The Signal Company’s share in the work was first to maintain direct touch between the Corps Staff and the advanced troops, for which purpose D.R.’s were attached to the cavalry, but by a special effort of B.E. section direct telephone communication was soon secured and maintained. Secondly, the main communication network had to be extended forward at the same rate as the advance, and, as a counter-attack was very possible, the full organization for position warfare accompanied the Corps. The Signal difficulties were doubled on the 25th March, by the sudden withdrawal from line of the XIV. Corps on the right and the consequent extension of the already wide Corps frontage which then stretched from Péronne to Le Transloy. The Imperial Signal Sections attached for assistance at intervals during the winter had been withdrawn, and, worst of all, the needs of the fighting fronts northwards entirely shut off for a time the supply of line construction material. Consequently, before a single pole or wire could be erected, it had to be released from service in rear, salvaged, and transported forward by the company’s lorries over extremely bad and congested roads. Much heavy material had again to be relayed forward over tracks impassable to lorries by teams from the cable sections, and finally carried on the sappers’ shoulders over shell-shattered ground impassable even for wagons. Under such handicaps, and in the teeth of continuous blizzards of snow, sleet, and rain, which continued till the end of April, over forty miles of poled route, including much of a heavy permanent nature carrying twenty-four wires, was erected, and two successive moves of the Headquarters of Corps and all subordinate formations accomplished without any loss of communication. The skill, endurance, and ready zeal of the A.S.C. Motor Transport drivers attached to the Company played a great part in the results achieved. They had never failed to meet the severe calls made upon them from time to time during the Somme fighting, but now both the distances and the masses of material to be moved were greater, and the road conditions but little, if any, better. Early in April the advance reached its limit, and was definitely held up in front of La Vacquerie and Havrincourt—outlying strong points of the Hindenburg Line. On the 17th, Corps Headquarters was established in hutments and tents near Haute-Allaines, after a short interval at P.C. Chapeau. Then the weather at last broke, and with a genial spring sun overhead, a rapidly drying country underfoot, and good news coming through from the Arras front, life under canvas, even in this devastated zone, became pleasant.