Company clerks 16 Mess caterers 18 Officers’ mess cooks 4 Men’s cooks 18[40] Butchers and cattle guard 12 Officers’ grooms 27 Transport drivers with scout sections 13 Instructors 4 Stretcher-bearers 128 Baggage guard 48[41] With water donkeys 16 Officers’ orderlies 80 Sergeant-major of non-combatant company 1 Transport driver non-commissioned officers 5 Despatch riders 20 Bandsmen 35 Drummers 33 Reserve in case of sickness and wounded 13 ――― Total 491
All these must be classed as non-combatants. Adding to these the prescribed establishment of 159 non-combatants, we shall get a total of 650 with each regiment of four battalions. They should all be armed, and be ready to fight either in the advanced lines or with the baggage.
The value of machine-guns is now so great that we cannot afford to be without them. In my opinion, each company should have one gun, and six men should be detailed to carry it and its ammunition. Thus, there would be 100 men with the machine-guns in a regiment (including four reserve men). The scout sections also did such useful service in the recent war that we ought certainly to have dismounted and small mounted scout sections in each regiment. This would take up 200 more men. Finally, the strength of every company, exclusive of all these extras, should be fixed at 250 rifles, which would make 4,000 in the regiment. The strength of a regiment would, therefore, total as follows:
Combatants (in sixteen companies) 4,000 Scout sections 200 Machine-gun sections 150 Non-combatants 650 ――――― Total 5,000
The present establishment of a four-battalion regiment is 3,838 combatants and 159 non-combatants; total, 3,997. Therefore a total increase of 1,003 per regiment is desirable. Including fifteen men in every company for supply duties, the authorized non-combatant element works out at:
Non-combatants 159 Bandsmen, drummers, buglers 69 Regimental quartermaster-sergeants 3 Sergeant-majors and baggage non-commissioned officers 6 For supply duties 240 ――― Total 477
Fixing the total number of non-combatants required at 650, I thus add to the expenditure authorized by existing establishments 173. These, including stretcher-bearers, would never go into action. Thus, the addition necessary to bring the fighting element of a regiment up to 5,000 comes out as follows: