Across all the fighting fronts – and for all the warring nations – maintaining supply routes and networks was of crucial importance. It could make or break an advance. British ASC officer G Rae explained how key this was to the Allied force that fought in the Mesopotamian Campaign.

Obviously, the most vital question for the advance from Basra right up through Mespotamia as far as right up to Kut-al-Amara, was the question of supply. For the army crawls on its stomach, and unless and until we had the supply situation completed, we were handicapped in advancing very far up. But fortunately, we were able in the very early stages of the campaign to establish our base at Basra.

The further British armed forces ventured from Britain, the more the supply lines were stretched. The logistical challenges of the Palestinian desert pushed men to their limits – as Edgar Woolley recalled.

The rail transport, which was so necessary and important for the maintenance of supplies and staff and food to the line as it advanced, was at times very difficult. And as the first necessity was military equipment – to maintain the advance elements of the Army in case of an enemy counter attack – such normal things as clothing and food were often, I think, given second consideration. In the result at times we frequently had to go without decent food at all. The only thing we relied on were biscuits and, occasionally, bully beef. The army biscuits were like, almost like chewing – they were almost identical to dog biscuits. Personally I hated the things. I couldn’t stomach them, could hardly chew them.

On the Western Front, a vast system was put in place to enable ammunition to reach the troops. After supplies had arrived at various railheads – several miles behind the lines – they were placed on motor vehicles to go by road to divisional refilling points. Tom Bromley transported ammunition by lorry.

We were stationed between Corbie on the River Somme, which was a railhead – that is to say, the railway came up to that point from the Channel Ports. And we were engaged in transporting the ammunition from the railhead up to the front, forming ammunition dumps and supplying the gun positions. Apart from ourselves engaged on this work, there was a lot of horse transport – horse transport galore! But even so, we had 18 pounders, 4.5 howitzers, 60 pounders, 4.7’s and grenades and this and that – bits and pieces – which we transported to the front to feed the guns and build up dumps, which were obviously to be used later on.

ASC driver Frederick Dunkley found that his job kept him very busy.

With my job on the Western Front I was connected with the mechanical transport, which of course entailed the transporting by mechanical vehicles of all sorts of supplies to the front. We must bear in mind that the mechanical vehicles were solid-tyred, no windscreens and very, very difficult vehicles to drive on the roads that the conditions prevailing. A normal day could easily consist of picking up a load from a railhead of High Explosive ammunition, delivering this probably a distance of 20 km to a dump, returning to a rail head, picking up a supply of foodstuffs and delivering this to another dump of a different kind, possibly in the same area because we were a Divisional Supply Column. And then it could easily be that, when one returned to the unit, you were detailed to go to an entirely different place or railhead… Alright, perhaps, but we must bear in mind, the conditions of the roads. And these journeys were not easy.

Thomas Olive also drove ammunition around the Western Front. He described how lorries were repaired if they got into difficulty on the uneven roads.

All these columns – they used to call them columns – a column of lorries, you know, attached to the 3rd Division or 5th Division, whatever it might be. But they all had a workshop lorry travelling with them. The means of working it was with a little Douglas engine and in the floorboard of the lorry there was a big square space cut open and mounted on a block, a concrete block, was this little Douglas engine. And they lowered it onto the floor and they connected the belt up to the lathe or the drills, whatever it was. Of course, they couldn’t do heavy repairs, that was sent down to base or left or anything like that. But for light repairs – turning up a shaft or anything like that, doing valves or whatever it might be – we utilised it for that.

Ammunition was taken from the dumps or refilling points up to the artillery positions by men or by horse transport. James Goodson carried out this work in his role as part of the 4th Divisional Ammunition Column.

Evidently they were short of drivers. Probably they’d had a lot of casualties, I don’t know. But four or five of us went from the battery to help, to join the DAC: the Divisional Ammunition Column. Our job there was supplying the guns. You had to find what ammo you wanted and take it yourself. We got it from dumps in the neighbourhood where they were. We had some tricky little jobs. Sometimes the guns was up the side of the infantry. Well in that case it meant going up very quietly in the middle of the night, you know. You can guess how it was with the ground all chewed up with mud and, oh the mud. Mud – mud was the enemy.

A huge amount of food was consumed by Britain’s armed forces during the First World War. Supplying millions of men with their rations was a complex operation. Food destined for men on the Western Front was unloaded at the Channel Ports. Alec Thomson supervised such work at Le Havre in 1917.

I was made a lance corporal then, in charge of some men. We went down the docks to unload the boats, you know – beef and tinned stuff and boxes and everything like that. Sides of beef, you know, sides of quartered beef, bullocks cut up – the meat ships. Onto trucks up for the line, you know, further up. I’d maybe have 20 men some days, some days you had 30 men. I was in charge of them, you see, that was my job – seeing everything was going alright. I didn’t lift anything, oh no.

William Kirk outlined how rations were then transported and divided up for the various units.

The whole job had to be done to fit in with what was happening. We’d get an order to refill that day at a certain place. We waited, the lorries as far as they dared come, and the stuff was dumped. We took it over from them. Then we started to get it ready for the regiments. The regiment’s representative was there, often the quartermaster sergeants. We knew the strength of his regiment, could be 600, 800 or whatever it was. And we had to issue the rations which had already been demanded through the head office, like. They would come from the nearest railhead – the nearest place the roads was good enough for them to come. And then it was transferred from the lorries to the horse transport for going up to where they wanted. It all had to be done by guess, there was no scales allowed. It took a bit of thinking out – you’ve got to, it was a case of wanting to use your brain. I had to use my brains, I tell you! It bothered me sometimes, I mean, to wonder whether I was going to get through!

