The Cornhill Magazine (Vol. XLI, No. 241 new series, July 1916)Various
General
The Cornhill Magazine (Vol. XLI, No. 241 new series, July 1916)
Various
England -- Periodicals; English literature -- Periodicals; Short stories, English -- Periodicals
That was a typical instance of the kind of accident that was happening,
and there were about three ‘Ford casualties’ every day. Thanks to the
simplicity of the mechanism of the Ford, and to the fact that, with the
necessary spare parts, the most serious indisposition can be remedied
in a few hours, our section has been at the front for a year—ten months
in the Bois-le-Prêtre, and two months at Verdun—without being sent back
out of service for general repairs. In the Bois-le-Prêtre we had carried
the wounded from the dressing stations to the first hospital, while at
Verdun we were on service from the hospital to the railheads. In this
latter work of _évacuation_ the trips were much longer, thirty to ninety
miles, so the strain on the cars was correspondingly greater. As our
cars, being small and fast, carried only three wounded on stretchers or
five seated, our relative efficiency was low in comparison with the wear
and tear of the ‘running gear’ and the amount of oil and petrol used. But
in the period from February 22 to March 13, twenty days, with an average
of eighteen cars working, we carried 2046 wounded 18,915 miles. This
would be no record on good open roads, but with the conditions I have
already described I think it justified the existence of our volunteer
organisation—if it needed justification. Certainly the French thought so,
but they are too generous to be good judges.
Except for our experiences on the road, there was little romance in
the daily routine. True, we were under shell fire, and had to sleep in
our cars or in a much-inhabited hayloft, and eat in a little inn, half
farmhouse and half stable, where the food was none too good and the
cooking none too clean; but we all realised that the men in the trenches
would have made of such conditions a luxurious paradise, so that kept us
from thinking of it as anything more than a rather strenuous ‘camping
out.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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