Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/276

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��Popular Science Monthly

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��The Giant Periscope. It Peeps Over Tree Tops Like a Giraffe

'""P^HE old French saying, "Be X silent; your enemies are listen- ing!" might well be paraphrased by the Germans to read, "Lie low; the English are looking!" Like the person "from Missouri," the British officer must see his way very clearly. For this reason, perhaps, the periscope is put to more strenu- ous service among the English troops than among any of the other belligerents.

The accompanying il- lustrations show a pole periscope of a late de- sign, which is ex- tensively used by k the English and also by the Italians, be- ^ cause it enables an officer to peep over tall obstacles, whether mountain peaks or merely tree tops. The height to which it can be run up depends upon the number of sec- tions of which it is made. The sections telescope into the bottom tube when not in use and dur- ing transportation, for which a tiny two-wheeled used. The truck is often run the protection of a tree, and spikes are nailed in the ground to hold the apparatus close against the tree-trunk. It is the work of but a moment to turn the crank and send the telescoped sections up, into the air until the top peeps out over the tree top. In one village on the Somme, a periscope of this kind, set up in a little protected cove, kept the Allied armies informed of every movement of the Germans, who were behind massive entrench- ments at that particular spot. The body of the truck is built so low that it can be easily concealed by brush.

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���An Ambulance with Its Own Traveling Kitchen

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Lower sight, piece

���The pole periscope in position. It may be folded up in a truck

��truck is greatest up under master's point of view

��United States Army Am- bulance Corps has its traveling kitchen. These units have taken over the front-line trench work for- merly performed by the Red Cross.

The vehicles of each unit consist of twenty Ford ambulances and of two one and one-half-ton trucks to carry baggage and supplies. One of these trucks hauls behind it the traveling kitchen which is mounted on a light four-wheeled trailer on which is carried a field range with all the neces- sary stew kettles, roast pans and the like to serve three meals a day to the forty-fi\'B men comprising a sec- tion. The traveling kitchen makes each unit independent of its base for cooked meals, provided its sup- ply of food does not run out. This is an advantage of the importance from the quarter-

���An American ambulance with its own traveling kitchen which is mounted on a very light four-wheeled trailer

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