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Updated: June 18, 2025
And if you go on right up to the very trenches themselves you will find that British policeman all the way; directing the traffic at every country cross-road where there is likely to be a congestion of the great lumbering motor-lorries; standing outside the ruined village church which the long-range guns have knocked to pieces in trying to get at a supply dump or a headquarters; waiting at the fork-roads where you finally have to leave your motor-car and walk only in small parties if you wish to avoid sudden death; on point duty at the ruined farmhouses which it is unhealthy at certain hours of the day to pass.
When the congestion becomes so great that it threatens to hold up the unending stream of motor-lorries which rolls through the city, day and night, between the great cantonments in the outskirts and the port, a tall British military policeman suddenly appears from nowhere, shoulders the Greek gendarme aside, and with a few curt orders untangles the snarl into which the traffic has gotten itself and sets it going again.
Accordingly, they sent a small force down to the Upper Jordan, that is, to the river north of the Sea of Galilee. This force, which consisted of Germans, Turks and Circassians, was rushed down from Damascus in motor-lorries, in order to deny the crossing at Jisr Benat Yakub. They blew up the bridge and covered the crossing with machine guns.
The wagons 'ad to pull aside to let some transport motor-lorries past an' One's off-lead that was a new 'orse just come to the Column from Base Remounts an' had some objections to motor-lorries hootin' in his ear an' scrapin' past a eighth of an inch from his nose 'e side-slipped into the ditch.
The Pera Palace Hotel has notices posted in its corridors warning the guests that it is no longer safe to place their shoes outside their doors to be polished. The streets, always wretchedly paved, have been ground to pieces by the unending procession of motor-lorries, and, as they are never by any chance repaired, the first rain transforms them into a series of hog-wallows.
A camp with some of the Divisional details was struck some little way from us, and the same night D.H.Q. at Elverdinghe Château were bombed, several motor-lorries being set on fire. It was too far back for us to be troubled with much shelling, and the German long-range guns fired mostly over our heads at the more attractive targets of Poperinghe and Proven.
The long columns of motor-lorries, the gun limbers drawn up by their batteries, the field ambulances by the clearing hospitals, were all cloaked in snow, and the tramp and traffic of an army were hushed in the great quietude. In the trenches the snow fell thickly and made white pillows of the piled sand-bags and snow-men of sentries standing in the shelter of the traverses.
In going from Albert up to the front I passed hundreds, yes, thousands of lumbering motor-lorries bearing every kind of supply from barbed wire to marmalade. In order to avoid confusion, the lorries belonging to the ammunition-train have painted on their sides a shell, while those comprising the supply column are designated by a four-leaf clover.
Townsend, you'd better send off your groom to warn your battery! Times and order of march will be sent out by the adjutant within a quarter of an hour! One hundred yards' distance between every six vehicles on the march! No motor-lorries for us this time, so all extra kit and things you can't carry will have to be dumped, and a guard left behind!"
They have their own police pass for the war-zone, but all special plums are for the Becketts, shared by the O'Malleys; and this visit to the trenches was an extra-special superplum. All along the way, coming and going, tearing to meet us, or leaving us behind, splashed with gray mud after a night of rain, motor-lorries sped.
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