New Britain herald., 1917-09-18
Bringing up the Guns. (Major Rowland Hill in the Montreal
 Tiara ald

Bringing up the Guns. (Major Rowland Hill in the Montreal Herald.)
 Building military railway Is not like constructing a transcontinental. You don't quite know what the
 route will be and your right-of-way has to be purchased with blood and shells. But you have to make a road bed and string rails just as swiftly. perhaps more so, for the penalty clause in the contract is defeat. I couldn't find the colonel of the Canadian railway battalion I visited. He was somewhere out in front among the field ambulances where disgruntled German shells were still bursting, locating tho grade for hts next section. through the auagmire of @ much-fought-over No Mana Land. But the adjutant was there in battered estaminet which hnd been, until yesterday, an advanced dressing station. His painter-they 1 carry painters and divers, too--had changed the Red Cross symbol into the sign that means Canadian Rail-
 way Construction Corps, and which ! has Canadian Brigadier whose namG IS textbook ir railway construction ! at its head. Tine adjutant he was asking how his trains of materin.
 were coming along.
 When you at home read that "tha guns were being brought up satis- 1 factorily,' and that there "have been
 heavy rains all day." you picture
 struggling teams of horses dragging
 batteries into advanced positions. There arc some oi the old pictures
 of war left, but they are few and far <fN
 muniffon have to take tho muddy
 streeks, but if luck is the least with
 us now they go over we'll planked
 roads wherc hauling IS fairly light,
 and by the time the roads are get 1 ting wenrilE worn of the traffic the
 railway Is there. We learned the
 value of lumber and railways at tho l Somma. 2 l On a huge stand, such as you might
 soc al the draughtsmans office at
 raillead on construction at home,
 there was a large scale map of what
 was yesterday Germany in Elan
 ders." There are blue and red lines
 which begin behind our old trenches
 and end nowhere-perhaps on the
 Rhine. There are the standard gauges
 and the light railways, and they arc
 wanted quickly.
 ! l II WALL dVU LWGlVc-1nCn Sn0llS aC
 Ottawa dump tomorrow night said
 the gunner captain. Mind you, the | line isn't built yet. and the gun Is l somewhere back at Vancouver, which
 is an old, before-the-push station. l "All serene" answered the Cana
 dian adjutant. T can pick them up>
 at Halifax dump and bring them l with the train taking the eight-inch l to Oshawa." Dominion geography
 is a bit mixed up here.)
 It Is swift travelling for a newly
 constructed line, but then when the
 combination of railway and artillery
 experts gets going, things do travel | with celerity. If Hindenburg wants to keep away from the big guns he.
 will have to fall back more than 5000
 yards in two days.
 Thanks to sacrifices by British and
 Canadian aeilways, we have plenty of
 material. and we have the blended
 brains and labor. too. in these men | of modern war, who pave the way for 1 the huge guns and clear the way for l the fighting men who Ego over.'' l And when the guns are satiated,
 along the same lines will come any
 thing from tin huts to house those men in the line. to tin hats to shelter ] them from shrapnel and timed bully beef to feed them. There's never any want for traffic on the military rail- ! way.