If tardiness in despatch from the base or railroad congestion _en route_ should congest your railhead suddenly, it may be necessary to indent for fatigue from the corps whose railhead yours is. Usually it is a night fatigue that must be requisitioned. Conceive the attitude of the fatigue that marches to railhead at 9 p.m. through the snow-slush, for eight hours' work. Conceive, also, the ingenuity with which, during operations, they secrete themselves in the nooks and crannies of supply-stacks, out of the bitter blast, until the rum issue is made. Half the energy of the N.C.O.'s is dissipated in keeping their disgusted mob up to strength. Conceive, too, the appropriation of "grub" that goes on in the bowels of these supply-stacks, and the cases of jam and veal-loaf dropped and burst by accident in transit. All-night fatigues that are borrowed are the very deuce. The winter-night clearance at railhead goes on in the face of much difficulty and hardship. The congestion of transport in the yard is almost impossibly unwieldy: it moves in six-inch mud and in pitch darkness, except for the flares of the issuers, and except when there is neither rain nor snow, which is seldom. The cold is bitter and penetrating, so is the wind. Horses plunge in the darkness; drivers, loaders, and issuers curse; and to the laymen, who cannot be expected to see the system which does lie beneath this apparent chaos, it is miraculous that the clearance gets done at all. The mistakes occur which are inevitable in the circumstances. The divisions clear by brigades. One brigade sometimes gets off with the rum or the fresh vegetable of another. Sometimes this is accidental, sometimes not. In any case it is a matter for internal adjustment by the division itself. The adjustment of packs is a matter of extreme difficulty at the railhead of a corps whose troops are mobile. Any corps railhead in the Arras sector in March, 1917, furnished a good example of that. We were to push at Arras. This meant that reinforcements whose arrival it was difficult, if not impossible, to forecast, were constantly coming in and raising the strength of the divisions drawing. It takes three days for orders on the base increasing the packs to take effect at railhead. An increase of five thousand in ration strength may be effected at half a day's notice only. They must be fed. The pack is inadequate to this extent. The division must be sent to another railhead to complete, or to a field supply depôt, or to a reserve supply depôt. It may take them a day to collect their full ration. You immediately wire the base for an increase in pack. By the time the wire has taken effect at railhead, the reinforcements (in these mobile days of an advance) may have moved on beyond Arras; you have all your increase as surplus on your hands. They must be dumped, and the increase in pack cancelled. It's not impossible that, the day after you have cancelled it, you will have need of it for fresh unadvised arrivals.