After two years of incessant service, and notwithstanding the “emery” effect of the fine sand which was carried in clouds by the wind and penetrated everywhere, it is generally understood that the Italian military motor fleet maintained reliable services throughout the war, and that the individual machines were in surprisingly good condition when their service was completed. Results were, at any rate, sufficiently satisfactory to justify the Italian Government in placing considerable further orders, with a view to increasing their motor columns. This war was probably the first event which enabled the motor vehicle to prove itself in practice absolutely essential as a military implement. A Tripoli newspaper summed up the value of the experience obtained:
“Many people will have asked themselves how it was possible for the Lequio Division to live, march, fight, and win with a base of operations distant from 70 to 200 miles, with rapid and long deviations which were almost of daily occurrence, in a country so barren and inhospitable that man and beast would perish if they were left for only two or three days without provisions.... The motor lorry provided the solution of the problem; by its use in a few hours provisions were brought from the stores and bases to the fighting column, having been conveyed possibly hundreds of miles, and, further, by its means not one day passed without the troops having bread, wine, and coffee. The motor lorry was ubiquitous; it transported ammunition or succoured the wounded, fetched fodder for the horses and other animals, or money for the troops and for the Arabs; it brought new boots for the soldiers or delivered urgent messages, as well as being used for the transport of troops from the various bases right up to the first fighting line in battle. Only the advent of the autocar rendered possible many of the daring moves of this war, as it solved the difficulties of desert transport.”
As regards the uses of motors during the various Balkan campaigns, the only reliable and available information appears to be that contained in a series of articles contributed by Capt. A. H. Trapmann of the Daily Telegraph to the columns of Motor Traction. At the commencement of the war in 1912, there were less than 100 motor vehicles in Greece, and some sixty of these—the property of Greek subjects—were immediately commandeered. The machines formed a fleet very far from ideal, representing cars of all makes and sizes, many of them suffering from negligent treatment or unskilful handling, and some very near the termination of a chequered career. The officers entrusted with the duty of purchasing the machines were completely ignorant of their value or qualities, and the drivers into whose hands they were subsequently put consisted mainly of people who could, or said they could, drive a motor car, though the great majority did not profess to possess any knowledge over and above that required for travelling with reasonable safety and certainty, assuming the mechanism of the cars to give no trouble at all. The better machines were chiefly allotted to the various generals and their staff officers, while some of the worst were fitted up with lorry bodies for the transport of goods.
After the fall of Salonica, the Greek objective was Janina, connected with the port of Preveza by an excellent road about sixty-three miles long. Directly Preveza fell into Greek hands, the authorities were faced with the problem of provisioning an army, in the first instance consisting of 15,000 men and gradually augmented to 60,000, operating against a fortified town in a totally barren country intersected by huge mountain ranges. The front of the army extended for about a hundred miles, and only one good road was available from the base to the centre of the advanced positions. Under these conditions, the authorities realised the possibilities of motor transport, and about thirty motor lorries, mainly obtained from Italy, were shipped to Preveza and put into service. It was found that each lorry could, in three hours, carry to the front about enough food for 1,000 men. This, however, was not the only problem. The army was absorbing on the average one ton of ammunition per day for every thousand men. The lorries were only capable at the best of handling 2-ton loads, and consequently were kept more than fully occupied. Moreover, the road, though good in certain portions, was in others particularly dangerous, being very winding and hewn for the most part out of the side of a precipice. Heavy traffic and heavy rains contributed to make the conditions yet worse, and under the circumstances, it is not surprising that very serious accidents occurred, and that by the end of the first six weeks only nine out of the original thirty lorries were still upon the road. It then became necessary to replenish the supply, which was managed in one way or another, and the service was maintained with enormous difficulty under conditions of false economy, which dictated considerable purchases of unreliable secondhand machines. Even so, the results served completely to convince Captain Trapmann that motor transport was the only solution of the supply problem in warfare.
