About thirty years ago, when I was a young curator, I received a request for information from an old gentleman in a nursing home in New Hampshire. As I recall the inquiry, it went something like this, “I was in the Field Artillery in WWI and we were supposed to receive ‘Combat Wagons’ to replace Escort Wagons to carry ammunition. We never got them. I am 93 years old I want to know what a Combat Wagon is!”
Well, I thought I knew what I was doing and that this would take about fifteen minutes to answer, when it actually took several weeks. It appears that very few people on the face of this God-forsaken little planet knew either. After a great deal of research I found one grainy picture and a bit of text.
Someone in authority decided that the escort wagons were too slow to keep up with the heavier horse-drawn artillery, such as the 155-mm Howitzer (Schneider), so a new vehicle was to be invented for this purpose. What resulted was an articulated two-vehicle contraption that was to be pulled by four horses. It was to have the same mobility as the cannon and limber had. Well, it did . . . sort of! It had the same capacity as the Escort Wagon, but was a hundred pounds heavier. Its cross country mobility was no better than that of the Escort Wagon and it was despised by those forced to use it. It was withdrawn from Field Artillery service and with its partitions removed became some sort of Engineer vehicle.
This is the second, and only clear, photograph of a Combat Wagon I have ever seen.
http://historylink101.com/2/bw/army_180 ... 7_e3b.html
I would be interested if anyone else has information on Combat Wagons.