NEVER-ENDING CHAIN

Evening Post, Volume XCII, Issue 148, 20 December 1916, Page 8

NEVER-ENDING CHAIN

FRANCE'S MOTORS AT VERDUN

4000 IN CONTINUAL USE.

Mr. Henry Wood, special correspondent of the United Press with the French Army, writes:

It is not improbable that some future poet will sing tho song of "The Four Thousand Automobiles of Verdun." When the Germans began their big drive last February the nearest railhead from which the French conld bring up their munitions and supplies was at Bar-le-Duc, some thirty miles away, and connected with ' Verdun by a single roadway capable of sustaining heavy motor truck traffic It was over tins one roadway that France 'T?mn y t <»tablishe<i «a endless chain of 4000 automobiles. . They maintained a uniform distance from each other of twenty yards, and moved at a uniform rate of one yard a second. There was only one order to be observed, and that was that never for a single second of the night or day must anything stop or slacken this endless, ever-rolling chain. If a chauffeur discovered something eoin X wrong with his machine, his duty was to run the automobile into the ditch before he should be obliged to stop in the roadway and clog the chain. At all hours there passed up and down the side of the roadway gangs of repair men. RUTHLESS METHODS. ,^1 i*t ily examiQed each machine as it had been run into the ditch If it was found that it could be quickly repaired it was repaired, and thruci back into the line. If it was found the accident was serious, the auto was ruthlessly cast aside, the repair gang merely carrying away the more essential and important parts' for use in making other repairs, x The cost of a single auto 'at that time was not worth the loss of a second to France. No road in the world could have sustained this chain of heavy traffic without constant repairs, and here again French genius solved the probera. A stone was found for macaclamr iJi u sufficlently soft to be crushed under the wheels of the autos themselves without the need of the roller. This stone was distributed along both sides of the roadway f or the cn b tire thirty males, as were also gangs of road repairers. The instant a hole or worn place appeared, a workman rushed in between two, automobiles and deposited a shovelful of the soft stone on m Tk He lea?- ed Wk * time to permit the approaching auto to pass over it, crushing it into the road bed and as this auto cleared it a second man leaped in between it and the next machine with another shoverful of stone this continuing till the weakened spot was again perfectly macadamised

WONDERFUL RECORD. For fully three months, until railways could be built, France kept up this endless chain of 4000 autos, 2000 moving up one side of tbe^oadway from Bar-le^uc as the other 2000 moved on in the oppo--16 A°m Verdun. The "^O a«t"mobiles included ako the ambulance autos that brought lack the wounded. Many of these were urgent cases, and yet these ambulances could only move at the established rate of one yard per second Hundreds of lives would have been lost had it not been for the field sections of the American ambulance stationed at Verdun. Equipped with small, light, speedy cars capable of going almost anywhere and everywhere that the heavy French auto-ambulances could not. go, the " rush " surgical cases were given to these American drivers. They were not given a place in the endless chain, but were allowed to dart into the intervening space of 60ft maintained between the cars, and then make their way forward as best they cooM. When an open field offered, they left the road entirely, and, driving across, would come back into line when they could go no further, and await another chance for getting ahead. They were able to bring the wounded down from Verdun often twice as fast as those who came in the regular ambulances, and always without ever committing the one great error on which the life of France depended—the tying up for a single instant of the endless chain of the 400 automobiles of Verdun.