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by
(Published by Leo Cooper and REME, 1970)
425 pp, maps and illustrations
Available from Regimental Headquarters REME
Isaac Newton Road, Arborfield, Reading, RG2 9NJ, United Kingdom
Order through the REME Association Shop
In the days of bow and arrow, pike sword and battle-axe it was reasonable to expect every soldier to be responsible for the upkeep of his own arms and equipment. The Assize of Arms of 1181 which seems to have been the first attempt to legislate for the good condition of Army equipment not only enforced this individual responsibility but also forbade a soldier to sell or pawn his arms and enjoined him to bequeath them to his heirs. From this point the compilers of this excellent history of REME describes its early historical background. The simple arrangements of the twelfth century for the provision and maintenance of military equipment were to last for a long time, until the publication in 1900 of an appeal letter from the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Leicester, asking for subscriptions towards the "proper equipment" of the county contingent of the Imperial Yeomanry then under orders for South Africa.
From the beginning of the twentieth century until the outbreak of the Second World War the serious business of providing and maintaining army equipment was mainly in the hands of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, with certain exceptions so far as the Royal Engineers and Royal Army Service Corps were concerned. In the inter-war years evolution was slow, because the mechanization of the Army was slow and because the Army, unused to mechanical equipment and unlike the Navy, had no established engineering branch.
The gradual acquisition of mechanical equipment, together with the storm clouds which were obviously gathering on the political horizon, began to generate a trend of thinking in the Army which was moving in the right direction, and when war broke out some degree of standardization had been achieved, the Master General of the Ordnance had been abolished and the Ministry of Supply formed with responsibility for the design and development of electrical and mechanical equipment. Nevertheless, in 1939 the Army went to war with equipment itself inadequate, which it neither properly understood nor could maintain because it lacked the necessary expert personnel at all levels. By February 1940, half the transport of the British Expeditionary Force was reported off the road awaiting or undergoing repair. Then came the loss of all this equipment at Dunkirk, a disaster which if anything, tended to obscure the extent of the Army's inadequate resources for maintaining it.
Meanwhile the Desert War was providing its lessons and directing thought along the lines which were to lead to the reorganization which was soon to come. Few people will know, however, that it fell to Sir William Beveridge, later to become famous for his great social service plan, to recommend the formation of REME in his capacity as chairman of a Committee on Skilled Men in the Services.
The new Corps began its career on 1 October 1942, just three weeks before the battle of Alamein. The Royal Warrant which ushered it in made the important provision that its personnel were to be combatant in the fullest sense. REME was certainly born in battle in the Middle East, and it quickly justified itself in the long, fast moving campaign from Alamein to North Africa. Brigadier Kennett and Colonel Tatman have brought together a detailed and comprehensive survey of the Corps's activities in all theatres of the Second World War, in Korea and in the smaller campaigns which followed.
Craftsmen of the Army - Volume II
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