ARMY COMMISSARY. The duties of an army or corps commissary, like those of division, brigade or regimental commissaries, are to see that all troops with or in his par ticular command are properly supplied with good and wholesome food; these duties for an army are, of course, on a more extended scale than for a regiment, but in general principles, forms, manner of procuring and issuing stores, in nearly all cases, the same rules will apply to the one as to the other.
The requisitions of an army commissary should always be approved by the commanding officer of the army; he should know accurately the number of troops in the command, and their different posts or stations. If the command is an extended one, there being many detached posts, he should at once ascertain the different methods of access to them, the probability of continuous or interrupted transportation, and endeavor to keep each post supplied in such a manner as to guard against any contingency arising from a lack of transportation. He should know the amount of stores on hand at any time, and the amount of stores due on any requisition. In order to facilitate his work, he should call upon all subordinate officers, par ticularly upon those having charge of stores in bulk, to make frequent reports (trimonthly are usually sufficient) showing the amount of stores on hand at each depot or post suitable for issue or for sale to officers. Should any
stores at the different posts become damage or unfit for issue, he should require that they be immediately reported to him, in order that he may make the necessary arrangements for replacing them. In an extended command he should make, or if his duties will not permit of his attending to it personally, he should have at least one practical commissary to act as an in spector, who should make frequent inspections of the stores at every post, examining the stores, their condition, quantity, quality, and, above all, the manner of caring for and pro tecting them.
The more stores are handled from the time they leave the depot until their final distribution to the different companies of the regiment for which they were drawn, the greater is the dam age and wastage, and when possible for the division commissary to draw in bulk, and issue at once on the proper returns, the damage is slight and the wastage, if any, is easily ac counted for by the one officer; but if he again transfers to a brigade commissary, who, in turn, transfers to a regimental commissary, the same wastage occurs in the second and third trans fer, and subsequent issues, as would occur in the first, while the proportion would be greatly reduced if but one officer had the entire charge of the issue.