ARMY'S MOTOR ARMADA TO BE 50,000 STRONG —— Uncle Sam's Garages and Assembling Shops Demand the Services of 150,000 Chauffeurs and Repair Men —— FIRST AID AMBULANCES FOR BREAKDOWNS —— Experts from American Factories to Take Charge of Efficiency Problems ——

Uncle Samuel has gone into the garage business here in France. He has gone into it feet first. He knows the importance of the automobile game in modern warfare; he realizes that if Napoleon the Great had only had one "Henry" at the battle of Waterloo, Marshal Blucher's famous advance through the mud would have been in vain. So he is determined, by aid of all the up-to-date motors, all the up-to-date mechanics and chauffeurs and technical experts he can muster, to prevent any of Marshal Blucher's Prussian successors from stealing a march on him.

Fifty thousand motor vehicles, roughly speaking, represent Uncle Samuel's immediate needs for his charges in France. Of these, some 38,000 will be trucks, some 2,500 ambulances, some 3,000 "plain darn autos," and some 6,500 motorcycles. To take care of this vast motor fleet, to run it, keep it in repair, and so forth, our Uncle will need about 150,000 men—a young army in itself.

When one stops to consider the factories, repair shops, rebuilding stations and what not that will be required, one can see that Uncle Sam's garage is going to be no five-and-ten affair. It is going to be a real infant industry all by its lonesome; and already it is a pretty husky infant, with a loud honk-honk instead of a teething cry. In fact, in the few months since our collective arrival in France Uncle Sam has built up such an organization to keep his cars on the roads as to stagger the imagination of the men of big business, both of our own country and of our allies who have come to look it over.

These Are Real Experts

The A. E. F.—and this is news to many of its members—has, right here in France, a fully equipped automobile factory which is able not only to rebuild from the ground up any of a dozen or more makes of motors, but to turn out parts, tools, anything required from the vast stores of raw materials which has been shipped overseas for the purpose, with the special machinery which has been torn up in the States and replanted here. The factory is going to employ thousands of expert mechanics, and is going to have a capacity for general repair work unequalled by any similar plant back home.

People who dwell within the desolate region bounded by the Rhine on the west and the Russian frontier on the east have been in the habit of considering our national Uncle as a superficial sort of an old geezer; but the way he has taken hold of his automobile business proves that they have another good think coming. He hasn't overlooked a thing. Hard by his big new factory there is an "organization ground," a "salvage ground," a supply depot, and what is perhaps most important of all, the headquarters of a highly trained technical staff.

This is a staff of experts; not self-styled experts, but the real thing—big men in the automobile business representing all the important motor factories in the United States. Some of these experts inspect the broken down machines and pieces of machines in the salvage grounds, and report whether the wearing out process was due to a chauffeur's mishandling of the car, to the use of poor material in its construction, or to something wrong in its original designing.

Working "On the Ground"

If it is the chauffeur or mechanic who was responsible, he, wherever he is, is hauled up on the carpet. If the fault is found to lie with the factory in the States that turned out the machine, the representative of that company on the board of experts reports the facts to the home office himself, with recommendations for future betterment. In making out his recommendations for a car of a new design, peculiarly fitted to traffic and combat conditions in France, his co-workers on the board lend him their assistance. In this way defects in cars are detected "on the ground" and the responsibility placed at once, so that future errors of the same sort will be avoided.

This is, in brief, the journey that lies before an American made auto shipper, say "F.O.B. Detroit." Knocked down, or unassembled, it is packed and put aboard a transport at "an American port." It makes the same voyage that we all made to "a French port," gracefully thumbing its nose at any passing submarines. At the port it is assembled, painted, duly catalogued and numbered, and given a severe once-over and several finishing touches by the experts of the technical staff and their assistants.

For Emergency Calls

Having passed this examination, it is loaded with supplies—for even a car has to carry a pack while traveling—and headed towards the interior under charge of a picked crew of mechanics, who try it out under actual traffic conditions and adjust it. On the way it is held over at the "organization grounds," where it is given its supplementary equipment of tools, water cask, and the necessary picks, shovels and tow cables to get it out of the mud. This done, it is turned over to a new crew of men, and, as one of the component parts of a train of cars in charge of a truck company, it is sent "up front" if the need is urgent, or, in case there are cars aplenty in that interesting locality, it is run to a reserve station to await call.

When the car, after days or months at the front, begins to show, by its coughing or wheezing or other signs, that it is about due for a new lease of life, the journey is reversed. If the car is able to get back under its own power, it goes back that way; if it is not, a hurry call is sent for the auto-doctoring-train, which is nothing more nor less than a repair shop on wheels. There the blue-jeaned doctors of the train do their best for the car, and if it doesn't come around in a day or so, it is towed back to be overhauled from A to Izzard.

For the supplying of this auto armada, Uncle Sam, who seems to have overlooked nothing, has dotted the main routes from the Atlantic coast of France up to the fighting lines with gasoline stations. At the ports of entry themselves he has erected immense storage tanks, each capable of holding 25,000 barrels of the precious juice. At a number of inland bases on the way up are other tanks with a capacity of 5,000 gallons each. Near the front are many smaller tanks, while at the front itself the regular gas drums, small in size and readily transported, are available for the cars that have run out.

Just to make sure, Uncle Sam has brought over a flying squadron of some five hundred tank cars, which again has caused the natives to sit up and take notice. These cars are loaded from the tank ships at the ports of entry, and then sent inland to fill up the various depots. All in all, this same Uncle Sam who, by the way, is now supplying his allies with practically all their gasoline and lubricants, is doing a pretty good and speedy job as a distributing agent.

One more sample of how this lean and canny old unk of ours uses his head, and this story will be over. All the motor trucks are being distributed about France in definite areas, according to their make; for example, a certain area will be served by Packard trucks exclusively, while another will have G.M.C.'s, and G.M.C.'s only. This system does away with the need for repair men carrying many kinds of parts, and makes it possible for one trouble-expert knowing all about one kind of car, to serve a whole district. In that way harmony of operation and speed in mending broken-down cars is secured.