Automobiles, Military; World War, 1914-1918 -- Transportation
“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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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