"RICH MIXTURE."
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A Delectable Concoction.
Pressure of space has prevented us from dealing at all fully with "Rich Mixture" in the columns of Tim Comzingers!. Moron. This publication was produced as a souvenir of the Home Mechanical Transport Depot of the R.A.S.C., and the profits, which are estimated approximately to amount to £800, are earmarked for St. Dunstan's Hospital for blind soldiers. This magazine is not offered to the general public, hilt is
• intended for circulation amongst mechanical transport men only. It is edited by Major Charles C. Wheeler and Lt. Bertram Atkey, and it bears the impress throughout of really skilful editing.
Not unfairly, the H.M.T. Depot Mows its own trumpet, but keeps the fanfare to a solitary page. The usual answer to the question, " What does the H.M.T.D. do? " is that it maintains the War Office vehicles running in this country, but, as it says, the use of the word home" in the title is a bit of a misnomer. As is explained, if spare parts are requiredfor WI.). vehicles at Dar-es-Salaam, the H.M.T.D. has to supply them. If the vehicles at Salonika or the Murrnan Coast need tyres, then the H.M.T.D. must be
add
cabled to send them. Mechanical transport has worked wonders in the Mesopotamian campaign, and it is ever growing in India. For any of the thousands of items needed to maintain vast fleets of vehicles, varying from giant caterpillars and armoured cars to motorcycles, the H.I4f-T.D. must be approached, as there is no other source of supply open. From Egypt and Palestine, Cape Town, Italy and Malta, the demands for material' arrive.
Last and greatest of all is the enormous M.T. tleet in the service of the Allies in Franco and Belgium, and the great repair shops for maintaining it, the size and details of which, mold it be stated, would amaze those not acquainted with it. Every tyre, spare part, bolt, or even split pin, for maintaining the vehicles of this fleet, and all the lathes, tools, etc., for repairing it, flow through the H.M.T.D.
There are some interesting photographs of the commandant and his staff of officers, ind some exceptionally clever skits and caricatures.
Heath • Robinson, in his inimitable style, depicts a Beebe airman, with his machine blown to pieces about him, sail ing calmly through the air with scarcely. more than his crumpled steering ,wheel to sustain him, and communing with himeelf, "It seems to me that I the zone of fire approaching must be." The sketch is extremely funny in all the wealth of Heath Robinson detail.
The state of affairs at Kempton Park is skitted in a sketch which shows the lorries being sucked up out of the mud by means of a crane and powerful magnet, the job being auperintended by divers ; whilst Lt.-Col. D. J. Smith's new suction gas plant gets a very bad time in a double-page sketch, in which it is shown as _" The Genuine HushHush, or The Paralizer 75," with a gammeter and almost every other device known to mechanical science, togethee with a drawing office, workshop, and married quarters, not to mention the rest house and a complete culinary establishment.
We recommend our readers who are unable to get hold of a copy of "Rich Mixture" to find ab excuse for visiting the H.M.T.D. at Newton Street, and to ,refuse to leave the waiting-room until "Rich Mixture" has been scanned through from the first page to the last,