After two years of incessant service, and notwithstanding the “emery” effect of the fine sand which was carried in clouds by the wind and penetrated everywhere, it is generally understood that the Italian military motor fleet maintained reliable services throughout the war, and that the individual machines were in surprisingly good condition when their service was completed. Results were, at any rate, sufficiently satisfactory to justify the Italian Government in placing considerable further orders, with a view to increasing their motor columns. This war was probably the first event which enabled the motor vehicle to prove itself in practice absolutely essential as a military implement. A Tripoli newspaper summed up the value of the experience obtained:
“Many people will have asked themselves how it was possible for the Lequio Division to live, march, fight, and win with a base of operations distant from 70 to 200 miles, with rapid and long deviations which were almost of daily occurrence, in a country so barren and inhospitable that man and beast would perish if they were left for only two or three days without provisions.... The motor lorry provided the solution of the problem; by its use in a few hours provisions were brought from the stores and bases to the fighting column, having been conveyed possibly hundreds of miles, and, further, by its means not one day passed without the troops having bread, wine, and coffee. The motor lorry was ubiquitous; it transported ammunition or succoured the wounded, fetched fodder for the horses and other animals, or money for the troops and for the Arabs; it brought new boots for the soldiers or delivered urgent messages, as well as being used for the transport of troops from the various bases right up to the first fighting line in battle. Only the advent of the autocar rendered possible many of the daring moves of this war, as it solved the difficulties of desert transport.”
As regards the uses of motors during the various Balkan campaigns, the only reliable and available information appears to be that contained in a series of articles contributed by Capt. A. H. Trapmann of the _Daily Telegraph_ to the columns of _Motor Traction_. At the commencement of the war in 1912, there were less than 100 motor vehicles in Greece, and some sixty of these--the property of Greek subjects--were immediately commandeered. The machines formed a fleet very far from ideal, representing cars of all makes and sizes, many of them suffering from negligent treatment or unskilful handling, and some very near the termination of a chequered career. The officers entrusted with the duty of purchasing the machines were completely ignorant of their value or qualities, and the drivers into whose hands they were subsequently put consisted mainly of people who could, or said they could, drive a motor car, though the great majority did not profess to possess any knowledge over and above that required for travelling with reasonable safety and certainty, assuming the mechanism of the cars to give no trouble at all. The better machines were chiefly allotted to the various generals and their staff officers, while some of the worst were fitted up with lorry bodies for the transport of goods.