An Ammunition Column was a support echelon of a British or Dominion brigade or division during the First World War and consisted of dedicated military vehicles carrying artillery and small arms ammunition for the combatant unit to which the column belonged, generally an Artillery Brigade or a Divisional Artillery.
Thus, the Ammunition Columns of a division, formed of the brigades of field artillery, carry reserve ammunition for the guns, the machine guns of the infantry and the rifles of all arms. Generally speaking, the Brigade Ammunition Column of the Artillery Brigades furnishes ammunition for its own batteries and for one of the brigades of infantry, and each is supported by a Divisional Artillery.
From the start of World War I, as they were newly established, BEF/Dominion Infantry Divisions came to be assigned a Divisional Artillery of three Field Artillery Brigades and one (Field) Howitzer Brigade, each Brigade having four batteries and a ‘Brigade Ammunition Column’. The British Army Divisional Artillery pre-WW1 included an additional Heavy 60-Pounder Battery. A Cavalry Division had two Horse Artillery Brigades each with 12 × 13-PDR guns. As warfare progressed and the tank was introduced the demands of ammunition supply to armored formations called for the development of like structures.
The British Army and Dominion Artillery prior to May 1916
Ammunition Columns, Brigade or Divisional, were officered and manned by the Royal Artillery and national equivalents. Intended for direct affiliation to their Brigades, and Divisions, they were additionally called upon to furnish ammunition to any unit requiring it during an action. The Officers and Gunners of the R.A. employed with an Ammunition Column were, as a matter of course, immediately available to replace casualties in the batteries.
The Horse Artillery and Heavy Brigades of Artillery each had their own Brigade Ammunition Column (BAC), organized in much the same way and performing similar duties. The Brigade Ammunition Column of the Heavy Brigade was divisible into three sections, so that the three batteries, if operating independently, have each a section at hand to replenish the ammunition expended. The Horse Artillery Brigade Ammunition Columns carried, besides S.A.A. for corps troops, other than artillery, the reserve of pom-pom ammunition.
The Howitzer Brigade Ammunition Column (BAC) included ammunition wagons (with limber), one wagon per howitzer, and one GS wagon for stores, with at least 132 horses (riding and draft, using six per wagon). The Columns operational task was to have available a constant supply, and bring forward, forty-eight rounds per howitzer, to a firing Batterys entrenched position, or to supply it to the Batterys own ammunition wagon lines. The Howitzer BAC was divided into two sections, they commanded by Lieutenants, each tasked to two Batteries, and included a Battery Sergeant-Major, a Battery Quartermaster Sergeant, a Farrier-Sergeant, Shoeing Smiths (of which 1 would be a Corporal), 2 Saddlers (driver equipment), 2 Wheel-Wrights, a Trumpeter, 4 Sergeants, 5 Corporals, 5 Bombardiers, 3 Gunners acting as Batmen, Signalers, Drivers, and The Gunners.
Some miles to the rear were the Divisional Ammunition Columns, which on the one hand replenish the empty wagons of the Columns in front, and on the other draw fresh supplies from the depots on the line of communication. According to the April 1915 War Establishment Organization Tables: New Army (40/WO/2425), it would have 12 Officers, 1 Warrant Officer, 10 Sergeants, 32 Artificers and 473 Other Ranks: Total 528 (and a Base Detachment of 49); seeing some 140 in No, 1,2,3 Sections and 84 in No. 4 Section plus a total of 683 horses. The Fifth Section: Heavy Portion for 60-pounder ammunition, were removed from the BEF DAC establishment in early in 1915 when the 60-pdr guns were withdrawn from Divisions.
The Divisional Ammunition Column collected ammunition from the Army Service Corps Divisional Ammunition Park, as the higher movement and supply of ammunition was coordinated at Corps level. A second scale of ammunition was stored in the Divisional Ammunition Park whilst a third scale was stored in the Corps Ammunition Park, which received and held replenishment from the Corps Ordnance Depot. Mechanical transport companies of the Army Service Corps carried out ammunition supply for RGA Heavy and Siege Batteries, given one company was included within each Army and Corps.
The Brigade Ammunition Columns and Divisional Ammunition Columns thus carried ordinarily seven or eight kinds at least of field, horse, howitzer and heavy gun shrapnel, howitzer and heavy gun lyddite shells, cartridges for the four different guns employed and pom-pom cartridges for the cavalry, in all twelve distinct types and varied small arms and machine gun ammunition. Consequently, the rounds of each kind in charge of each ammunition column must vary in accordance with the work expected of the combatant unit to which it belongs. This ‘operational decision’ additionally saw the abolition of the four integral ‘Brigade Ammunition Columns’ and they being broken up or absorbed into their supporting ‘Divisional Ammunition Column’.
Having to absorb three Field BACs and a Howitzer BAC, the DAC would take on additional authorized ammunition wagons, horses and personnel, and excess to establishment personnel would be moved as artilleryman to any of the sixteen gun/howitzer batteries, of the Division. This ‘internal’ reassignment of BAC gunner officers and artilleryman was consistent with past practices, as since 1906, it was an established routine to consider ‘ammunition column’ personnel, as a manning reserve and a source of timely replacements for ‘casualties’ in their brigades batteries.
In the ‘new’ Divisional Artillery ‘universal establishment’ structure, the Divisional Ammunition Columns reorganized around a new supporting model, standing up a dedicated ‘A’ Echelon, and a supporting ‘B’ Echelon. The ‘A’ Echelon comprised four ‘new’ Sections, now doing the work of the (four) Brigade Ammunition Columns, one for each of the Divisions mixed Artillery Brigades. Each common A Section, had the same task of bringing forward ‘first-line’ artillery ammunition, and small arms ammunition, to the batteries of an affiliated Artillery and Infantry Brigade, as previously did a Field BACs.
When the DACs absorbed the RFA BACs in May 1916, the DAC Establishment increased to 16 officers and about 800 men. In January 1917, when the Divisional Artillery was reduced to two brigades, the numbers in the DAC were reduced to 15 and about 700, and later in 1917 to 15 and about 600. By Aug 1918 they had further reduced to 15 and 569.