Our Despatches from the Front (No. 156).
Page 21
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Motor Transport in the Mountains of the Vosges.
WITH A VBENCH MOTOR AMBULANCE.
16711, March, 1917.
. Our rest peribd is finished and
-we are once more back on the Front in the Vosges. Our orders to move arrived one evening, and at seven the next.morning the convoy moved off. The regulations laid down for travelling in convoy now provide that a round red disc shall be fixed to each tenth vehicle and that a gap of 50 metres shall always be lett between each a vehicle and the succeeding vehicle. The object of this is to allow crosstraffic to. pass, and it is very necessary as one often meets conveys of 30-odd lorries, while on one occasion a string of 80 was passed. .
After trekking for two days we
arrived at which is a charming little place by the side of a mountain lake, and proceeded to instal ourselves there. As the town is in peace-time a popular summer resort we found it very easy to obtain two furnished villas by the lake side, and I now live in luxury which is all the mare enjoyable after the weeks of sleeping on .straw. It is one of the paradoxes of this war that at the Front one often lives more comfortably than "en arriere "; of course, I speak of the ALT., and not of the infantry. Most of our work now consists of Outposts where one or more ears are detached for five days. I have just been away to A— for five days with four ears, and now have come up the mountainside to H
Gr— with one car only, for another five days. ' We are only • just behind the lines here and are, somewhat too close to our own artillery,for shells meant for them arrive in our own front garden, so to speak. However, as we live in a substantial cing-out, that is a minor consideration, but all the -same it is annoying to find the woodpile scattered liroadeast in the forest ; sometimes it works the other way, though, and we find a sturdy pine tree neatly cut off ready to hand.
The car reposes in a semi-dugout or shelf cut in the mountain side, and with the aid of some telephone cable we have installed electric light in our dugout from the C.A.V. lighting set. The " main " runs from tree to tree, and when the car comes, in we have only to attach the two leads to the accumulators. As dug-outs go we are not too badly off ; we have a. stove, and benches made up " aboardship " fashion, and as we are seven (not counting the many rats) we do not suffer from cold.
The water supply is a beautifully clear spring some yards down the hill-side, but for all supplies we have to _descend to the village below. Our great excitements are 'ta soupe" at 10.80 a.m. and 5.30 p.m., the arrival of the rum ration, and watching other people being shelled. A battery of our " heavies " got annoyed this afternoon for some reason unknown to us, so We are expecting friend Fritz to return their complinientg. As can be imagined, this mountamp work is terribly hard for motor vehicles. The climb up here is mostly first gear work ; the road is but a mountain track at best and abounds in shell holes, which are filled in with loose stones and earth, and which are now covered by the snow, forming traps for the unwary. A large amountof the traffic is done on rnuleback, and these cantankerous creatures always choose the most inopportune moment in which to run amok.
As a contrast to our ears there are sleighs and dog teams arid also cable railways ; these methods of transport will give you some idea of the natural difficulties of the country.
A night or two ago one of our cars had the starting handle bent right back under the radiator by a tree stump which was covered over by the snow' one cannot take a car over forest tracks without paying for it in some way or another.