Such transport conditions bore more hardly on signals than any other service. With activities spread over the whole area, a very limited _personnel_ and transport, and ever-changing conditions, which often stultified by nightfall all the laborious effort of the day, the difficulty of getting parties to a given spot at a given time, co-ordinating the supply of materials and labour, controlling the working parties and switching them to meet emergencies as they arose, was a splendid schooling in patience, temper, and too often in resignation to fate. This remained the paramount factor in the Company’s experience throughout the Somme. As an example, a cable wagon of B.E. section took its place in a melancholy queue at 7 a.m., and arrived at its working point near Montauban at 2 p.m., to lay a short line required urgently at noon, and involving about half an hour’s work. The party returned via Carnoy in accordance with the traffic circuit, and encountering similar conditions, reached headquarters near Méaulte at 10 p.m., with horses and men exhausted. Under the same difficulties, 51 Air Line Section was engaged in following up the advance with a light open wire route up to Fricourt, and B.G. and B.F. Sections were worked with the 21st Division Signals and the Corps Observers respectively. The commencement of active operations brought the work of the operators and the despatch riders at headquarters and with the heavy artillery to a point of extreme pressure, which was maintained with little variation throughout the following months. Up to two thousand telegrams, and a larger number still of D.R.L.S. packets, were received or despatched daily. The telephone exchanges at Corps and Heavy Artillery Headquarters, with over sixty and thirty connections respectively, worked hard day and night, handling urgent priority calls; but so keen and expert were the operators that a service was maintained equal, if not superior, to the highest civilian standard. The destruction of lines by hostile shelling and traffic was met by the skilful use of alternative routes and by the quickness and energy of the maintenance linemen. However, the incessant strain to which the operators were subjected soon began to affect their nerves, and before the Company was withdrawn men resting off duty could be heard answering imaginary calls in their sleep.