Rear services
military forces concerned with military logistics and support
Rear services were those agencies in Warsaw Pact and Soviet style military forces concerned with military logistics and support. The Rear Services supplied the armed forces with ammunition, fuel, spare parts, food, clothing, and other material. They included the Central Military Medical Administration. Usually a deputy minister of defence served as chief of Rear Services for the armed forces. Rear Services encompasses mainly the Rear Services' Staff, several main and central departments and other services.
Structure
Major departments were:
Military Transportation which was the primary traffic management organization for the armed forces and was responsible for coordinating and planning supply movements by all means of transport.
Food Supply which both procured food from civilian agricultural enterprises and operated a military state farm system to supply troops, particularly those serving in remote areas.
Clothing Supply usually had its own clothing factories to manufacture uniforms and specialized gear.
The main and central directorates operated post exchange, health care, and recreational facilities for military personnel. The Rear Services also provided financial reports on armed forces activities to party and government organs.
“Rear services” enters the record as military forces concerned with military logistics and support. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Rear, services and military can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rear services” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.