Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/785

Rh A-L Lines of 12

Infantry batfa >1 v I M Div: AmmCol:?' N Engineers O Pioneer batLa. \ P Armu Service \

Corps. ,. J^ ti |l ^H 3

Q-T four brigades o/Vj'i'iViiii-?-;

Field Artiller. " ""'

Army Ordnance. \

Relrtjious Institutes.

Miniature Rifle Ranges. C Barrack Expense Stores Q Bank branches and

Post Office.

CATTERICK CAMP (HIPSWELL DIVISION)

to 30 ft. wide with asphalt surface. Many small bridges will have to be reconstructed. Maintenance of such roads will have to be kept in view. In each unit camp plank paths (" duck boards ") will be necessary from the very first, from every hut, otherwise the whole place will become a quagmire.

Railway lines should be laid into every group of hutments (see plan of Hipswell Camp, fig. 4) and there should be a branch leading to a main line. The gradients should not exceed I in 50 and the curves 600' radius at a minimum. The construction of these camp lines was, in some cases where the sites had been hurriedly chosen, a matter of very serious difficulty.

(iii.) Water Supply. At Catterick Camp the water was obtained from the river Swale in a valley with steep banks about a mile above Richmond. It was conducted by gravity from a deep pool in the river to a pumping station where, after settling in suitable tanks, it was pumped up to two tanks holding in all one million gallons, where the water was chlorinated. From this position, which is sufficiently jlevated from the general level of the cantonment to command all parts by gravity, a 10 in. main leads along the main line of railway, ind branches are taken off to each unit eamp. A subsidiary storage tank of 100,000 gals, at the S.E. end of the cantonment, about two ind a half miles from the main tanks, provides against any incon-


 * renience caused by a temporary breakdown.

(iv.) Lighting. This subject was very carefully considered in the early days of the war and it was decided that electric light would ')e the safest and best, and by using aerial transmission lines sup- ported on simple poles, it would be as inexpensive as any other form.

] \ scale of lighting for various buildings was then carefully drawn up, apon which the whole system for any grouping of units was easily
 * alculated. In almost every case of a large hutted camp the installa-

, 'ion had to be provided de novo, for municipal supply was insufficient
 * o enable the current to be brought from the local installation of

iome adjacent town. A power station was then designed at some
 * entral spot and preferably near a stream where water for boilers

ind for construction tanks could be easily obtained. From this central station transmission lines radiated to various hutments. Dccasionally, and especially in camps (those for 1,000 men or less), jas from an adjacent town supply was used.

(v.) Refuse Disposal and Sewage. This subject presented diffi-
 * ulty owing to faulty selection of sites in some cases. For compara-
 * ively small camps the removal of solid matter was possible by cart-

ige and incineration; there being several patterns of destructor in
 * he market, it was only a. question of erecting one or more in suit-

ible places, and arranging for a regular system of conservancy. But rtith large bodies of men, 20,000 and upwards, this became very

, difficult, and in the larger cantonments a regular system of water- borne sewage was adopted. Here, again, cooperation with local bodies was tried as far as possible, but generally the task was too

great for town sewers (e.g. at Ripon, a town of 9,000 pop., the addi- tion of 42,000 men and 10,000 horses was far too great for the effi- cient use of the town sewers, and a separate purification plant had to be devised for the camp with an elaborate network of sewers). The sewerage system for the Hipswell Camp is indicated on the plan (fig. 4), as far as the hospital, beyond which point the main sewer is joined by the sewer from the other division (Scotton) and together the main sewer, now 18" in diameter, proceeds some two miles to the disposal works.

In any case some disposal works are necessary in every camp for the treatment of liquid sullage from lavatories, kitchens, etc. This sullage_ water is often very foul and had to be carefully filtered either in primary and secondary contact filter beds, or according to some other recognized method of sanitary engineering.

Other refuse from the camps can be dealt with by some simple form of refuse destructor.

Organization of Constructing Hulled Camps. The system of organ- ization in America is that each department of engineering has a separate and independent charge, one department doing all the sur- veys, another the building, another the water supply, and so on. In England the system was that, while the War Office technical staff supplied the type plans, the authorized rules for quantities of water, electric light, etc., the general approval of the order of urgency and of lay-out, and the selection of the contractor who executed the work, the whole of the local work was entrusted to an experienced senior Engineer officer. He had sub-departments under him for roads, railways, water, electricity, sewage, but he was entirely re- sponsible for coordinating their work and for the local application of materials. The actual execution was almost invariably in the hands of a large firm of contractors who worked on a system of cost plus percentage (which has- certain defects but which can be worked well on a competitive system). The superintending officer had authority to give instructions to the contractor, and was responsible for the supervision of his work and for regular and periodical pay- ment. The system worked well and expeditiously.

As regards materials, although some of the earlier camps had their walls built of corrugated steel on wooden framing, this material was rapidly exhausted, and the subsequent substitution of timber boarding caused such a famine of all sorts of scantlings and planks that every effort was made to use some other method. Light steel framing filled in with concrete vertical slabs was used with success, and framework with expanded metal plastered over was also used. Both these methods had the advantage of giving employment to such trades as bricklayers and plasterers, and thus not being so entirely dependent on carpenters.

Roofs were for the most part covered with one or another of the many waterproof felts in the market. In some cases corrugated steel sheets were used and a few hutted hospitals were roofed with