War salvage in Europe

[Tony Smith]

Diverting the course of this thread a little, but what to extent did recycling occur during the war? We have heard stories of scrap metal drives to feed war production, but how much scrap returned from the Front to be re-used in the factories? Presumably all those convoy ships crossing the Atlantic returned with nearly empty cargo holds, just as Road Transport supplying dumps near the front would have been "light" going back to the beachhead. I think of the amount of small arms and artillery brass cartridge case that would be measured in the tons, that today would be highly sought and valuable scrap. Perhaps rifle brass would have been uneconomic to retrieve in all circumstances, but artillery is generally at a fixed point at one end of an established line of supply. How much spent brass would have been stacked by the guns following the massive barrage of El Alamein? In both senses of the word, I would say thousands of Pounds worth!