In order to assess at their true worth the achievements of the Signal Corps during the war, it is essential to realize the amazing number, variety, and magnitude of the tasks the corps was called upon to perform. The Signal Corps is a staff department charged with providing means of communication for the army, both at home and overseas. According to the present tables of organization, one field signal battalion is usually attached to each division, the telegraph battalions being used as corps or army troops. Generally speaking, the telegraph battalion maintains communications in the rear; the field battalion usually operates with the combat troops at the front. In addition to these troops, there are numerous special units, such as pigeon companies, radio companies, photographic and meteorological sections, which are attached to corps, armies, or to General Headquarters. In France where hundreds of miles separated our base ports from our troops on the firing-line, there devolved upon the Signal Corps an enormous amount of work in the area known as the Services of Supply. The magnitude of the telegraph and telephone systems in the S. O. S. is illustrated by the fact that when the Armistice was signed, the Signal Corps in France was operating 96,000 miles of circuits known as “long lines,” with 282 telephone-exchanges, and a total of nearly 9,000 stations. The requirements for wire in the field were even greater. When our operations were at their height in the summer of 1918, it was estimated that the Signal Corps would require 68,000 miles of “outpost wire” a month for use at the front in connecting telegraph and telephone systems. Outpost wire is, I ought to explain, a development of the war. It is composed of seven fine wires, four of them bronze and three of them of hard carbon steel, stranded together and coated first with rubber, then with cotton yarn, and finally paraffined. This wire is produced in six colors—red, yellow, green, brown, black, and gray—in order that it may readily be identified in the field, the red wire running, for example, to the artillery, the yellow to regimental headquarters, green to brigade headquarters, and so on. The enormous amount of this wire required is explained by the fact that very little of it was saved, it being out of the question to pick it up during the hurry and excitement of an advance, while hundreds of miles of it were destroyed during the heavy bombardments which usually preceded an attack.