FEEDING THE GUNS

Hokitika Guardian, 20 July 1918, Page 1

FEEDING THE GUNS

You never can picture the ammunition wagon’s frantic contortions during an action unless you have seen them.

And then, in spite of your own bruised and aching bodv, you feel a thrill at the sight. Few correspondents have mentioned the ammunition wagon because few correspondents have seen the ammunition wagon in action with its halfmad drivers standing up in their boxes tugging at the reins of their frightened, maddened horses, with the crashing of the shells around making the most terrible din imaginable.

No picture by Caton Woodville or anybody else exaggerates the original one bit. The job of the drivers is to get their loads of shells up to the guns. It does not matter whether the enemy is sweeping the rear roads with shrapnel or heavy explosive or gas shells. The ammunition wagon has just got to keep going right on till it reaches its destination.

Ask any of the boys who were through the last big fight “ over there ” when the German shells were plastering the roads for miles behind and the aeroplanes were hovering above the wagons trying to drop bombs on them. Ask any of the officers who were needing more ammunition for their batteries. They’ll tell you about the ammunition wagon. The horses became terrified and began to plunge—they always do, they can’t help it—and the rain of shells became heavier every hundred yards. Not a few limbers were liit. “Napoo ” for the driver and his mates and the team.

Sometimes the horses scream—yes, they scream. But the limbers coming up behind have to get to their own destination as quickly as possible and lliere is little time ro think of anything but one’s own job and little enough time for that.

The noise of the traffic and the smash of the shells drowns the voice of the drivers ; it drowns the wail of the approaching shells. Perhaps it is just as well it does, for it is not possible for the men to leave the horses and seek shelter. They just have to drive straight on, through the barrage and the pande- ! moniuni, gesticulating and roaring themselves hoarse at horses which do not hear and are too frightened to see. They are bearing the food for the guns; and the guns must never be starved. There was once an ammunition wagon which went up the track to the gunpits at a great rate past every kind of obstacle, down into and up out of shell -holes, the horses stretching to the pace like track racers.and the driver standing like a mad thing on the traces roaring and tugging like a man possessed. He landed in great time and came to a halt in a bogged hole up over the axles in mud. A captain came along and congratulated the driver on bis pluck and daring.

“Don’t praise me,” saicl the driver. “It’s them'ponies you’ve gotta praise. They got so scared I couldn’t hold them. And I was so scared at their being scared that I couldn’t hold myself. If it hadn’t been for that mud uole I guess we would have been away beyond the front line by this time. We were going some.”