Ammunition train

“ The shouting of the workers, the crunch and grind of wheels, the groan of gears, the cracking of whips, the clang of metal, the pounding of countless horses’ hoofs, the chugging of streams of motors and the screams of their many-throated sirens; empty ammunition trains going and loaded ones coming, light artillery and heavy artillery, tanks in platoons, trucks in companies, field kitchens, water wagons, supply trains, ration carts, all fought for space and air in order to make their own particular noise vibrate. ”

“ Their artillery was good, from attention having been given to it before the breaking out of the war, but the train was unlike any other in modern armies, the guns and ammunition-waggons being drawn by mules, not two abreast, but in teams like cart-horses, without reins, and under no farther command than the voice of their conductors, who ran on foot on the side of the road. Their guns were heavy, and among the field batteries were several of twelve-pounders. ”

“ Each railway artillery project called for the manufacture of a great equipment of ammunition cars, fire-control cars, spare-parts cars, supply cars, and the like, a complete unit being a heavy train in itself. Such armament-train cars, together with numerous other accessories and necessary equipment, were designed by the Ordnance Department and produced for each mount. ”

“ Train after train lumbered by with stores and guns and ammunition for the front, the whole of this enormous traffic being run on a single line of rails. Amongst the most troublesome items to deal with were the mules. Sometimes a mule would suddenly produce a violent uproar in a waggon by beginning to kick, his hoof against every mule and every mule's hoof against him. Even if these beasties were taken out of the waggon to be watered their behaviour was unseemly. A soldier would with infinite patience marshal the mules in line with himself, their halters all tied together. ”

“ The troops must have their rations, or, more important still, the ammunition must be at hand in case of need. Sometimes they would accomplish the task assigned without difficulty, but it was the exception. Of course, they could not start until the army had got out of the way. Then, the roads, already cut up somewhat by the artillery, were soon rendered next to impassable by the moving trains. The quartermaster in charge of a train would be called upon to extricate a wagon here that was blocking the way, to supply the place of a worn-out horse or mule there ”

“ Around the edges of this stupendous mountain of death there was a feverish activity, a subdued excitement that boded ill. American and French ammunition trains came tearing, galloping, whirling in dust-clouds ahead of smoking exhausts—into that trembling woods. With seeming recklessness shells were tossed into the wagons and camions, which departed with fresh haste.
A flood of giant trucks streamed into the woods, dumped their loads of ammunition and whirled away for more. The marines tightened their belts and decided to stick around. ”

“ It was necessary to have transportation for ammunition. Provisions could be taken from the country; but all the ammunition that can be carried on the person is soon exhausted when there is much fighting. I directed, therefore, immediately on landing that all the vehicles and draft animals, whether horses, mules, or oxen, in the vicinity should be collected and loaded to their capacity with ammunition. Quite a train was collected during the 30th, and a motley train it was. ”

“ There is always something coming the other way—and your way, a steady succession of camions in the centre of the road, and of artillery trains on the side. The camions are mostly very heavy and very powerful, and have no compunction at all about what they run into, as they know that it cannot harm them. The ammunition trains consist of batteries of 75’s, little framework teams with torpilles fitting in small compartments like eggs, and other such vehicles in tow of a number of mules, with the driver invariably asleep. ”

“ The hail of bullets comes whistling along—ispt, ispt, ispt—and everywhere little jets of sand are spurting up. Can we wonder if now and then a stretcher-bearer is struck down? To put the case frankly—he is doing a brave work, but he has no business to be where he is. It is easy to see why the usages of war do not permit the presence of ambulance men in the firing line. Quite apart from the serious losses incurred by so valuable a corps, advantage might be taken by an unscrupulous enemy to bring up ammunition under cover of the Red Cross. ”

“ Between the army at the front and the great base at Capetown stretched some 700 miles of railway, and over this single line of rails ran an unending succession of trains carrying troops, food, guns, and last, but by no means least, tons upon tons of ammunition. The work of supplying a modern army in the field is stupendous, and the best thanks of the nation are due to the devoted labours of the Army Service Corps. The officers and men of the A.S.C. work night and day, they rarely see any fighting, and are seldom mentioned in the public press or in despatches ”

“ For bringing up guns and their ammunition at a critical moment automobiles are of the greatest value. At the Motor-car Reliability Trials last autumn there was present a military officer of considerable experience who was much impressed with the possibilities of the motor in battle. If, he argued, sixty cars could run down from London to the South Coast easily in three hours carrying an average of four passengers each, the same number of horseless vehicles could convey sixty machine-guns to Brighton in a similar time. ”

“ Bombardment of the country behind the enemy's trenches is not necessarily to destroy towns. Its strategical purpose, I was told, is to cut off communications, to prevent, if possible, the bringing up of reserve troops and transport wagons, to destroy ammunition trains. ”

“ These portable and easily laid field railways twist and turn and coil like snakes among the gun positions, the miniature engines, with their strings of toy cars, puffing their way into the heart of the artillery zone, where the ammunition is unloaded, sorted, and classified in calibers, and then artfully hidden from the prying eyes of enemy aviators and from their bombs. ”

“ From there and for miles back the car crept slowly past gun positions and batteries beyond count or reckoning, jolted across the metals of a railway line that was already running into the captured ground, past “dump” after “dump” of ammunition, big shells and little piled in stacks and house-high pyramids, patches of ground floored acre-wide with trench mortar bombs like big footballs, familiar gray boxes of grenades and rifle cartridges, shells again, and yet more shells. ”

“ There were thus eight machine guns to each tank. When it is remembered that the fire of a protected machine [Pg 364] gun is equal to fifty men, each tank represented an invulnerable company of 400 men. Moreover, not a shot need be wasted. In full fire, a tank could eject 4,800 shots per minute, or 80 bullets per second, and could carry its own fuel and ammunition.
Against the British-invented tanks all the light German trench artillery was powerless. ”

