CHAPTER II ARMOURED TRAINS "The armourers, With busy hammers closing rivets up, SHAKESPEARE. ACTUALLY the first "job" to be undertaken in Crewe Works, with a view to winning the war and kicking the Hun away back across the Rhine whence rudely and ruthlessly he had pushed his unwelcome presence, was the hurried overhaul of a L. & N.W.R. motor delivery van which, destined for immediate service overseas and in conjunction with other and similar vehicles volunteered by such well-known firms as the A. & N. Stores, Bovril, Ltd., Carter Paterson, Harrod's Stores, Sunlight Soap, etc., ad lib., formed the nondescript nucleus, unique and picturesque, but none the less invaluable, of the mammoth columns of W.D. lorries which eventuated in proportion as the Country got into her stride. Thereafter the "fun" became fast and furious; orders succeeded one another in quick succession, and in ever-increasing numbers, with the result that men who till then had been accustomed to living, moving, and having their being solely and entirely in an atmosphere of cylinders, motion rods, valves, and all the like paraphernalia of locomotive structure, suddenly found themselves "switched over" on to then unknown quantities, such as axle-trees, futchels, wheel-naves, stopplates, elevating arcs, trunnions, and other attributes of "war's glorious art"; until from bolt shop to wheel shop, fitting and electric shops to boiler shop, foundries to smithy and forge, one and all became absorbed in the tremendous issue which threatened the ordered status, the very vitals, of the civilised communities of the world. One, if not indeed the, centre of wartime activity within the extensive domain of Crewe Works may be said to have been the mill-shop; for, although of necessity "fed" in respect to integral parts by other-and for the time being subsidiary-shops throughout the Works, it was here that were assembled and completed in readiness for dispatch to that particular theatre of war for which they were destined numerous "jobs" of anything but "Lilliputian " dimensions, and evincing characteristics of exceptional interest and unmistakable merit. So immersed in munition manufacture did the shop become that, always-even in the everyday humdrum round of peace-time procedurea source of delight and information to the visitor, professional and amateur alike, entry within its portals perforce assumed the nature of a privilege which Mr. Cooke, bowing to the dictates of THE MILLWRIGHTS' SHOP 41 D.O.R.A., but none the less regretfully, felt constrained to withhold from all save the few legitimate bearers of either Government or other similar and indisputably genuine credentials. Employing none but men possessed of considerable technical knowledge conjointly with the highest degree of mechanical skill and ability, the mill shop might, not without reason, be termed a "seat of engineering"; a "siége," that is, not simply productive of new machinery, but responsible for the repair and maintenance within the Works, as well as for the repair throughout the Company's entire so-called "outdoor system, of a plant of infinite variety, embracing machinery evincing qualities so diverse as are to be found in air-compressors, gas engines, hydraulic capstans, lifts, presses, etc. Fitly enough, however, in spite of these habitually peaceful proclivities, the soul of the millwright from the very outset of the war became infused with the spirit of Mars, and pride of place should perhaps be accorded the two armoured trains which, during the late autumn and early winter months of 1914-15, claimed the combined energies and ingenuity of those who were called upon to construct them. Invasion was a bogey which, rightly or wrongly, undoubtedly throughout the whole period of the war never failed to exercise the minds, not only of competent military and naval authorities, but of amateur and would-be Napoleon-Nelsons" as well, and right up to the spring of 1918, when every available ounce 66 of weight was flung across the Channel to counter what was destined to prove the final and despairing enemy offensive, large forces had been kept at home, if merely as a precautionary measure. True enough, a certain degree of material damage accompanied not infrequently by a sufficiently heavy toll of human, and usually civilian, life resulted from perennial air raids, and an occasional ballon d'essai smacking of "tip and run" on the part of some small detachment or flying squadron of enemy ships might momentarily upset the resident equilibrium of one or other of our East-coast seaside resorts; but nothing approaching the semblance of any actual or serious attempt at invasion was ever known to occur; in fact, Mr. Lloyd George, when speaking at Bangor in February, 1915, went so far as to "lodge a complaint against the British Navy," which, he reminded his hearers, "does not enable us to realise that Britain is at the present moment waging the most serious war it has ever been engaged in. We do not understand it." There was no disputing the fact, those at home never really understood the war; almost equally self-evident was the truism that they seldom if ever really appreciated to the full the natural beauty and charm of their native shores. It needed the grim reality of the former, and the aching sense of void created by enforced and prolonged absence from the latter, to bring home the unadulterated meaning of each in its true perspective, as may be seen from that poignant ENGLAND INVIOLATE 43 little plaint, pencilled from the hell of a front-line trench: "The wind comes off the sea, and oh! the air, I never knew till now that life in old days was so fair, But now I know it in this filthy rat-infested ditch, When every shell must kill or spare, and God alone knows which." Very similar, too, is the strain reflected by the French "poilu," who, drafted out to distant Macedonia, and languishing 'midst the feverstricken haunts of the mosquito, plagued everlastingly besides by sickening swarms of flies, suddenly exclaims,-" Où est notre France? la chère France, qu'on ne savait pas tant belle et si bonne avant de l'avoir quittée?" From fighting men at the front and from them alone could realistic portrayals of pent-up emotions such as these emanate; they alone were capable of expounding the naked definition of the word War;" the people at home "do not understand it." 66 Whether it was by good luck or by good management that "this sweet land of liberty" of ours, England, remained unmolested, immune from the horrors that were being perpetrated just across the narrow dividing line afforded by the waters, within sound of the guns, within range of modern projectile, must be left to the realm of conjecture; although some idea of "the dangers we had to run" may very well be obtained by a perusal of a few of the several and extremely cogent observations which no less an authority than Admiral Viscount Jellicoe has to |