The series of successful minor operations carried out by the Corps in July and August, including the capture of Méteren, and the devastating effect of our superior and incessantly active artillery, no doubt quickened the German decision to evacuate the Lys salient. This evacuation commenced at the end of August, and thenceforward all ranks were occupied in the rapid restoration of communications through the devastated area, now as broad as the old Somme battlefield. An attempt was made to utilize the old buries laid down by the XV. and other Corps before the retreat; but these were too effectively destroyed by the enemy to admit of rapid restoration. After the successful attack of the Belgian and Second British Armies at the end of September, in which the XV. Corps co-operated on the right flank, headquarters were moved to St. Jans-Cappel on the 4th October, and on the 21st, to Mouvaux, near Tourcoing, following the rapid retreat of the enemy to the Scheldt. On this occasion a fast piece of work was done by 91 Air Line and B.E. Cable Section, two lines being completed across the Lys to the new headquarters—a distance of nearly twenty miles—in one day. The Signal portion of the preparations for forcing the passage of the Scheldt filled the period up to the 10th November; but as the enemy retired during the night, and the Armistice was proclaimed the following day, they proved unnecessary. The Corps was not selected to accompany the advance to the Rhine, and so it fell to the lot of B.E. Section on the 12th to lay the last and farthest forward cable in France, from the Scheldt, crossing at Pecq to an observation point on the eastern side. APPENDIX III. THE MEDICAL SERVICES. When the South African Expeditionary Force was organized on the termination of the campaign in German South-West Africa, Colonel P. G. Stock was appointed S.M.O., and in addition to the South African Medical Corps _personnel_ who volunteered for regimental duties, arranged for the mobilization of one Field Ambulance and one General Hospital. The former, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel G. H. Usmar, S.A.M.C., assembled at Potchefstroom with the 1st South African Infantry Brigade; while the General Hospital was formed at Wynberg, the _personnel_ being largely composed of volunteers from the staffs of No. 1 General Hospital, Wynberg, and No. 2 General Hospital, Maitland, and included representatives from each of the four provinces of the Union. It subsequently provided the _personnel_ for the Depot in England, and the South African Military Hospital at Richmond, which was afterwards built and organized. No hospital equipment was available in South Africa, but the official Advisory Committee on Voluntary Aid, of which Sir Thomas Smartt was chairman, met the difficulty by voting £15,000 to purchase it on arrival in England, and a further £1,500 to augment the equipment taken by the Field Ambulance.