Units which had no horse transport available had been instructed beforehand to draw thaw and reserve rations to tide them over the period. They stuck to their quarters, and ate tinned beef and biscuit.
But special dispensations had to be granted for traffic by lorries. When a coal-train arrived at railhead it was unthinkable to clear it by H.T. General Service waggons would take a week to clear four hundred tons of coal. Dispensations had to be granted for other urgent reasons. The cumulative effect was that of lorry traffic to a dangerous extent—dangerous because the frost bites so deep that when the thaw is at its height ruts are two feet deep. It bites down at the soft foundation beneath the cobble-stones of the village streets; and on the country roads the subsoil has no such protection as cobbles from the oppression of loaded lorries. But it was curious to see, in the villages, the cobbles rising en masse like jelly either flank of the lorry, or rising like a wave in the wake of the lumbering thing. Lorries got ditched in the country roads beyond immediate deliverance by other lorries. Nothing less than a steam tractor could move them. A convoy of tractors was set aside in each road-area for no other purpose than to obey calls to the rescue of ditched lorries. Certain roads were so badly cut that they had to be closed to traffic of any kind: motor-cycle with side-car that ventured on was bogged. The personnel of the road-control was increased twenty-fold to check speeds and to indicate prohibited roads. The worst tracts of the roads in use were so bad as to be paved with double rows of railway sleepers until the frost had worked out. Some roads will never recover; they will have to be closed until remade.
This advanced railhead was so near the line as to be full of interest on the eve of the April push. It was here you could see the immediate preparations and the immediate results of the preparatory activity. The local casualty clearing stations gave good evidence; you could tell, by watching their convoys, and talking with the wounded, and observing in the operating-theatre, what was going on. Such significant events as the growth of fresh C.C.S.'s and the kind of reserves they were putting-in, were eloquent. Talk with the legion of Flying-Corps observers who were about railhead was enlightening; so was the nature of the reserves they were laying up. The bulk and description of the supply-reserves dumped at railhead for pushing up by lorry-convoy to Arras told their tale also. Every night a convoy of lorries would load and move up under cover of the darkness. There was no mistaking the meaning of such commodities in their freight as chewing-gum and solidified alcohol. Do not suppose, reader, that chewing-gum is for mere distraction in the trenches. Neither is solidified alcohol for consumption by the addicted, but for fuel for Tommies' cookers when coal and wood are impossible of transport. Commodities such as these make one visualise a sudden and overwhelming advance. —— tons of baled straw were dumped at railhead. This was not for forage, but to strew the floors of empty returning supply-trains for wounded. Each C.C.S. in the area had to be prepared to improvise one such ambulance-train per day when the push was at its height. The handling of these things makes one abnormally busy; if he gets four-hours' sleep in twenty-four he is doing famously. But one is never so jaded as not to be interested in these portentous signs.
Once I went up to Arras on a night lorry. The convoy crept up into the lip of the salient. The guns flashed close on either flank; the star-shells lit the road from either side. The reserve dump was in an old factory in the Rue ——. An enormous dump it was. The Supply Officer lived next it on a ground-floor. His men burrowed in an adjacent cellar. He had laid on the floor of the attic above him eight layers of oats. A direct hit would have asphyxiated him with oats. His dump was unhappily placed. There were two batteries adjacent. Whenever there was a raid and the batteries let fly, they were immediately searched for. In the search his dump was found, on more than one occasion. There were ugly and recent shell-holes about it. The off-loading convoy was hit many nights at one point or another. He took me to the bottom of the road after dark. The scream of shell was so incessant that it rose to a melancholy intermittent moan.
Next day he took me about the town. Civilians were moving furtively. They were not used to emerge before night. In any case such shops and estaminets as remained were prohibited from opening before 7.30 in the evening. Wonderful!—how the civilians hang on. They have their property; also, they have the money they can always make from the herds of troops who make a fleeting sojourn in the place. Apart from the proprietors of cafés and estaminets, they are mostly caretakers who stay on: caretakers and rich old men with much property who prefer the chance of being hit to leaving what their industry has amassed over thirty years of labour....
The German fatigue on the railway was useful, if slow. It was supplied from the prisoners of war camp near the station. When the thaw was in progress we lost them, so heavy were the demands upon the camp for road labour. The O.C. the camp sometimes visited to see what manner of work they did. He threw light on their domestic behaviour in camp: "The greediest ——s on earth!" he would say. "If one of them leaves table for two minutes, his friends have pinched and swallowed his grub. They steal each other's food daily—and they're fed well enough. They're a sanctimonious crew, too; most of their post-cards from home are scriptural, laden with texts and pictorial demonstration of the way the Lord is with them. The camp is half-filled with religious fanatics; they sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs when they're free. But there's not much of the New Testament notion of the brotherhood of man amongst 'em; they do each other down most damnably!..."
When the Arras advance was imminent their camp was moved farther back from the line, and we lost them. The Deputy-Assistant-Director of Labour sent a fatigue of 125 of the halt and the maimed—the P.B.'s; altogether inadequate.