General News
14 December, 2024
Veteran's Voices
During World War I, the defence forces were faced with the immense challenge of moving men and supplies around.
A division (and brigade) train was a logistic support and supply unit under the command of the division to which its numeric designator corresponded.
Division trains were a prime mechanism to ensure the army could move and fight.
The tasks of the trains and motorised columns varied.
The basic tasks of train companies were to carry baggage and resupply food, forage and water for the headquarters and units of the division.
Without logistics there is no combat: ammunition, food, water and equipment supply, and maintenance are vital components of the combat power of an army.
It was Napoleon who first introduced a deliberate synchronised supply and maintenance system to support military ammunition columns and related entities under direct command of the divisional artillery headquarters, specifically charged with moving the vast quantities of (particularly) artillery ammunition.
In addition, the train companies supported division units with a wide variety of general tasks, ranging from providing drivers for formation headquarters and field ambulances to carting roadmaking materials and engineer stores, operating snow ploughs, using sleds to evacuate casualties through the mud, providing transport for postal deliveries, repairing unit equipment, and operating ad hoc pack transport units.
The supply columns and ammunition sub-parks, in addition to their basic tasks, hauled lumber, road metal, ordnance and postal cargo, petrol, quicklime, rails and medical comforts, as well as emergency mass medical comforts.
They also provided emergency mass medical evacuation and incidentally filled in as medical assistants at dressing stations.
1 Division Ammunition Sub-Park even published the AIF newspaper Rising Sun, later renamed Aussie.
Transport network
Rail transport was the main means of shipping service personnel and military equipment around the country.
However, Australian railways were not up to the demands of war.
Each state used a different gauge (track width), much of the rolling stock was unsuited to the task and not until early 1943 was rail transport centrally organised.
Yet, the demand for a quick and efficient means of transport only increased as coastal shipping was diverted for use by the armed forces or reduced by losses to enemy action.
The rail network in Queensland was closest to the fighting.
In 1942 the army had effective control of transport in northern Queensland.
This led to the Queensland Railways Commissioner and the federal Minister for Transport clashing with the Minister for the Army in a dispute that was solved only through the Prime Minister’s intervention.
By the end of the war hundreds of thousands of Australian and Allied soldiers, and even enemy prisoners, had travelled millions of kilometres on Australian trains.
[CROSSHEAD]Rail workshops
State railway workshops were established centres of industry that played a vital part in Australia’s war effort.
In 1942 the Ipswich Railway Workshops, Queensland, was a major centre of wartime production.
As well as constructing and maintaining the tracks, locomotives and rolling stock that were under increasing demand from military as well as civilian traffic, the workshops produced war material and provided the expertise and tools to test enemy weapons.
Ipswich Railway Workshops expanded in 1941 when the federal government constructed a tool and gauge room.
The skilled technicians at the railway workshop were able to provide support for the munitions factory at nearby Rocklea.
With sea lanes exposed to enemy attack, the Allies had a major problem moving troops and supplies overland to Darwin.
Troop trains could move armies from east to west but not from south to north.
The narrow-gauge Central Australian Railway from Adelaide ended at Alice Springs.
A single-line railway ran south-east from Darwin for 500km to Birdum.
The 1000km from Birdum to the Alice was partially traversed by rutted vehicle tracks.
In 1942 the AMF, CCC and the US Army worked together to build a road to connect the two railheads.
When the link was complete, truck drivers of the Australian Army Service Corps ran road convoys that transferred men and material that had been transported by troop train from supply depots and training camps in the south to the railhead to forward bases in the north.