BOOK
Colonel Péchot: |
 |
ISBN 978-1-901023-01-5
|
|
Author Sarah Wright |
|
Hardback, laminated full colour board cover, 256 quality glazed pages, 300 illustrations: scale drawings, maps, photographs and drawings, many contemporary, others commissioned for the book. Available from good booksellers or S.M. Wright c/o Wrightscale |
|
Price £36.75 Payment by a UK cheque in favour of S.M Wright Postage UK included, EU £10, rest of world £26 |
 |
Colonel Péchot: Tracks to the Trenches is the result of over 20 years’ research and access to the private archives of the Péchot family and others, and French Army archives. The book explains to a new generation the forgotten system of 60cm portable railways which linked existing railway lines with the Western and other Fronts, 1914-18. Péchot created this system in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War; after trials and development, the French Army used it. Almost immediately, the Germans copied and refined the system. During the War, other combatants adopted it. This integrated system of supply explains why great armies were able to stay in the field for years. Heroic men, early lorries and |
|
| mud-caked mules have been credited with this feat but in the field had to be replaced by railways. | ||
| At the beginning of the War, lorry transport was undeveloped. By 1920, it offered a viable alternative to rail and was retrospectively credited with transport during the War. The little railways were forgotten. Read the book, look at the evidence and judge for yourself. |
||
 |
||