That hope was destined to fail. The guns were scarcely silent after the attack of the 26th when the weather broke, and October was one succession of tempestuous gales and drenching rains. Now appeared the supreme difficulty of trench warfare. For three months the Allies had been slowly advancing, blasting their way forward with their guns before each infantry attack, and the result was that the fifty square miles of old battle-ground which lay behind their front lines had been tortured out of recognition. The little country roads had been wholly destroyed, and, since they never had much of a bottom, the road-menders had nothing to build upon. New roads were hard to make, for the chalky soil had been so churned up by shelling that it had lost all cohesion. In all the area there were but two good highways, and by the third month of the battle even these showed signs of wear. The consequence was that there were now two No Man’s Lands—one between the front lines, and one between the old enemy front and the front we had won. The second was the bigger problem, for across it must be brought the supplies of a great army. It was a war of motor transport, and we were doing what the early Victorians had pronounced impossible—running the equivalent of steam engines not on prepared tracks but on high-roads, running them day and night in endless relays. The problem was difficult enough in fine weather, but when the rain came it turned the whole land into a morass. Every road became a watercourse, and in the hollows the mud was as deep as a man’s thighs. The army must be fed, troops must be relieved, guns must be supplied, so there could be no slackening of the traffic. Off the roads the ground was one vast bog, dug-outs crumbled in, and communication trenches ceased to be. Behind the British front lay six miles of sponge, varied by mud torrents. It was into such miserable warfare, under persistent rain in a decomposing land, that the South African Brigade was now flung.