A Large Number Of British Officers
Were Also Invalided.
CHAPTER VIII:
THE DESERT RAILWAY
It often happens that in prosperous public enterprises the applause
of the nation and the rewards of the sovereign are bestowed on those whose
offices are splendid and whose duties have been dramatic. Others whose
labours were no less difficult, responsible, and vital to success are
unnoticed. If this be true of men, it is also true of things. In a tale of
war the reader's mind is filled with the fighting. The battle - with its
vivid scenes, its moving incidents, its plain and tremendous results -
excites imagination and commands attention. The eye is fixed on the
fighting brigades as they move amid the smoke; on the swarming figures of
the enemy; on the General, serene and determined, mounted in the middle of
his Staff. The long trailing line of communications is unnoticed.
The fierce glory that plays on red, triumphant bayonets dazzles the
observer; nor does he care to look behind to where, along a thousand miles
of rail, road, and river, the convoys are crawling to the front in
uninterrupted succession. Victory is the beautiful, bright-coloured flower.
Transport is the stem without which it could never have blossomed.
Yet even the military student, in his zeal to master the fascinating
combinations of the actual conflict, often forgets the far more intricate
complications of supply.
It cannot be denied that a battle, the climax to which all military
operations tend, is an event which is not controlled by strategy or
organisation.
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