It seems that a similar opinion was forced upon the Greek military authorities, since one of the first moves when the second campaign became inevitable in 1913, was the purchase of one hundred motor lorries. This step, while good in itself, was inadequate, since no real provision was made for the supply of competent and responsible drivers, for adequate supervision, or for completely equipped workshops. Many of the drivers were well-to-do enthusiasts who had volunteered for service, and who very soon came to regret that they had done so. It is one thing to drive a good touring car and to fall back upon professional assistance whenever trouble occurs, but quite another to handle and maintain a heavy motor lorry without competent backing and under thoroughly bad conditions of service. Some 50 per cent. of the motor fleet was usually out of commission, and the staff of the repair shops were so incompetent that it was seldom that a car once taken to pieces was ever fit for the road again. The following extract from Capt. Trapmann’s account gives some idea of the difficulties which had to be overcome:
“The strategy and tactics of the campaign against Bulgaria landed the Greek headquarters at Doyrani on July 8th, and there nearly two-thirds of the Greek motor service was concentrated on July 10th. Greek headquarters decided to move sixty miles west to Hadji Beylik along the railway, and the vital question was how the cars for the service of the staff, and the lorries for the army service were to accomplish the journey. The single-line railway track was impossible on account of unbridged gaps, and also because the railway was in urgent demand for transport. The only semblance of a road was a mule track two feet wide, which led for the most part through a tangle of vegetation, and occasionally amidst a wilderness of rocks and stones. Eventually it was decided literally to force a road by sheer weight. The lorries took turns at leading, raced full speed for twenty yards, and then bashed their way through the jungle. After fifty yards or less the lorry would be brought to a standstill by the accumulation of rubbish piled up in front. This would be cleared away, the car would back, then start on a fresh charge. When a lorry got seriously damaged it would be replaced by another and taken in tow by a third. Sometimes explosives had to be used, and small rivers were bridged by the simple expedient of placing tree trunks in them until a car could cross. It was bumpy work.
“In Macedonia a road of any sort was a luxury, the best roads could not compare as regards surface with a fourth-class English roadway, whilst as often as not the motors had to make their own road as they went along. It must be remembered, also, that driving in war time is very different from under peace conditions. Bridges and culverts have usually been destroyed, telegraph lines sag across the road, and at night time are apt to get entangled in the driver’s neck with dire results. I, myself, have seen a goodly number of motor smashes, one when a temporary bridge gave way under an overloaded lorry, another when a contact mine exploded. The worst accident I remember, however, took place soon after the fall of Janina. A very old and depreciated lorry was being used to convey passengers down to Preveza, a distance of sixty-three miles, by a mountain road which for half its length was cut on the edge of a precipice. At one of the awkward places on the road the steering gear broke, and the car with its human freight dashed over the cliff and fell into the river.”
The conclusions reached by Captain Trapmann as a result of very exceptional opportunities of observing military motor transport under active service conditions should be of considerable value. His catalogue of desirable features is as follows:
(1) Clearance from ground in order to enable a car to pass over rock-strewn stretches.
(2) An adjustable cow-catcher in front for use at night on good stretches of road, on which, however, dead or wounded horses or men may be lying.
(3) An inclined bullet shield of light steel to protect the front of the radiator from casual sniping.
(4) A stout iron hook or ring in front and behind for towing purposes, especially when a river has to be negotiated, the bridge over which has been destroyed.
(5) Solid tyres with a set of non-skid chains which can be fitted when occasion arises.
(6) A wire grappler to preserve the driver from the danger of sagging telegraph wires hanging across the road.
While the experiences detailed in this chapter are, comparatively speaking, on a very small scale, and consequently results cannot confidently be applied in anticipation to a war of immensely greater magnitude, they have at least served to show that even unavoidable lack of experience, or avoidable lack of competence, cannot prevent the motor vehicle from being a very valuable asset behind an army in the field. The Tripoli and Balkan campaigns proved not only the necessity of employing motors for the work of the transport and supply columns, but also the possibility in so doing of saving the lives of very many wounded men who, when dependence was placed on slower methods, frequently died from exposure on their way down from the front to the base.