The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1918-10-31
HOW GUNS AND FOOD ARE
MOVED INTO BATTLE

/ Hc1dl paper VI inc AiucTICdHS Ill
France and in this interesting paper
appeared the following account Of
how guns and food are moved into
battle. The article follows:
When the Infantry moves forward
many miles through the rain over
such SCARED and tortured country
side as stretched ahead of the Amer
lean Army in the Argonne, the i'm
mediate task is pushing the heavy
artillery and ammunition up behind
them. The immediate problem is the
instantaneous creation of roads
where no roads had been for years.
In such times and such places the
Yankees realize as never before in
their lives that the pace and ease of
an advance in France varies inversely
as the square of the mud.
In such times the men of the hour
are those Pioneers-both Engineers
and Infantry-who are the pathfind-
ers for the guns.
They were hard at work at dawn
on the 26th. With the first dough-
boys to go rip-roaring out Of the 20
miles of dismal, mist-veiled trenches
went Engineers with Wire-cutters and
footbridges.
Plank for Everyone
In the division that swept up and
beyond Bethincourt the Engineers at
the zero hour were lying abreast Of
the third Infantry wave, each man
carrying plank. When the great
hour struck, they passed through the
third wave, through the second,
through the first, so that by the time
that first wave came up to a swollen,
swampy stream kilometer ahead of
the jumping off place, there were the
Engineers tossing their planks down
to make a swift and decent foOtway.
Over this footway a. brigade passed
on. Then up came the planks, to be
fashioned in a twinkling into broad,
substantial bridge over which, by
o'clock that first morning, heavy traf
fic was numbering slowly forward.
AS night fell at the end of the third
day their colonel could have been
seen ensconced in his headquarters.
His headquarters was a limousine
car. He was neatly uniformed, ex-
cept that, in defiance of all regula-
tions, he wore neither sock nor shoe.
His weary feet had got past the point
Of enduring either. In one hand he
held cup Of coffee, the first warm
thing he had encountered in four
sleepless days and nights. In the
other, hand he held the receiver Of
his telephone, which was convenient
ly set up in the front seat. Into the
mouthpiece he was pouring his re-
port, which was both a boast and a
bitter complaint.
"A broad, solid road all the way
through, sir, and I'll be dog-goned If
the traffic of five divisions isn't hog
ging it already"
Job for the Pioneers
In the region just to his left, a
road had opened up for three kilo-
meters at the end of the first day.
Down that road at sunrise, It would
have been impossible for column of
tyos to have marched without casu-
allies. The shellholes were so many
and so huge that five ton truck
could not have stood level in the
road, much less have driven a hun
dred yards along it without disaster.
Yet soon road came into being
there.
Out of a hundred dugouts the pio-
neers came, carrying the stones with
which those dugouts had been walled.
Out Of the stones they would build
new thoroughfares, or with them
mend and strengthen even those
along which the trucks were slowly
grinding. You can shove such stones
under the crushing tractor Wheels
and watch them be ground to pow
der that will defy even the steady
wash and drain of autumn rain.
An Engineer captain, commanding
some 1000 men at work on one main
artery of traffic, mopped his brow and
blessed the God of Good Roads who
had inspired the French to macadam-
ize theirs. For only roads originally
made of broken stone can be mend
ed quickly with broken stone. For
material, even If the neighboring dug
outs were not full of it, the villages