P., Tour was on its way again. The
cheers of the Somerset men sounded gayly in our ears, and the cars
quickly picked up speed and began to mop up the miles at a great
rate. And then, suddenly--whoa! We were in the midst of soldiers
again. This time it was a bunch of motor repair men.
They wandered along the roads, working on the trucks and cars that
were abandoned when they got into trouble, and left along the side of
the road. We had seen scores of such wrecks that day, and I had
wondered if they were left there indefinitely. Far from it, as I
learned now. Squads like this--there were two hundred men in this
particular party--were always at work. Many of the cars they salvaged
without difficulty--those that had been abandoned because of
comparatively minor engine troubles or defects. Others had to be
towed to a repair shop, or loaded upon other trucks for the journey,
if their wheels were out of commission.
Others still were beyond repair. They had been utterly smashed in a
collision, maybe, or as a result of skidding. Or they had burned.
Sometimes they had been knocked off the road and generally
demoralized by a shell. And in such cases often, all that men such as
these we had met now could do was to retrieve some parts to be used
in repairing other cars in a less hopeless state.
By this time Johnson and the two soldier chauffeurs had reduced the
business of setting our stage to a fine point.
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