Water for the Desert Mounted Corps
A historian corrects some errors he made
In Does History Have a Replication Crisis?, Anton Howes notes that historians do a pretty poor job of correcting each others’ errors. Reading that article (which I recommend to all who dwell in Clio’s realm) inspired me to correct an error I made some years ago in my book On Armor.
In Footnote 9 of Chapter 2, I gave the wrong figure for the weight of 8 gallons of water ("16 pounds.") Assuming that the gallons in question are Imperial gallons, this figure should be 80 pounds.
The figure for the tonnage of supplies needed to keep the 18,000 cavalry horses of Desert Mounted Corps in fighting trim ("324 tons"), which is based upon the figure for the weight of water, is also in error. It should be 900 tons.
Thus, the footnote should read as follows.
Captain Burns calculated that each cavalry horse required eight gallons (80 pounds) of water and 20 pounds of forage each day. Burns, ibid., p. 3. Given a "saber" strength of 18,000 mounted men, this meant that the daily tonnage of supplies needed to keep the cavalry horses of the Desert Mounted Corps in fighting trim would have amounted to 900 tons a day.
A PDF copy of the corrected chapter can be found here, at the Military Learning Library.
Great comment, I have noted among historians and others in recent years that anytime an historian starts to recount history they should open with “as best we can tell now from the sources available to us, this is what we think happened....” and numbering myself among the mathematically challenged I feel your pain.