, “B” and “D” Coys occupying positions in rear.

On the morning of the 15th, “F” Coy and the Malay Rgt withdrew in line with “B” and “C” Coys and this line was held until evening when the “cease fire” sounded. This position was very heavily shelled and mortared as the Japanese were able to put up an observation balloon from the opposite hill and direct their fire. No artillery support was available to retaliate with. The position being held was untenable in the event of a strong attack, but there is no doubt that the RAOC, having undergone their baptism of fire during the preceding days, would have justified their “combatant role”.

The role of women in Ordnance

The role of women was massively important. Each fortnight the Army Bureau on Current Affairs published a series of articles, one was entitled, The Women Bogey. This sought to bolster the argument in favour of women retaining after the war the more prominent position in the workplace that they enjoyed during hostilities. Men were running scared. Newspaper articles appeared regularly emphasising the crucial importance of the work women undertook in the Ordnance Depots, to say nothing of Royal Ordnance Factories, manufacturing companies and indeed just about every walk of life.

On 15 June 1942, the Yorkshire Evening Post reported on the role of ATS at Chilwell which had the largest ATS unit in the country. The chief ATS stressed that ‘it has never been the the aim of the ATS to turn girls into mere weak imitations of men. Girls are individualists and throughout the organisation there must be the individualistic touch.’ The article highlighted the range of tasks undertaken: machine shop, drawing offices, stores and, of course, the 14 cookhouses that keep the depot operating 24 hours a day. More specifically women undertake the Articisation of tanks bound for Russia and the Desertisation of those bound for Africa and the East. To counter the effects of condensation in tanks being delivered to hot climates, a ball of lime is suspended inside. All parts are ‘sozzled’ with oil and grease. Not surprisingly the article finds ATS who in their former lives were in the public eye such as the first woman to cross the desert on a motor cycle and who later competed against men in Army trials. No wonder men were scarred.

A similar theme emerges from the Sunday Times on 1 November 1942 of a visit to ‘Woolwich-in-the-country’ described as being in the north but probably Donnington in Shropshire. The special correspondent tells how, ‘in that radiant summer of 1940 when the sunshine seemed to mock our anxieties as France tottered to capitulation, he remembered vividly a visit to Woolwich Arsenal, adding that ‘a day or two ago he visited a new Woolwich buried in the countryside many miles from London.’ He marvelled at the size of the place but also the many innovations that had been introduced adding that, ‘the American authorities were so impressed by ‘Woolwich-in-the-country’ that they sent an ordnance expert across by bomber to study its methods.’ In relation to women he wrote that, ‘there are girls wherever you turn and most of them are in the ATS…in one of the huts in the training section a slim 18 year old ATS corporal was lecturing officers, soldiers and ATS on the identification of wireless components…later in the instrument repair shop a good looking young woman with sergeants stripes pinned on her overalls paused for a moment from measuring thousandths of an inch to talk rather diffidently about her civilian studies at five British and foreign universities and to admit that she was a BSc Edin (First Class Hons)…in terms of facilities he saw the hall with  a loan collection from the National Gallery on show.’

For B.F.s!

On the outbreak of war, many Bedford trucks were taken over from their owners for army purposes. Few of these came with the relevant handbook and so these had to be supplied.

For Vauxhall, a variation on the theme appeared in the form of a book called simply ‘For B.F.’s. It seems that the manufactures became sick and tired of soldiers making the same mistakes time and again. The book, illustrated by Douglas of Punch, became famous worldwide, was translated into several languages and much was reproduced verbatim by the Americans in an instruction book dealing with armoured vehicles.

OVERLORD in contrast with the BEF

"It would be hard to find a greater contrast between OVERLORD and the move of the BEF to France in September 9139 when the RAOC base installations in support of the Army had been manned by a scratch collection of civilians in uniform with only a handful of regulars to guide them"
Brigadier A.H. Fernyhough

Mobilisation

The time came at 11.00am on Sunday 3 September 1939, when war was declared.

Bill Williams, now Deputy Director of Ordnance Services (MT) at the War Office, went to Chilwell that morning to lead a group of senior serving officers meeting, possibly for the first time, the newly called up members of the Army Officers Emergency Reserve. These included Reddy Readman who would take over as Chief Ordnance Officer at Chilwell, Bob Hiam, who would command the depot at Old Dalby, Robby Robinson, who would command the depot at Sinfin Lane, Derby, and Dan Warren who would take a lead role in scaling, the dark art of estimating the quantity of stores needed for battle.

Also on that Sunday in Birmingham the executives of the Nuffield Motor Company met to put into action the plans they had prepared for war. Through the various parts of the Nuffield Group it would over the next five year contribute aircraft and weapon production in addition to a great many vehicles. It is probably true to say that elsewhere in Britain similar gatherings were taking place. Nevertheless much of the country would soon return to a certain normality, for example, the motor companies still brought out new cars for the growing market.

