ARMY TRANSPORT

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 65, 16 March 1940, Page 12

ARMY TRANSPORT

BUILDING OF RAILWAYS

VALUE OF OVERSEAS MEN

(By Air Mail, from '-The Post's" London Representative.)

LONDON, February 23.

A corps of railwaymen from New Zealand, Australia, and Canada is to be formed in France for survey and construction work. It hag been quite frankly stated in London that their arrival will be most-welcome, because railwaymen in the Dominions are much more practised at this type of work than their confreres in Britain. Pioneering days of railways in Britain are long past and comparatively few British railwaymen have wide experience of laying new lines. Hundreds of miles of railways are being.laid in France for the^British troops, and already 500,000 tons of rails have been shipped over the Channel. It has been admitted that lack of adequate survey units has delayed the work. Dominion surveyors will find plenty to do. Another handicap from the British poiift of view is. the fact that the type Of.--track being laid is different; from that used in Britain but is exactly similar to that in the Dominions. Men from overseas, used to the work, will make much quicker progress than those who have to learn the job.

Transport, of course, is the lifeblood of an army t and even the date of an offensive is governed by the rate of completion of a railway construction programme. There is no doubt that today the British Army is being served much better for railway and transport in every respect, compared with the. early stages of 1914. Then the railway side of the Army was relatively small, but the War Office quickly realised its importance 9pd the lesson was not lost. Today there are special schools for military railway personnel and 5000 men are training at two of them. ' :i ' i,■■■[ ■'..■ '■ : ■■; ;' ■; : .'.

Some idea of the vastness of the transport undertakings needed to serve the British Army in France today can be judged from the following facts. Already the railways in Britain have lost to the Army, personnel numbering 35,000 men. There are over a score of transportation depots in France and the material in each would,, roughly speaking, cover an area of 200 square yards to a depth of eight feet. In the last war Britain sent 1500 locomotives to France.,, This time the number may greatly exceed that total. There are 25 casualty trains in Britain and France, each capable of carrying [350 men and a staff of 40. No fewer than 100 ships are being used for the conveyance of personnel and materials. The movement of a single division may entail the use of 30 to 35 trains, and the fact that a division is mechanised does not greatly reduce the need for train transport. No fewer than 80, steel bridges have already been sent to France. . In ijie last war 11,000,000 letters a week were sent to France from Britain, and there was a .return postage of about 9,000,000. It is expected that there may. be even more this time. A division in the field .requires about 500 tons of food and materials ; daily, and most of this is moved by rail. Each man absorbs in one way or another about half a ton a month.