Commissariat (see also sutler). As the name suggests, this was a military office dating from Roman times responsible for food supplies. The alternative (at least when away from home depots) is foraging, developed to a fine art form by French troops during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. But letting troops scatter over the countryside in search of food has a number of drawbacks, among them vulnerability to, for example, guerrilla reprisals and increased opportunity to desert. In general, discipline and unit cohesion require a regular and dependable supply of food by the army itself.
In some armies the commissariat is synonymous with QM, but others have divided the duty of supplying food to the troops between the two offices. In the American civil war, for example, Confederate commissaries were primarily responsible for the procurement of food from the agricultural regions under Southern control and arranging its transportation to the armies in the field. It was only at this point that the QM would take over and oversee the distribution process. But more typically the role of the latter has been to supply troops with all manner of goods, including weapons, munitions, clothing, footwear, tents, and a plethora of minor items. By contrast, the commissary officer has been responsible for the provision of rations alone.
This makes the commissariat the most suspect and vilified department of any armed force, at any time and any place in history, with some justification. In the British armed forces, the commissary was also entrusted with the administration of government funds in the field (the ‘chest’), far from supervision and where the opportunities for peculation could be irresistible. The fortune amassed by Clive was already significant after a mere two years administering the commissariat in Madras, and many another has enriched himself similarly.
This said, the functions for which a commissariat is responsible are vital. The saying ‘an army marches on its stomach’ is attributed to Napoleon on St Helena—perhaps after having had time to consider how lack of attention to this very fact lost him armies in Spain and Russia. In Elizabethan times, the stomach was considered the fount of courage, as the phrase ‘not to have the stomach’ for some challenge lives on to remind us. The importance of food supplies to an army on campaign cannot be overestimated, and failure by the commissariat can imperil operations more than any other factor. To return to the Confederate example, the incompetence and suspect honesty of commissary officers was noted by many during and after the conflict as a significant contributory cause in the defeat of the rebellion.
Yet the commissary officer's lot is not a happy one. He might buy good quality food, only to have it spoil in warehouses or sent to the wrong destination, and whatever he does troops will grumble, as they always have and always will. A number of mutinies have been precipitated by grievances over food and commissaries beaten up or killed. Generally looked down on by other officers and more drably uniformed, few have had the opportunity to show their worth in combat. Assistant Commissary Dalton VC, of Rorke's Drift fame, stands like a proud lighthouse above the sea of muttering and innuendo that in general obscures the vital work done by those of his calling throughout the history of men at war.
— Andrew Haughton
