The attempt to put this policy into practice quickly showed the fallacy of it. Immediately it was discovered that the composition of the divisions had radically changed during the service in France. Men had died in battle, fallen sick, been transferred to other organizations, and their places had been taken by replacement troops shipped from the United States. Whole divisions had been rearranged. In the autumn of 1918 the expeditionary divisions were no longer representative of separate districts of the United States; each was in effect a cross section of the whole of America. One of the first organizations to come back from France was a minor unit, a company, which had received its training at Camp Cody, Texas. The unit was sent to Camp Cody for demobilization and discharge. There it was discovered that, of every ten men who had joined the unit when it was in training, only four remained. The other six were newcomers, and to reach their homes they had to travel to points scattered from Oregon to the Atlantic coast. Had this system been followed throughout the disbanding of the expeditionary units, it is evident that it would have cost the Government heavily in travel allowances paid to discharged soldiers, without saying anything about the tremendous traffic burden upon the railroads of the country. There was nothing to do but to break up the whole organization of the A. E. F. before sending it to the demobilization centers, and to assemble the men once more in units that possessed geographical identity. The A. E. F. received instructions to attempt this break-up in France--at least to begin it there. It was found impossible to regroup the services of supply troops to any extent, because the embarkation ports in France, at which the supply troops were prepared for embarkation, were neither organized nor equipped to handle such a difficult work. More could be done with the divisional troops at Le Mans. Thereafter, whenever a division came into the area of Le Mans those soldiers who had joined the division after its training had been complete, and who did not live in the district centering in the original training camp in America, were detached and assembled with neighbors of theirs into territorial demobilization units, which became known as overseas casual companies. When the division itself went on from Le Mans to the ports it consisted only of the remnant of charter members who had been with it from the outset. The prescribed size of an overseas casual company was two officers and 150 men, but it was seldom convenient to send forth companies uniformly organized. Men were not held waiting in France until casual companies could be built up to the prescribed size. One company might consist of fifty soldiers and the next 250, according to circumstances in the embarkation camp.