Italy at War and the Allies in the West

by E. Alexander Powell

"But our Ordnance Department claims that they cannot fire two thousand rounds without heating and jamming," I remarked.

"Who ever heard of a machine-gun being called upon to fire two thousand rounds under actual service conditions?" he asked scornfully. "On the front we rarely exceed two hundred or three hundred rounds; five hundred never. Long before that number can be fired the attack is broken up or the gun is captured."

"In any event," said I, "the American War Department, to whom Colonel Lewis offered his patents, asserts that the gun did not make good on the proving-grounds of Flanders."

"Well," was the dry response, "it has made good on the proving-grounds of Flanders."

The pretty little casino at Paris Plage, where, in the days before the war, the members of the summer colony used to dance or play at petits chevaux, has been converted into a lecture-hall for machine-gunners. Covering the walls are charts and cleverly painted pictures which illustrate at a glance the important rôles played by machine-guns in certain actions. They reminded me of those charts which they use in Sunday-schools to explain the flight of the Israelites out of Egypt or their wanderings in the Wilderness. Seated on the wooden benches, which have been brought in from a school near by, are a score or more of sun-reddened young Englishmen in khaki.

"Here," says the alert young officer who is acting as instructor, unrolling a chart, "is a picture of an action in a little village south of Mons. A company of our fellows were holding the village. There are, you see, only two roads by which the Germans could advance, so the captain who was in command placed machine-guns so as to command each of them. About five o'clock in the morning the Germans appeared on this lower road. Now, the sergeant in charge of that machine-gun, instead of taking cover behind this hedge with this brook in front of him, had concealed his gun in this clump of trees, which, as you see, are out in the middle of a field. No sooner had he opened upon the Boches, therefore, than a detachment of Uhlans galloped around and cut him off from the town. Then it was all over but the shouting. The Germans got into the town and our fellows got it in the neck. And all because that fool sergeant didn't use common sense in choosing a position for his gun. They marked his grave with a nice little white cross. And that's what you boys will get if you don't profit by these things I'm telling you."

There you have an example of the thorough preparation which is necessary to wage modern war successfully. It is not merely a matter of a man being taught how to operate a machine-gun; if he is to be of the greatest value he must be taught how to place that gun where it is going to do the maximum damage to the enemy. And, by means of the graphic Sunday-school charts, and the still more graphic sentences of the officer-teacher, those lessons are so driven home that the men will never forget them.

Virtually everything between England and the fighting front is under the control of the L. C.—Lines of Communication. This vast organization, one of the most wide-spread and complex in the world, represents six per cent of all the British forces in France. Of the countless forms of activity which it comprises, the railways are by far the most important. Did you know that the British have laid and are operating more than a thousand miles of new railway in France? As the existing railways were wholly inadequate for the transportation of the millions of fighting men, with the stupendous quantities of food and equipment, new networks of steel had to be laid, single tracks had to be converted into double ones, mammoth railway-yards, sidings, and freight-houses had to be built, thousands of locomotives, carriages, and trucks provided. This work was done by the Railway Companies of the Royal Engineers, behind which was the Railway Reserve, whose members, before the war, were employed by the great English railway systems. Wearing the blue-and-white brassard of the L. C. are whole battalions of engineers and firemen, bridge-builders, signal-men, freight handlers, clerks, and navvies, all of them experts at their particular jobs. It is impossible to overrate the services which these railway men have performed. They build and staff the new lines which are constantly being constructed; they repair destroyed sections of track, restore blown-up bridges; in short, keep in order the arteries through which courses the life-blood of the army. They are the real organizers of victory. Without them the men in the trenches could not fight a day. You cannot travel for a mile along the British front without seeing an example of their rapid track-laying. They have had to forget all the old-fashioned British notions about track permanency, however, for their business is to get the trains over the rails with the least possible delay; nothing else matters. Engaged in this work are men who have learned the lessons of rough-and-ready construction on the Mexican Central, on the Egyptian State Railways, on the Beira and Mashonaland, and on the Canadian Pacific, and the rate at which they cause the twin lines of steel to grow before one's eyes would have aroused the admiration of such railroad pioneers as Stanford and Hill and Harriman.

The engines for use on these military railways are sent across the Channel with fires already built and banked, water in the boilers, and coal in the tenders. They come in ships specially constructed so that the whole top deck can be lifted off. Giant cranes reach down into the hold and pick the engines up and set them down on the tracks on the quays, the crews climb aboard and shake down the fires, a harassed-looking man, known as the M. L. O. (Military Landing Officer) turns them over to the Railway Transport Officer, who is a very important personage indeed, and he in turn hands the engineers their orders, and, half an hour after they have been landed on the soil of France, the engines go puffing off to take their places in the war machine.

It is not the numbers of men to be transported to the front, nor even the astounding quantities of supplies required to feed those men, which have been the primary cause for crisscrossing all Northern France with this latticework of steel. It is the unappeasable appetite of the guns. "This is a cannon war," Field-Marshal von Mackensen told an interviewer. "The side that burns up the most ammunition is bound to gain ground." And on that assumption the British are proceeding. England's response to the insistent cry of "Shells, shells, shells!" has been one of the wonders of the war. By January 1, 1917, the shell increase for howitzers was twenty-seven times greater than in 1914-15; in mid-caliber shells the increase was thirty-four times; and in all the "heavies" ninety-four times. And the shell output keeps a-growing and a-growing. Yet what avail the four thousand flaming forges which have made all this possible, what avails the British sea-power which has landed these amazing quantities of shells in France, and 2,000,000 of men along with them, if the shells cannot be delivered to the guns? And that is where the great new systems of railway have come in.