The Break-Down Gang

Levin Daily Chronicle, 31 January 1918, Page 4

The Break-Down Gang

(By Victor MacClure.)

Shallow pools rcflcctcd the grey sky all along the road. The rain came down in grey clouds and fed the pools until in places they overflowed the whole surface of the road's width. Here and there in tho length of the road, the surface pava had gone, and in its place were doep ruts, slimy and tenacious, that gripped the wheels of the motor-lorries and almost stopped their progress. Under the driving rain men in bedraggled khaki fought great sloughs of mud with wide-bladcd hoes, while others turned barrow-loads of broken stone into tho place whence tho mud had been removed. Other men levelled the road metal or drove it down with weighted staves, pounding it flat. Time and again the workers had to jump to the roadside to allow a heavily laden camion to go by. After cach car passed tho work of repairing the road was taken up again.

The land abutting the road on either side was barren and grim. Here, too, the gluey mud was the chief feature, despite the filled-up shell-holes in which tons of earth and metal had been sunk. This road passed through land that was once by the Germans, land that had been wrested from them not many months ago. The trees still standing with tattered trunks and devoid of branches, showed by their frayed heads how hot tho shell-fire had been in this region. Even now, the long-range cannon of the Germans sometimes threw a dismal-looking tree into the air, and left, where it had been rooted, a great cavity in the ground.

Sometimes these far-thrown shells landed on the road, driving great holes in its already scarred surface. These holes were speedily filled up by the road-making soldiers, and, until the work could be commenced, a soldier policeman guarded the holo and warned the passing traffic to beware of it.

Along tho road came a great motorlorry loaded with food for the store further up the line. Tho driver had heard the burst of a big shell not long before, but drove ahead. He wheeled his car round a corner with a hoot of his horn —and he found tho hole the shell had made. Before he could avoid it, the front wheel of his lorry crashcd into the crater, and the huge structure nearly toppled over. The driver was thrown from his seat by the lurch at the same instant as ho switched off his magneto and jambed on his brakes.

' Five minutes had not passed before a gang of soldiers surrounded the lorry, with planks and sleepers. Not many words were spoken. A plank was shot across the side of the crater, and under one of the lengthwise struts of the chassis. On that plank was placed a lifting jack. Slowly the huge weight of the lotry rose to its normal position, and as the wheel came out from the shell-hole, huge billets of wood were shot under it. Finally, the wheel rested on two sleepers giving a gentle incline from tho hole and forming a bridge for the rear wheel.

The engine hummed again, the great car moved forward, forward with its load of food and comfort for the men in the muddy trenches. The breakdown gang filled up the hole and levelled the top with broken metal, packing it down with their weighted staves. Supply waggons passed and some crossed the place where the hole had been. The broken link was forged again.