In the matter of traffic, too, the 33rd with characteristic self-reliance proceeded to look after itself. General Bell, who had a pungent common sense, knew his men when he set them to paddling their own canoe. When congestion on the Béthincourt road, assigned to both the 33rd and the 80th Divisions, prompted the thought of making a road of his own, he did not take up the question with Corps, which, as this was not in the original plan, might ask the views of Army on the suggestion. A young engineer might be sent out to make an investigation. He might consider the danger of drawing fire, and other factors. Then he might return to Corps for further consultation. After this another young engineer might be sent out to superintend the construction. Before Corps knew anything about it, and in the time that procrastinating counsel might have occupied, the Illinois men, who did not need anyone to show them how to build a road while they had spades and elbow-grease, had one completed right over the Mort Homme. With its transport moving in good order and with its objectives taken, the 33rd might say, in the language which it had learned in training at the British front, "We've finished our job, and we're feeling quite comfortable, thank you." Except to put in a brigade to relieve the 80th and join up with the 4th Division--which was no small exception to the brigade--the 33rd had nothing further to do until, on the strength of the way it had carried out its mission of the 26th, it was ordered to cross the Meuse on October 8th in order to stop some of the flanking fire from the other bank--which belongs to another chapter. Cronkhite's 80th, or "Blue Ridge" National Army Division, which was the center division of the Third Corps, was also to swing toward the Meuse, and had farther to go, though the Meuse bends inward toward its line of advance. According to the Army plan, the 80th was to have only one day's intensive fighting and swift advancing. On the night of the 26th the narrowing front of attack was to "squeeze" it out. Immediately ahead of them the Blue Ridge men had two miles of open hilly country, which facilitated maintaining their formations. Beyond this was a series of woods forming practically a belt, which offered cover at every point for machine-gun nests. Better still for the enemy's purpose in holding up a persistent attack--of the kind the Blue Ridge men were under orders to make and would make--beyond this, separated by another open space, was another belt of woods. When hard pressed in the first belt, the enemy could withdraw to the second, where his machine-guns would have another free field of fire.