Beyond Is-sur-Tille at Saint-Dizier was another, a supplementary, regulating station for the Meuse-Argonne battle, which during the battle fed, apart from the troops in the Saint-Mihiel and other sectors, 645,000 men and 115,000 animals. Regulating stations did the detail, while Gièvres and the base ports did the wholesale. They saw that each division received its daily rations of food and ammunition. Each division had its "cut in" of cars, with all its daily supplies, which was made up a day in advance and sent to the divisional railhead. Knowing the needs of the divisions, a regulating station sent its requisition back to the big warehouse centers, while it always tried to keep on hand a small amount of all articles likely to be needed in haste. When we were swinging our divisions around for the Château-Thierry emergency, one division had seven railheads in eight days; its trains were on hand on each occasion. They must be; otherwise the divisions went hungry. All other demands must yield to the routine which brings the morning milk and the grocer's boy to the kitchen door. At the railhead you felt not only the breath of battle but that throbbing suspense and intensity of purpose which is associated with men in action. Here came the empty trucks and wagons from the front, and the ambulances traveling in their convoys on the crowded roads up to the zone of fire, while men worked in darkness. Here the wedge from home was narrowing under the hammer strokes, until you could feel it splitting the oak--the hammer strokes of the hundred millions, their energy, their prayers and thoughts. Those empty trucks seemed ever hungry, open mouths, the mute expression of the call for more, and still more, of everything with which to keep up the driving--more replacements as well as material. When the front wanted anything, it was wanted immediately. Improvise it, purloin it, beg for it, but send it, was the command that admitted of no refusal. If this officer could not get it, put another in his place who could. Officers when they lay down for a few hours' sleep had their telephones at their elbow, ready as firemen to answer the call. Men worked until the doctors ordered them to the hospital--that they must do. They could do no more. The S. O. S. could not send guns or tanks when it had none from home; but American resourcefulness surpassed its own dreams of probabilities. Harbord could well say to Pershing: "I've straightened out things in the S. O. S." XXIV REGULARS AND RESERVES Isolation of West Pointers--College graduates not dissociated from the community--The monastic ideal of the founder of West Point--And the caste ideal--The officer a cleat on the escalator of promotion--Out of contact with America--Five years to make a soldier--A clan tradition--A blank check to the regulars.