Motor Transports in War

by Horace Wyatt

Another important point, if the cars are to go abroad and to be used under bad conditions of road surface, is that any ordinary simple method of attaching the body to the chassis must be very carefully examined before it is approved. Something more than average security is needed.

A fair number of touring cars are being changed into motor ambulances, not by replacement of the body but by its adaptation. This method has the disadvantage that it renders the old body subsequently useless for other purposes. Further, it is likely to cause delay, since every case has to be considered on its individual merits. Also, unless the chassis is a long one, the adaptation will almost certainly involve a big overhang.

“The Autocar” illustration.
A TYPE OF EXTEMPORISED MOTOR AMBULANCE FAVOURED BY THE FRENCH AND BELGIANS.

These notes will serve to give the necessary information to those who may wish to equip motor ambulances for any kind of use during the war, and there does not appear to be any need to go into details of all the various other varieties of ambulance body, many of them very beautifully fitted and designed, but also very expensive. One other type may, however, be mentioned, since it is being employed extensively by the French and Belgian Governments. This consists essentially of a stout floor carrying two iron frameworks of inverted V shape. Between these two and stretching fore and aft is an arrangement similar in principle to a squirrel cage, or to a water-wheel with four floats. The place of each float is taken by the necessary apparatus for the support of a stretcher, provision being made that all the four stretchers retain their horizontal position whatever the position of the framework supporting them. The stretchers can be loaded in from the side to the bottom position, and the apparatus swung round so that this operation is continued, the stretchers after being loaded being subsequently raised by the rotation of the frame. It is stated that in Antwerp and elsewhere this type of ambulance has been used extensively, and is found to be very comfortable and very easy to construct.

Turning to the work for which the ambulances are being employed, much of this is of an obvious character. Ambulance services are evidently needed both at the military hospitals, and also further back at the big base hospitals of the Red Cross Society on the Continent. They are wanted again at all the various hospitals in this country to which wounded men are brought. They are employed, for example, in London, to meet the hospital trains and carry from the stations those men who are not able to be conveyed in ordinary cars.

The requirement of motor ambulances nearer the front is almost limitless. In the system of the R.A.M.C. in service, wounded men are first removed by regimental stretcher-bearers to the “aid post,” where medical attention is first given to them. Thence, they are carried by the bearer sections of the field ambulance—and possibly, if roads permit, by motor ambulances—to the advance dressing stations, whence after treatment they are taken by the military ambulance waggons to meet conveyances from the clearing hospital, which is usually situated somewhere near the railhead. Upon this hospital falls the duty of avoiding all overcrowding nearer the front, and this must be done by employing all available means of transport. Evidently, motor ambulances are the most suitable kind of conveyance for this work, since they afford a reasonable degree of comfort to the patient, and even if their speed capacities cannot be utilised to any great extent while they are carrying wounded men, advantage can be taken of them while returning empty towards the front for further load. Once the patients have been taken as far back as the field hospital at railhead, their subsequent conveyance to the Red Cross hospitals, or any other required points, can be carried out by train supplemented by local motor ambulance services from the termini to the hospitals.

Another and less obvious type of service is that which involves thorough patrolling of all those districts in which battles have taken place, with a view to ascertaining whether any wounded men are still remaining in the villages and along the country-side, where they may be given thoroughly kind, but possibly somewhat unskilled, attention by the civilian inhabitants. Another duty of the drivers of the ambulances carrying out this work is that of setting on foot minute inquiries with a view to finding out whether any men killed in battle have been buried by civilians without any record having become available which would serve as a basis for certain information which can never be so terrible as an almost hopeless state of suspense. This class of work, of course, has to be carried out over roads which have in many cases been badly broken up by heavy military traffic, and possibly even intentionally destroyed by a retreating enemy. Consequently, it puts a very severe strain on every portion of the chassis and body of the ambulance, and makes the fact that the whole of the motor vehicles at present employed by the Society have been freely given or lent by their owners without reservation and without charge all the more noteworthy.

For some time past, the Society has been shipping ambulance cars, and also touring cars, to the Continent as rapidly as means of transit have permitted. The requirement seems to be enormous, but even so there does not appear to be any likelihood of the supply falling short of it. Many motorists have placed not only their cars, but their own services ungrudgingly at the disposal of the Society. The usual practice is for the Society, after accepting a car for service, to undertake to have a suitable ambulance body put upon it in place of its own. In some cases, however, motorists have even taken this charge upon themselves, and whatever may be the disadvantages of dependence upon volunteer service, it can at least be said that in this case such dependence has served in some measure to show how many men, unable for one reason or another to take up military duties, are only too anxious to expend their energies and their money on any object of national value in connection with which they are able to be of use.