Mobilisation had been ordered on Friday, 1 September and, at the RAOC’s new Headquarters at Hilsea near Portsmouth, took the Corps by surprise simply because of the sheer numbers (6,000) who had volunteered and been allocated for Ordnance work. This needs to be set in context. At the point when the nation went to war, the total strength of the whole RAOC at home and abroad was 727 officers and 5,292 soldiers. Indeed, the War Office estimate of the likely number of recruits had been only a misleadingly precise 237 men. The huge influx initially overwhelmed the small recruitment team, but it also necessitated the taking over of every school building in north Portsmouth and Cosham. The NAAFI was quite unable to cope; it was only the absence of rationing and local purchasing that saved the day. At Hilsea, there was neither enough space, nor uniforms, nor equipment. To compound the problem, the Corps was responsible for supplying not only itself but the army as a whole. In time things began to settle, but it was very much ‘make do and mend’.

Back to 2 o'clock - some images of the RAOC in WW2 - link to Pinterest

 Images from some of the RAOC depots in WWII. Find some more on Pinterest

ATS in RAOC repair workshops before the time of REME

Packing at the former pickle factory at Branston

Tanks ready for shipment at Chilwell

The loss of the Lancastria

Many Ordnance men were evacuated at Dunkirk, but many too became prisoners of war.

The position with the Nantes depot was a little different, since from the time of the first withdrawal Colonel Palmer had been sending valuable warlike stores back over the channel. Given its position a good way from the German advance there was more time for an orderly evacuation. Tragically an even greater disaster awaited. 

On 17 June some 6,000 soldiers and airmen, including the remaining 200 Ordnance personnel, boarded SS Lancastria, a 17,000 ton former Cunard Liner. Just as it was heading out to sea, Stuckas struck and it sank within fifteen minutes with the loss of 2,000 lives including 50 Ordnance men. Tragic though this was, the greater loss was of RAF Ground Crew who had boarded first and who were ‘crammed like sardines’ under deck. Jack Lumsden survived by jumping into the sea and swimming free. He went on to serve at Chilwell, Derby and Burton retiring as a Major after 37 years with the RAOC. Douglas Hanson was another RAOC survivor from the Lancastria, having spend nine months at the MT depot at Nantes. 

After Dunkirk

The British Army that returned from France was exhausted, dispirited and no longer mechanised in any real sense. The stark reality in the summer of 1940 was that at some point Hitler would invade these islands. Accordingly the Army set up, within what was really a peace time structure of area Commands, a Home Army alongside a vital anti-aircraft command. By July 1940 by hook or by crook some five divisions had been re-equipped by the small largely civilian manned Ordnance Depots within each area Command. These were  supported by the then five existing Central Ordnance Depots. In addition to Chilwell, there were depots dating from the Great War at Woolwich (armaments), Bramley (ammunition), Weedon (small arms) and Didcot (clothing and general stores).

“God, what a war!” he said. “There’s always some blasted spare part missing and you can’t get a sausage out of anybody urgently! It was different when we only had rifles”  This complaint by a staff captain comes in JK Stamford’s account of the Dunkirk evacuation and states the underlying problem with stark clarity. The older depots were still organised largely as if they had ‘only rifles’, whereas they were trying to handle an ever increasing range of items. The requirements of an army of the 1940’s were different but nothing like as complex as they would become by 1945. 

It was clear to Bill Williams, who by then have been given full charge of the Depots (other than clothing and general stores) as Director of Warlike Stores, and to those around him that the end of the war would come only with a return to France on a massive scale. In the days and months following Dunkirk this must have become more an article of faith than a realistic proposition. Yet it was a target and something to plan for. 

An invasion on a massive scale would demand vehicles, armaments and equipment in an unprecedented number, but, unlike the BEF, effectively supplied and supported. This would take time and, in the build up, effective storage would be needed. The existing Ordnance depots dated back to before the Great War and so new space was needed. It was needed also since the war of the mid twentieth century would need supplies wholly different from the wars of the past.

The key impact on the RAOC of the Dunkirk evacuation and the experience of the BEF had been first and most obviously a sickening return to where they had been over year earlier desperately short of everything. In the aftermath of Dunkirk, Winston Churchill writes in his account of the war that he contacted President Roosevelt who immediately made US ordnance reserves available. Yet none of this came free and the British government had to part with its fast diminishing reserves of dollars and gold. This remained that case until Roosevelt achieved the passage of the Lend-Lease act in March 1941. 

One more immediate result of this piecemeal arrangement for supplies from the US was a huge variety of different makes and models of equipment. Add to this the consequences of the separate UK motor companies developing their competing models each with their own set of spare parts and that, after Dunkirk, the fact that the vehicles that could be obtained relatively quickly were an even greater variety: the RAOC was faced with a store man’s nightmare.

