As a people, when we want something done in a hurry, we are no more inclined to count the cost than to stint our efforts. Ditched trucks and caissons were the casualties of the charge of our transport, which was no less furious in spirit than that of our infantry. Moving a broken-down truck off the road of course meant delay for the trucks behind it; and it meant, too, that someone at the front would be asking in vain for the supplies that it carried. But that pitcher of milk was spilled; on to the market with other pitchers. Anyone who thought that the going would be easy or troubles cease on the other side of the old trench system was soon disillusioned. The Germans had blown up some roads as well as bridges. Our own shells in the preliminary bombardment had made shell-craters and dropped trees as obstacles. We must not forget that for four years there had been a belt three or four miles wide beyond the old trench system from which any but army life had been excluded. No roads had been kept up except those which served a military purpose. The Germans, partly because of their rubber famine, had depended largely on light railways rather than motor-trucks for sending up supplies. Where they did not use a main road, it was of no interest to them how far it had fallen into disrepair. Maps did not take bad spots into account, and aërial scouting did not reveal them. Dirt country roads had been utterly neglected. We must use them all to meet the demands of our immense force. Our heavy trucks and artillery wheels soon cut them with deep ruts. When the engineers were not on hand, each battery and convoy negotiated a passage for itself and left those in the rear to do the same. Freshets had washed out some sections, and undermined others. Embankments had fallen away into swamps, where a side-slipping truck would sink in up to its hubs. If shoulders to the wheel failed when artillery striking across fields ran into ditches and holes, snatch ropes were used. Each convoy must locate the unit which it was serving. The rolling kitchens that had worked their way forward could not deliver their warm meals until they had found the impatiently ravenous troops. Artillery commanders must grope about for their assigned positions, or wait until they were assigned positions. They must have their ammunition as well as guns up. Officers bearing instructions from the staff were as puzzled as the recipient about their meaning, as they studied the map by the discreet flash of an electric torch, and sought to identify landmarks shrouded in the thick night mist under the canopy of darkness. Lightly wounded men moved counter to the streams of traffic and of reserves, who might also be uncertain of their exact destination. Men with bad wounds in the body tottered across the fields and dropped by the roadside. Others who could not move must be found and brought in by searchers.