“ Piled up at various points are stacks of empty shell cases, which by their size indicate the enormous quantity of ammunition that is being used by our guns in their work of pulverizing the German trenches and fortifications. Every one is busy—the newly won ground is being cleared, positions are being consolidated, roads are being made up, telegraph poles and wires erected, standard-gauge railway lines are being laid down. Whether at the Base or the trenches, war is carried on methodically and with the regular routine of a factory. ”

“ Forward they swept, near and nearer, and for a few moments it seemed as if all were lost; the men did the only thing they could do to save themselves—they fired their rifles as rapidly as possible in the face of the enemy. The flash of fire-arms, and perhaps some of the shots taking effect, saved the train from destruction; the immense horde swerved slightly to one side, and swept on more madly then ever, just grazing the last one of the teams, bearing down the wagon and trampling the cattle underfoot, but only stunning the driver, who was saved by the wagon falling over him. ”

“ The machine-gun, with its mounting and ammunition and spare parts, is neither light in weight nor inconspicuous to carry. When the infantry has rushed a trench after the preliminary bombardment the machine-guns have to be carried bodily forward over a shell and bullet swept area, where the machine-gun detachment is a familiar and unexpected target for the German marksmen. ”

“ The roads, which had been partially repaired, were still soft and broken, and developed into quagmires—mud and water to a depth of two and three feet made vehicular traffic almost out of the question. All ammunition had to be transported to the guns by means of horses carrying pack saddles, a slow and tedious method, which took a lot out of men and beasts alike. As yet no decca-ville railways had been constructed as far as battery positions. Very heavy work thus fell on those at the wagon lines, who were kept busy most of the day and night. ”

“ We come to a light railway, and this under no circumstances must be damaged. We arrange for it to be "ramped" carefully with sleepers, but it is just as well to carry a few spare sleepers in the tanks, because some heavy gunners live near by. The track, which by this time is two feet deep in mud, again divides, and bearing to the right we find that an ammunition column has camped across it. ”

“ The dumping, in the gun pits and in ammunition stores, of the necessary 500 or 600 rounds per gun meant days of labour in collection and distribution on the part of the railways and motor lorries. The breakdown of a few motor lorries at a critical time, or the dropping of a single bomb upon an important railway junction, were disturbing factors quite sufficient to have arrested the flow of ammunition, and to have postponed, indefinitely, any programme based upon its prompt delivery. ”

“ One of the chief modern problems is supplying sufficient ammunition for quick-firing guns—the baggage trains must not be so long as to hinder the advance of the troops, yet where there are many guns and each shoots off hundreds of shots a minute, great quantities of ammunition are needed. ”

“ We have nothing to do but to improvise well-adapted gun-carriages for our rails." At the same meeting Mr. T. Wright, C.E., gave details of a proposed railway train battery for coast, frontier and inland defence which was designed to carry ten, twenty or forty guns or mortars.
Another early advocate of the use of railways as an actual instrument of warfare was Colonel E. R. Wethered, who, in 1872, wrote to the War Office suggesting that heavy ordnance should be mounted on wheeled carriages so constructed that they could be moved along any of the railways, from point to point. ”

“ It has been said that it takes a man's weight in lead for every soldier killed in battle. I am inclined to almost believe that, from my own observations and from the amount of ammunition I knew to be expended on the battle-field of the Weldon Railroad, where I noticed innumerable bullet marks on trees standing on level ground, at height that could only endanger birds.
For the next few days the troops were occupied in further strengthening their positions and in destroying the railroad north and south, as far as our picket lines. ”

“ Now and then one sees afar off an ammunition dump, many hundreds of stacks of shells—without their detonators as yet—being unloaded from railway trucks, transferred from the broad gauge to the narrow gauge line, or loaded onto motor trolleys. Now and then one crosses a railway line. The railway lines run everywhere behind the British front, the construction follows the advance day by day. They go up as fast as the guns. ”

“ The nearer the front you went, the greater the concentration of men and material. Shells, the size of the milk cans at suburban stations, stood in close order on the platforms beside the sidings of new light railways; shells of all calibers were piled at new ammunition dumps; fields were cut by the tracks of guns moving into position; steam rollers were road-making in the midst of the long processions of motor trucks, heavy laden when bound toward the trenches and empty when returning; barbed-wire enclosures were ready as collecting stations for prisoners ”

“ Fighting squadrons soon caught the craze for ground stunts and carried it well beyond the lines. One machine chased a train for miles a few hundred feet above, derailed it, and spat bullets at the lame coaches until driven off by enemy craft. Another made what was evidently an inspection of troops by some Boche Olympian look like the riotous disorder of a Futurist painting. A pilot with some bombs to spare spiralled down over a train, dropped the first bomb on the engine, and the second, third, fourth, and fifth on the soldiers who scurried from the carriages. ”

“ The waggons continued to roll in, to fill up, and pull out again; the pile of ammunition boxes to dwindle, the heap of empty boxes to grow. Vickers scurried round, keeping an eye on smooth working, trying at intervals to press some of his stock of gas-shells on any battery that would take them. “I’ve fair got wind up about them,” he confided to one waggon-line officer. “If a shell hits them it will stop the whole blessed dump working. Then where will your guns be for shell?” ”

“ The aeroplane from which the bomb had been dropped was not now in sight, but this is what had happened. One of the German machines passing over the front line, as they often did, had escaped the Allied craft, and had also managed to pass through the firing of the anti-aircraft guns. Whether the machine had gone some distance back, hoping to drop bombs on an ammunition dump, or whether it came over merely to take a pot shot at the American trenches, was never known. ”