'DOING THEIR BIT."
Page 17
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Lively Times of the M.T. on the Flanders Front.
APASSING REMARK to another in which the words field ambulance were used, brought a young Irish Guardsman to my, "It's not an ambulance that I would like to drive at all. They have a bad time with the darkness and the mud and the ,shell holes, and it's doing their bit they are."
I did not knep the speaker. Coming from an Irish Guardsman, it was an unexpected and handsome acknowledgment of M.T. work. I found that the night before he had ridden down wounded, and on-the front of an ambulance. They had been held up on a shelled road whilst the remains of two other ambulances were being ,cleared. In one case the back, and in the other the front of the car had been blown bodily away. In this forsaken part of Belgium—forsaken because it is agricultural and offers but little comfoat in the way of large prosperous town centres—a day's run offers many little features that may
prove :nteresting. The roads have a ..narrow pave centre with sides that turn into -quagmires speedily under a little rain.
Driving a lorry becomes an exciting job. Every inch of centre firm road is a. precious asset against being stalled. We quarrel over decimals of inches with those going in the opposite direction, and are careful to give no advantage. Equal share we give grudgingly;. but mom, never !
The infantry's great job is to dig themselves in. Ours is the great job of digging ourselves out. There are roads lined with lorries parked on the quagmired sides. These lorries are to be seen in various stages of submersion in the sticky viscous stuff. They cannot rest on the firm pave centre, for that is being used by the passing traffic which itself is in constant danger of slipping into the morass.
Here -is an ammunition column of Alhions who will be working from 3 p.m. onwards. I Pass on the way home about 12.30 to find them busy in preparing
get a start. We are asked to give a tow, and, after the ropes are fixed, find the game hopeless. Two other passing lorries are impressed to help, and the three of us, after a big struggle, tow and pull the derelict out. That gives them a start, and several hours work will be necessary to get that convoy on to the road—to return at night or early morn and park again in the morass.
Such is the game of hundreds of lorriea here, and the driver's worst job is a kind of mudlarking. Sometimes our lorry skids, and the two nearside wheels drop into the quagmire. We brace ourselves to the game before us, which is to get the front wheel up the 12 in. drop from
the pave to the morass. Again and again we dive into the gluey mass for large stones, build up a foundation and' rush for it. An hour. sees us again on the move; but not before some of the men on the morassed convoy near have assisted us, diving cheerfully into the mud as though use had made them love
it.
These convoys with their drunken attitudes suggest a delirious night out, instead of a fearserne crawl in the darkness with loads of live shell. This night work is deadly enough, but the convoy who worked to a certain battery &ring the day tared as badly as any I've yet had news of. There were 12 lorries fully loaded and waiting on he roadside to be unloaded. Fritz shelled and all took cover, including the artilleryman who was my informant. Ones shell caught the foremost lorry and, the ammunition went up. One after another the other lorries went up in turn until the whole were finished, One live shell fell into the dug-out where the narrator was, together with several of the M.T.s. Luckily it did not explode, having no fuse attached, else I would not have heard the tale.
Such tales are not rare. Almost every day I meet men who relate true stories of hairbreadth escapes, and with the atmosphere of their stricken lorries to give convincing evidence. Such a lorry was a C.C. type Cornmer that had its chassis back and water tank blown away and engine riddled. It had done three years good service and owed us nothing. The driver had a miraculous escape, a piece of shell tearing the woodwork just above his head, only missing him by inches.
Another that I looked at, on the same day, had its gear levers smashed and. gearbox twisted nearly off. Here the driver had been killed instantaneously. The lorry behind had also been put out. of action, and the driver told me a rather curious story that the concussion of the exploding shell stopped hi a engine and lorry dead. It sounds improbable, and I imagine that he subconsciously and automatically stopped her himself.
A car driver on this front recently was badly stuck in the mud and proceeded to dig himself out. Gas shells came over to 'lighten the job, and he had to don his gas helmet. For 3i hours he worked with thil on' the sweat running down his face in streams and blurring the glasses in front. However, this wan not so bad as another of his experiences. He was stuck for seven days on the Somme front, existing on whatever grub
he could rummage, and, like Robieson Crusoe, marching the horizon every day for a promise of help. A sister, whilst looking at the lighted sky during an aeroplane raid, remarked the other night, "How pretty it is and haw much prettier it must be near the front." I've cursed the firewurks heartily myself, but can imagine the intense'fervour with which our friend must have greeted them after sevea nights of it on a lorry that persisted in thinking itself a submarine. Star shells weirdly rising and lighting with stage effect, a stage of mud and wreckage. Intense silence, alternating with a pandemonium of noise. Seven days and nights in a world of unreality, and as helpless to move as Crusoe himself to more sor:ial things.