Military station

“ Yesterday I saw for myself.
Compiègne is the sentinel to the “zone des armées.” At the railroad station you must present your sauf-conduit before you go through the gate, and frown as you do so, for certainly the official will frown at you. The streets are full of soldiers and officers, blue with them, and great military trucks grind past at every turn. Even the churchyard is filled with lines of military wagons, and horses were tethered at its portals.
We arranged to have a bite to eat at the hotel, and I, for one, was surprised at the naturalness and comfort of the atmosphere. ”

“ From this brief sketch of the railroad organization that feeds the front, we pass to a consideration of the war-freight which it carries.
2. Organization of the munition parks. At the rear of every army there is a “Main Artillery Park,” located at a point of easy communication with the distributing station and the front beyond. Military railways connect it with the “Army-Park Depots” farther on, which in turn are similarly connected with the “Army-Corps Parks,” and the latter with “Divisional Parks.” ”

“ He it is who, acting in conjunction with the railway people, must see that all the details in connection with entraining and detraining are properly arranged and efficiently carried out, while the operations of the station staff are, in turn, greatly facilitated alike by his co-operation and by the fact that there is now only one military authority to be dealt with at a station instead, possibly, of several acting more or less independently of one another. ”

“ The top of the summit is flat tableland, and afforded a very eligible site for strong military works. It was first occupied by the Americans early in 1776, when they commenced the erection of batteries, barracks, and houses, with the view of making it a place of general rendezvous, and a recruiting station for the army of the north. ”

“ These stations, or, as they are well named, casernes (barracks) , are big structures filled with many firemen, on an average about 140 men in every building: and each station is equipped with numerous pieces of fire apparatus, and all are provided with a large inner court, or drill-yard, in which the men go through military evolutions twice daily, and where the new men, who are coming into the brigade continually, are taught how to handle all the various appliances used in fire-fighting. ”

“ The heart of this unit is the railroad station at which the supplies arrive for the shell zone; in a normal secteur, one military train arrives every day bringing the needed supplies, and one hospital train departs, carrying the sick and wounded to the hospitals. The station at the front is always a scene of considerable activity, especially when the train arrives; there are pictures of old poilus in red trousers pitching out yellow hay for the horses, commissary officers getting their rations, and artilleurs stacking shells. ”

“ They will meet all troop trains, and see that troops and stores are detrained with the utmost despatch.
It will be observed from these regulations that, whatever his own rank may be, the R.T.O., subject to the instructions he has received from his superior Transport Officer, exercises at the railway station to which he is delegated an authority that not even a General may question or seek to set aside by giving orders direct to the station staff. The R.T.O. alone is the "channel of communication" between the military and the railway elements. ”

“ In America the word is used of a railway station, whether for passengers or goods; in Great Britain on railways the word, when in use, is applied to goods stations. A particular military application is to a depot, situated as a rule in the centre of the recruiting district of the regiment or other unit, where recruits are received and undergo the necessary preliminary training before joining the active troops. Such depots are maintained in peace time by all armies which have to supply distant or oversea garrisons ”

“ At military stations, barracks were to be erected in accordance with plans drawn out by the same body. In these respects, impaired as health was, inspection of stations, added to ordinary official routine, became an arduous duty.
Arrangements had to be made with reference to an expedition about to be dispatched against the King of Abyssinia. In calculating the probable requirements for which preparations had to be made, casualties by climate were looked upon as likely to exceed those in battle; supplies on a large scale were accordingly provided. ”

“ I have seen more civilians on the platform of one English country station than I saw at all the German stations together between Cambrai and Würzburg.
Railway work, such as unloading coal, &c., from the trucks, was being done by boys of twelve to fifteen, working in gangs of about six, doing the work of two or three men. All the railway engine-drivers and employees I saw were men obviously above military age.
The stations are all under military control, and transport work is carried on by soldiers. ”

“ Among the many changes produced in India by the development of the railway system and by other causes one of the most striking is the abolition of small military stations. Almost all these have disappeared, and the troops are now massed in large cantonments, where they can be handled much more effectively than in out-stations. The discipline of small detached bodies of troops is generally liable to deterioration. ”

“ Ammunition distributing stations at railroad spurs, Plattsburg Barracks, and O'Connell's Farm. The Division Ordnance Officer will locate the Ammunition Dumps along transverse trunk line road.
(c) Field trains, until further orders, at north end of Plattsburg Barracks Reservation. Distributing point, Plattsburg Railroad Station—Regimental Supply Stations: Saranac River 182; intersection Peru Road and Rifle Range Road, Sand Hole in Rifle Range, Sand Road on O'Connell's Farm, Ravine on O'Connell's Farm.
(d) The commander of trains will establish traffic regulations for all roads. ”

“ The line was organized since the early days of its occupation, then was gradually improved to become during the last years of war a model of stabilized trench warfare area.
Even the station itself, where an artillery observation-post had been constructed, was wedged in a powerful stronghold whose solid concrete shelters for machine-guns were forming the bastions. ”

“ The Zone of the Interior is that part of the railway system which, though not situated at the theatre of war, is subject to military control by reason of the services required of it in the forwarding of troops, supplies, guns, ammunition and other necessaries. ”

“ A railway station, to serve as a Home Base ("Etappenanfangsort") will be assigned to every Army Corps. From these home bases supplies are sent forward to Collecting Depôts ("Sammelstationen") , which will be established at not too great a distance from the theatre of war.
In the theatre of war a base will be assigned to each Army, the situation of which will change according to the progress of the operations. The Army Corps are connected with the Field Base by lines of communication roads ("Etappenstrassen") , and on these roads posts are formed about 131⁄2 miles apart. ”

