FRENCH LIGHT RAILWAYS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17199, 20 June 1916, Page 5

FRENCH LIGHT RAILWAYS.

SUPPLY PROBLEM- IN CHAMPAGNE. (From H. WARNER ALLEN, representative of the British Press with the French Army.) Speaking generally, the ordinary traffic from the rear to the firing zone passes over the Decauville railways, described in a preceding dispatch, while motor transport is mainly reserved for cases of emergency and for supplementary requirements. A motor lorry carries on an averago about three tons, while a single Decauvillo truck will carry about three times as much, and the difficulty of keeping up the roads for the motor lorries is enormously greater than that of maintaining the light railway track. Of course, if there came from the front n sudden urgent demand for extra ammunition, the motor lorries would at once bo invaluable, as they ware at Verdun, but as a general .rule the light railway bus very considerable advantages over the automobile. Thanks to this system, railhead is now often practically in the front lino trenches, if only the ground will provide sufficient cover. Failing cover, the two-fcot gauge lino can be supplemented in the wenches themselves by sixtoen-inch gauge rails, with handdrawn trucks. These rails can be laid without difficulty in the communication trenches, and increase a man's working power many times. It is estimated that one man with a truck mounted on these rails can do as much work in the way of hauling up ammunition, material, etc., as twenty-five or thirty men ooald do without this mechanical aid. The difficulty of carrying heavy loads along tho narrow, winding trenches is obvious, and it is likely that, as time goes on, thp main trench arteries will almost all be provided with rails. A military station where the ordinary and the Decauville lines meet behind tho front is a curious and interesting spectacle. I visited such a station, which provides for the revictxtalling of -10,000 men in Champagne. There was very little about it to suggest the civilian's ordinary notion of a railway station, Ifc was unenclosed and roofless, and tho only building was a small wooden hut, in which everything that is received and everything that is given out to the army commissariat officers is checked. The platform consisted of a long bank raised some four feet above the railway, slimy with mud and covered with what seemed an inextricable mass of cans and horses. Tho mud was bad enough on the platform, but it was much worse in the fields beyond it. where, as thero was not room for everything on the platform, several hundred commissariat waggons had taken up their position. Thero was just room for one cart to.pass another on the platform, and it took miracles of good driving and no little tact and commonsense on the part of tho gendarmes regulating the traffic to prevent everything being blocked in hopeless confusion.

A long line of goods trucks, sufficient to provide the daily needs of forty thousand men, had been run in alongside the platform, and everyone was hard at work loading tho commissariat carts with „nll that was needed by the troops. There were trucks of. hay and straw and oats, wood for fires and coal, and thousands of rondins, hewn logs used for tho making of the roads throughout the Champagne pouilleuse, since they afford a foundation which will keep above the mud. Not the least important of the trucks was the postal van, round which men had gathered with tho greatest eagerness to see what parcels and letters had been sent to them from home. BREAD DISTRIBUTION.

There were several truckloads of broad, fresh and appetising. The distribution of the- bread is an exception to the general system. As ;* rule all provisions are sent direct from the railhead to the troops. As, however, every division has in reserve three days' supplies with tho divisional convoys and three days' supplies with the regimental convoys, the bread in these reserves must be changed from time to time before it grows too stale for human consumption. Consequently, every few days the convoys distribute among tho troops their stock of broad and then obtain from the station fresh bread to be held in reserve:

The railway station is a junction with a two-foot Decauville, and is the starting-point of half a dozen small gauge lines. Provisions as a rule are, as I have said, taken off by horsedrawn carts. Sometimes, however, a truck or two on the Decauville must be devoted to them, when men in particularly awkward positions in tho front lines have to be revictualled. As vet, wounded men are rarely brought back by the light railways. It may be sometimes that a man or two, only slightly wounded, can be brought down from the , front on an ordinary truck,

trucks are being prepared specially for the transport of the wounded on these Decauville railways.

The main business of the light railway is the carriage of ammunition and material for the engineers. Immediately the ammunition reaches the station it is unloaded on the Decauville trucks. With surprising rapidity a small engine is.hitched on and steams off gaily to an ammunition depot, where some twenty or thirty men are waiting its arrival. The trucks stop exactly oppesito the sheds where the eh«lls are stored.

Each calibre of gun has its own particular shed. In the first shed one may .see rows of six-inch shells neatly arranged, thousands of them together, ready to be sent forward to the front at a moment's notice. They are painted an ugly yellow colour, and aro of several shapes and types. In another shed will be found hundreds of deadly looking olght-inch projectiles, even uglier than the smaller shell. " What beautiful shells," eaid an artillery officer who was showing me round.; ''it makes me quite happy to see them and to think .what they will give tho Bodies. Thero is nothing in the world like a good eight-inch shell." Suppose there is a move somewhere up among tho hills in tho north and word is sent <Lwn for several thousand rounds to be brought up immediately. A word at the telephone and a.'little train, with its absurd engine, will be up in front of the sheds.' In a few minutes tho trucks are loaded add are off to carry fresh food to tho big guns that aro stirring up the Germans some fifteen or twenty miles away. Thanks id organisation not a. minute is wasted. A CLEARING, HOSPITAL.

Alongside tho principal railway station of which I hxvo been sp?aking is a largo clearing hospital, which the medical officer in charge explained to me is to be. regarded as a mere waitingroom. It consists of a series of sheds, some with beds for the seriously wounded, others with benches for the slightly injured. There is a makeshift, operating room, so that in case of urgency operations can be performed, but as a general rule the purpose of the hospital is to sort out the wounded. In the past it was a heavy drain on the effectives that men suffering from insignificant injuries or ailments had to be transferred to the interior, where they would probably pass several months before they rejoined thenunits. Now all slight cases are despatched at once to neighbouring ambulances, by motor-car, and they aro able to rejoin with the minimum of delay. Certain serious cases, too, for which a train journey might be serious, are treated.at special hospitals in the army zone. The men who have to be evacuated to the hospitals of the interior are transferred directly from the ambulance to a hospital train which is drawn up opposite its gates. These trains provide accommodation for 350 wounded and are orovided with nurses and doctors. This system has given excellent results and it is likely that in the future the hospital tram will be utilised even more generally than it has been up to the present.