At the end of this supply chain, the men in the front line received their welcome rations of food. John Grover of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry recalled how this final stage worked.

They came very well indeed. Of course in the forward areas they had to be carried up by ration parties. It was quite a business, because you had your transport lines well out of the line. And then every night the ration parties came up – the transport was horse-drawn, what they called limbered wagons – and your rations were made up by company units and they came up with a quartermaster sergeant to accompany it to some dispersal point from which they had to be carried forward by carrying parties every night. But they always arrived and they were made up in advance according to the sub-units they were going to so that you got a sandbag containing the rations for so many men.

A whole range of other equipment – from clothing to fuel – was vital for keeping men ready for battle. These supplies were issued by each unit’s quartermaster. NCO William Skipp once found himself under pressure in this role.

When I was a company quartermaster sergeant, of course, one of my duties was the issue of everything: food, clothing – an issue of tobacco or cigarettes came up, it was my job to distribute it. Well, I always remember, I had an issue of khaki and my company being the biggest company, I was the only one to get this particular issue. Well the quartermaster gave it to me; I issued it all in good faith. Two days later, after we’d had a shower or two of rain, that khaki turned purple. Well, of course it sent up quite a giggle and my particular company were known as the bright boys, you know – with other two words put in. Well, that wasn’t so bad but we had a battalion parade. And when the colonel came to my company, he said, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ And of course the quarter bloke was always responsible for anything like that that went wrong. Well, he chewed me up – I wouldn’t like to repeat the actual language he used – but he said, ‘Get them changed by the next parade!’

Although members of the ASC worked behind the front line they were still serving in a war zone, and faced the dangers this entailed. In July 1916, ASC officer Percy Douglas was wounded while transporting ammunition.

The road between Fricourt and Montauban was a sunken road, very narrow, and it was known as the Valley of Death. Because every few hundred yards or so, there was a dead mule and a smashed up limber or wagon. And the Germans, of course, kept dropping shells all night at odd intervals along this road; of course, they had the range of it. We sort of got instructions to go up one night and I took 14 GS wagons with me and a sergeant and we went into Fricourt, there was a large ammunition dump by Fricourt. Well, we loaded up with bombs and small arms and ammunition and then we proceeded up the Valley of Death. Eventually, we got up to this dump where we were to unload the wagons. We were met there by an RE party, who unloaded the wagons. We turned them around and started to go back again. There was a tremendous bang and I came to in a ditch. I’d been hit by a fragment from a 5.9 high explosive shell…

As well as the Army Service Corps, many other units were involved in keeping the war machine in operation. A vast amount of labour was employed. Huge numbers of men built roads and trenches, worked at depots, stores and canteens and carried out many other tasks besides. Frederick Higgins outlined the functions of both the Pioneer and the Labour Corps.

Every division for the fighting troops had a regiment of some sort attached to them of what they call the Pioneer Corps. The pioneer regiment done all the work required, you know, such as helping on the trench digging and all sorts of general repairs that might be required. All sorts of work, jobs like that went on, to keep things moving or to help the troops to do their job. The Labour Corps was any man who could do a job of work, any sort of work even if it was only labouring. They’d gather them all together and distributed them out to various places, various camps, working in the camps you know and helping the cooks and all sorts of jobs. Everything that required doing, there was always somebody to do it.

Manual work was also carried out by members of the Egyptian, Indian, Chinese and other Labour Corps. Thousands served in these forces. A Fletcher worked with members of the Chinese Labour Corps at one of the ammunition depots in 1917.

At this time most of the heavy labour of our depot was done by Chinese. We had about eight hundred of them. They were not recruited men, they were not army men, they came over under contract, they came from the paddy fields of China and most of them had never seen Europe until they arrived at France for this purpose. They knew no language but Chinese and of course we couldn’t speak Chinese, they had interpreters. They were very strong and extremely good to work with.

During the war, the ASC grew to over 325,000 soldiers. These men – and others – achieved the impressive feat of maintaining the supply of men, equipment, goods and ammunition to a vast war machine across a multitude of fighting fronts. Tom Bromley was proud that, although the work could be dangerous, he and his comrades didn’t buckle under pressure.

We were under stress, if you can use that word. The question of rest didn’t enter into it; it was night and day, get what rest you could. But the ammunition had to be delivered where it was needed, regardless of the comfort of the individual. And I would say this, that our boys – practically all of whom were volunteers in the first instance – knew what was required of them and didn’t hesitate to carry out the tasks assigned to them, with a cheerful heart. They were very efficient in doing the job, keeping the lorries on the road and making sure that the guns received the ammunition that they wanted. Now this wasn’t done without danger, of course. Sometimes under great difficulties, not only of shell fire and there was great confusion, breakdowns, horse transport in the way, troops trying to come up and down, ambulances coming back with the wounded – oh, tremendous confusion, sometimes – but nevertheless, we got the job done, without complaint. Never any question of any hesitation in getting on with it.

Voices of the First World War is a podcast series that reveals the impact the war had on everyone who lived through it through the stories of the men and women who were there.