“ On the declaration of war the Inspector-General was to organise the stations for the feeding of the troops and horses proceeding to the front, and was then himself to go to some station one or two marches from the fighting-line, and fix, each day, the Railhead Station for the time being, moving his own head-quarters as occasion might require. ”

“ The station gets more and more packed with people. Here one may notice a company of tired and sunburnt soldiers marching up the platform in their blue coats and red baggy trousers covered with black leather below the knee, each carrying a painfully heavy knapsack and rifle; while hurrying along may be seen gay-coloured Turcos, Arabs with their red fezzes, or crowds of peasants patiently waiting for the omnibus train, which leaves an hour later than the express. ”

“ The assistants have long spears with which they probe and run through a cargo in a few minutes, or seconds, and it is seldom that any contraband article escapes their vigilance. This station is called "La Garita de la Vija"—or "the Gate of the Beam." ”

“ The unit numbered at full strength eight Medical Officers, a Quartermaster, a Dentist, two Chaplains, seven Nurses, eighty-four rank and file, nine A.S.C. and seventeen P.B. men. Perhaps its own simple statement gives its record in the most effective language: ‘No man ever left the station without having his wound examined and dressed, and receiving a meal and a smoke.’ From frost-bite, La Bassée, Neuve Chapelle, Aubers and Festubert, came the first streams of clients to this station.
A CASUALTY CLEARING STATION.
We return to the centre of war activity at the Territorial Headquarters in York. ”

“ This would be no match for the British system which has one such station to every twenty miles of coast. Ours would be farther apart, but as the Sound could be guarded at its entrance the stations need only be maintained along the south shore of Long Island and down the Jersey coast. Each station would be provided with patrol, fighting, and observation airplanes. It would have the mechanical equipment of microphones, searchlights, and other devices for detecting the approach of an enemy now employed successfully abroad. ”

“ We all piled from the train and had half an hour's brisk march through the picturesque little city. But it was the railroad station that impressed us most. Permissionaires swarmed there in faded blue uniforms and battered helmets. Some were smiling and happy, talking with vivacity and wide gestures to civilians. Evidently they had just arrived. The soil of the front line still stained their clothing. Others, far neater and encumbered with equipment, did not have much to say. ”

“ What is really amazing, in a large station, is that the organising imperative will which directs the rush of moving things lies hidden behind an apparent state of chaos and entanglement. We began to walk along lines of trucks that never ended. They seemed to have been left there and forgotten [Pg 126] since the beginning of the war—rolling-stock that appeared to have had its day, with stiffened axles and couplings devoured by rust; but suddenly our lamp would light up an open door, and some soldiers were seen in a heap, sleeping on the straw, or there were cattle with stupefied looks. ”

“ On the way we stop at an air-station, to watch the aeroplanes rising and coming down, and at a point near Poperinghe we go over a casualty-clearing station—a collection of hospital huts, with storehouses and staff quarters—with the medical officer in charge. Here were women nurses who are not allowed in the field dressing-stations nearer the line. ”

“ The large bodies that back them are generally quartered together in extensive barracks, from which any number of engines and men can be turned out according to the nature of the call. Then there are cities where every section has its own well-built station; others where one or two sections are housed together, according to circumstances, and perhaps as many as half a dozen located at headquarters. If groups are formed, the headquarters of the group or district has, perhaps, two sections, while each of the other stations has only one. ”

“ A few yards behind the mouths of the communication trenches are the first dressing-stations, everywhere and always one of war's most ghastly spots. Paths make their way from these dressing-stations down the mountain-sides until they become roads, and, once they have become roads, our work begins.
Nowhere else are foreign soldiers upon German soil. Nowhere else, from Ypres to Belfort, do the lines face each other in a mountain range of commanding summits and ever-visible village-dotted valleys. ”

“ Traveling by automobile in the war zone is far more complicated than by train. Even in a gray military car, with two men in horizon blue on the front seat, you are held up at the entrance and exit of every town and hamlet, and often half way between, by the sudden appearance of a sentinel in the middle of the road, holding his gun horizontally above his head. ”

“ When we reached the station we found it guarded and patroled by soldiers and no one could pass the gate without showing both a ticket and pass. It was even more difficult to get three seats in a coupé, for a Russian family was taking care of a sick man and said they had only places for their nurses. ”

“ The keepers wear a uniform not unlike that of railway guards and porters. We wander through the gardens, return, descend the hill by the school of musketry, where soldiers are to be seen shooting at the butts, pass through the paddock of the old farm, and so return to the railway station, extremely gratified by all we have seen, and almost equally divided in our minds between the merits and attractiveness of either ward. ”

“ There is a depôt with spacious repairing yards and very commodious workshops, where 250 workmen are daily employed. In addition there are extensive railway go-downs and quarters for the employés of the company. If these represent merely the requirements of the station, in a more general way there is an hospital with several beds, a building for the accommodation of emigrants and, in the immediate precincts of the station, barracks for the 2nd Trans-Caspian Railway Battalion. ”

“ The advanced base of the Aircraft Park moved up, by successive stages, as the prospects of the Allies improved, first from Le Havre to Le Mans, then, at the end of September, to Juvisy, near Paris; lastly, in mid-October, the port base was moved from St.-Nazaire to Rouen, and at the end of October the advanced base left Juvisy for St.-Omer, which became its permanent station during the earlier part of the war. ”