FRENCH LIGHT RAILWAYS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11729, 20 June 1916, Page 3

FRENCH LIGHT RAILWAYS.

SUPPLY PROBLEM IN CHAMPAGNE (From H. WARNER. ALLEN, representative of tho British Press with tho French Army.) Speaking .doncrally, the ordinary traffic from tho roar to the firing zone posses over tho Docauvillo 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 average about three tons, while a single Dccauvillo truck will carry about three times as much, and the difficulty of keeping up tho roads for the motor lorries is enormously greater than that of maintaining the light railway track. Of course, if there came from the front a sudden urgent demand for extra ammunition, tho motor lorries would at once be invaluable, as they were at Verdun, but as a general rule the light railway has very considerable advantages over the automobile. Thanks to this system, railhead is now often practically in the front line trenches, if only tho ground will provide sufficient cover. Failing cover, the two-foot _ gauge line can be supplemented in the trenches themselves by sixteen-inch gauge rails, with handdrawn trucks. These rails can he laid without difficulty in tho communication trenches, and increase a man's working power many times. It is estimated i<hat one man with a truck mounted on those rails can do as much work in the way of hauling up ammunition, material, etc., "as twenty-five or thirty men oould do without this mechanical aid. Tho difficulty of carrying heavy loads along the narrow, winding trenches is* obvious, and it is likely that, as time goes on, the main trench arteries will almost all be provided with rails. A military station where the ordinary and the Decauville lines meet behind the front is a curious and interesting spectacle. I visited such a station, which provides for the revictualling of 40,000 men in Champagne. There was very little about it to suggest the civilian's ordinary notion of a railway station. It was unenclosed and roofless, and the only building was a small wooden hut, in which everything that is received and everything that is given out to tho 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 carts and horses. Tho mud was bad enough on the platform, but it was much worse in* the fields beyond it. where, as there was not room for everything on the platform, several hundred commissariat waggons had taken up their position. There was just room for ono cart to pass another on the platform, and it took miracles of good driving and no little tact and commonsense on the part of the gendarmes regulating the traffic to prevent everything being blocked in hopeless confusion. A long lino 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 the commissariat carts with all that was needed by the troops. There wero trucks of hay and straw and oats, wood for fires and coal, and thousands of rondins, hewn logs used for the 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 bread, fresh and appetising. The distribution of. tho bread is an exception to the general system. As a rule all Erovisions are sent direct from the railead 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 the troops their stock of bread and then obtain from the station fresh bread to bo 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 the front lines have to be revictualied. As yet, 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, but as a general'rule'they are left to tho motor ambulances. However, trucks are being prepared specially for tho transport of the wounded on these Decauville railways. Tho 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. Tho trucks stop exactly

opposite the sheds where the shells ar» 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 bo sent forward to the front at a moment's notice. They are painted an ugly yellow colour 5 and are of several shapes and types. In another shed will be found hundreds of deadly looking eight-inch projectiles, even uglier than the smaller shell. "What beautiful shells," eaid an artillery officer who was showing me round; "it irakes me quite happy to see them and . to think what they will give tho Bodies. There is nothing in tho world, like a good eight-inch shell.' 3 Suppose there is a move somewhere up among the hills in tho north and word is sent down for several thousand rounds to be brought up immediately. A word at the telephone and a little train, with its absurd engine, will ha i up in front of the sheds. In a few minutes the trucks are loaded and are off to eaTry fresh food to the big gunk that are stirring up the Germans soma fifteen or twenty miles away. Than«B to organisation not a minute is wasted. A CLEARING HOSPITAL. Alongside the principal, railway atsw tion of which I have been speaking if a.large clearing hospital, which tJ« medical officer in charge explained to me is to ho regarded as a mere waitingroom. It consists of a series of sheds* some with beds for the seriously wound* ed, others with benches for the slightlj injured. There is a makeshift ope*j ating room, so that in case of urgenoj, operations can be performed, but aj a general rule the purpose of the hos* pital is to sort out the wounded. Jsi tho past it was a. heavy drain on tiid effectives that men suffering from in* "•*- significant injuries or ailments had t<* be transferred to the interior, whew they would probably pass several months before they rejoined theif units. Now all slight cases sx& de» spatched at once- to neighbouring auw bulances by motor-car. and. they arj able to ro'join with the minimum <9 delay. Certain serious cases, too, ftf which a train journey might be serf* ous, are treated at special hospitals in the army zone. The men who hav« to be evacuated to the hospitals of the interior aro transferred directly front the ambulance to a hospital train which is drawn up opposite its gates. These trains provide accommodation for 350 wounded and aro provided with nurses and doctors. This system has given excellent results and it is likely that m the futuro the hospital train will be utilised even more generally than it has been up to the present.