So, it wasn't just about volume, it was about hundreds of thousands of parts which make up the volume. Official accounts all talk about the tons of stores held or issued and the picture conjured is of bails or crates of bulk. Truly the devil is in the detail explaining another of Bill’s favoured saying, a place for everything and everything in its place. The task was to set up an organisation which could estimate what needed to be ordered, order it, receive it, check it, store it, issue it and then maintain it.

The Beginning

Had you been a passenger on the omnibus from Nottingham railway station to the little village of Chilwell on a wet November morning in 1934, you may have seen a tall, heavily built soldier fidgeting as he sat, his eyes scanning all that passed, one cigarette lighting the next. In his pocket was the letter from the War Office instructing him to visit the site of a former shell filling factory. In his mind were wild imaginings, a fully mechanised army light years from that which he had experienced in the four long years of the Great War. He could hardly believe it; he had been asked to see whether the site could be right for the first Royal Army Ordnance Corps Depot specifically for motor transport and, if so, how he would create it.

In the late 1920’s the War Office had begun to explore just what a mechanised army might look like by setting up an experimental armoured force, however with the depression this came to nothing. During the depression, as government sought to conserve resources and set its face against re-armament, the Royal Army Ordnance Corps had suffered more than most. It was the cinderella of the army and it is probably safe to say that it was regarded as a corps of store-men, never to confront an enemy and seldom to leave the safety of the warehouse. This was reflected in the staffing which was overwhelmingly civilian, and even the soldiers were not regarded as combatant troops: pen-pushers, little more. If the Corps itself had suffered, so too had its equipment: there were no more than 4,000 vehicles for the whole Army and most of those old and unreliable and with few in the Corps able to maintain them; it had only 25 drivers. Now things were going to change.

Nuffield Motors

I wondered why I could find little about the group of motor companies headed by Lord Nuffield with factories in Birmingham, Coventry and Oxford (Cowley). The reason, I find, is like all the motor companies they were supporting the war effort in very many ways, but most particularly the RAF.
It became clear very early in the war that the RAF was 'wasting' a great many planes, in the sense that planes crashed and could no longer fly. Nuffield set up a network of Civil Repair Organisations which would collect the crashed aircraft, bring them to repair factories in various parts of the country and, largely by trial and error, put them back into airworthy condition. This was a massive operation that provided vital support in the Battle of Britain.
Nuffield also built tanks, first the Cruiser and then the Crusader and the Cromwell. These tanks were initially outgunned by Germany's Panzers, but later with a 6lb gun gave as good as they got. In the Desert War, at least initially, they proved unreliable, but Nuffield flew out a team of engineers to investigate and address the problems. In addition to tanks, Nuffield championed the self propelled gun, in particular, the Bofors. They manufactured ammunition and much else.
It was said that the motor companies were ideally placed to manufacture anything out of metal, and this they did.

Or War on Wheels?

What is in a name? The story is about the mechanisation of the British Army in WWII. Its challenges, mistakes, lessons learnt and ultimate success.

Tanks at COD Chilwell en route to North Africa

Wheels of War

The name of a book has to be right. Telling some old friends about the book recently, it became very clear that it is about the mechanisation of the army - a monumental task. So I am now working to a revised title, Wheels of War.

“The British Army which crossed to France in 1939 differed from other armies at that time in being fully mechanised.” Report on the British Expeditionary Force

In a little over eight months they discovered to their cost just what a truly mechanised army could do as German General Guderian and his Panzers drove all before them and would have taken the whole force prisoner had Hitler not hesitated.

The next five years would see a completed transformation of the British Army as the the number of vehicles grew from 40,000 to 1.5 million.

The driving force behind mechanisation was the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and the 250,000 soldiers, ATS and civilians who worked in over one hundred massive depots in the UK and in the theatres of war worldwide, but also the motor industry both here in the UK and in Canada and the USA.

Wheels of War is their story.

Chilwell, Didcot and Bicester

What do the Chilwell housing estate,  Didcot power stations and Bicester Garden City have in common? 

They occupy the sites of three of the vast Ordnance depots that supplied the British Army in WWII. Together with over one hundred other such depots they comprised 40 million square feet of covered and 50 million square feet of open storage of anything from tanks and Bailey bridges to mobile radar and boot laces. In them and elsewhere around the theatres of war, some 250,000 soldiers, ATS and civilians, including many with expertise drawn from industry, worked together handling hundreds of tons of some 750,000 different lines including 375 million items packed by them and teams of volunteers for D Day.

In a speech for Salute the Soldier Week June 1944, Bill Williams, Controller of Ordnance Services for the British Army, said this: 'War in itself is essentially wasteful and if we are to be victorious we must waste more, or what appears to be more, than the enemy. This is the cost of war.' 

The Waste of War is the story of the men and women who handled all those supplies and, in doing so, invented 21st century logistics.

Houses built at Donnington to accommodate the many ROAC men moved from Woolwich