The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1915-07-07
GERMANY'S GREAT
SUPPLY STATIONS
Vast Stores of Food Supplied and
Broken Material Mended or
Recast.
News and Courier.)

Northern France, May ZO.-ln a
one-time prosperous and busy city
that now contains almost as many
German soldiers as it does French in
habitants, is one of the "Hauptpunk-
tie" or chief points in the remarkable
lines of communication which stretch
from Germany to the front trenches.
The "Hauptpunkte" may be called
for want of a better name a division
headquarters in the lines of communi-
cation. This headquarters has, rough
ly, two functions, the preparing and
forwarding of food and ammunition
and the repairing of material that has
broken down under the strain of bat
tie.
In the city recently visited by an
Associated Press correspondent the
German authorities have requisi-
toned the slaughter house of a one
time French butcher, and in it are
methodically preparing the enormous
quantities of meat needed for the ar
my a few miles away.
The cattle are, for the most part,
driven in from Germany. For miles
as one approaches the city one can
see herds grazing on the rich French
fields. By the time they have reached
the division headquarters they are
fat and sleek.
Meat Supplies.
The slaughter house, of course, has
been found entirely too small for the
amount of work that has to be done
there, especially in that department
where meat is sailed or picked. In
default of r~eceptacles therefore the
army has requisitioned bath tubs and
similar inappropriate but useful YES
sells, and in them lie thousands of
pounds of meat. A thousand pounds
of wurst a day is prepared for the
front, as we'll as many hundreds of
pounds of beef, mutton and pork.
Within a hundred yards of the
slaughter house is the bakery, for
merly a manufacturing establish
ment, whose brick ovens have been
found to lend themselves very well
to the baking of 10000 loaves of
bread a day. Each loaf, composed of
one-third of white -four and two
thirds rye flour, weighs 1,50 grams.
Perhaps less important and vital,
but more interesting, r the estab-
lishments where damaged artillery
and guns are repaired and put into
shape for use at the front again.
From all along the front there
come to a former machine shop the
guns of all bores that have been put
out of commission in the fighting.
They come in with damages that in
many cases are quite as freakish as
the injuries sustained by The soldiers,
and are repaired with quite as much
ingenuity.
In a carpenter shop French work.
men, aided and superintendent by
Germans, remake the wheels. In an
other part machine guns are made
whole, oftentimes by using the I'M
damaged parts of two, three or more
weapons. In still another building
new muzzles are moulded and put
onto unchanged trucks.
Here also are prepared the great
hoops of wire that a be stretched
in front of a trench in an emergency
at q moments notice and can be
made fast by stakes of steel that are
screwed into the ground. Thus at
tackers, whose artillery has demol-
ished the usual entanglements of
barbed wire, can still be checked for
a time at least.
In conjunction with the machine
shop there is a shoe shop and a leath-
err shop, where broken saddles are
mended, and where the straps for ar
tillery wagons, rifles and knapsacks
are put into order once more. 1t is
the exception rather than the rule
that any piece of apparatus used at
the front is damaged so badly that
it cannot be mended here or that it
has to be sent back to Germany.
S~weepings of Battlefield.