There were very few supplies available in Europe for the American Army. Practically everything for their maintenance had to be shipped from the home base, and no chances could be taken with the possible cutting of the line of supply by enemy operations at sea. Therefore, for every soldier sent to France there went an amount of food and clothing sufficient to meet his needs for four months--an immediate supply for thirty days and a reserve for ninety days. The supply was kept at that level by adding to the amount already sent, with each fresh unit of 25,000 men embarked from America, the increase needed for them. As our Army overseas grew to 500,000, to 1,000,000, to 2,000,000, and with each new leap of the numbers subsistence and clothing for their four months’ use also crossed the ocean, great cities of warehouses sprang up, almost overnight, for the storing of these immense quantities of goods. Each port had its base supply depot a few miles back from the shore where were stored the materials as they were unloaded from the ships. Here was kept, in the depots of all the ports, a part of the reserve sufficient to maintain the entire Army, whatever its size at any given time, for forty-five days. Well inland, midway between the base ports and the front lines, was another series of warehouse cities to which the goods were forwarded from the base warehouses and from which they were distributed to the final long line of storage depots immediately behind the battle zones. In the intermediate warehouses was kept constantly a thirty days’ supply for all the American forces in France and in the distributing warehouses behind the front and at hospital, aircraft and other centers of final distribution there was always on hand a sufficient supply for fifteen days. Most of the material for all this vast network of storage houses had to be shipped from the United States. This was especially true of the base supply depots and the early construction. Later, much of the wood was cut by American engineering troops in French forests. Let two or three of these warehouse cities afford an idea of the immensity of the task of housing the supplies for our armies. At the St. Nazaire supply depot nearly two hundred warehouses afforded 16,000,000 square feet of open and covered storage. Back of Bordeaux there was wrought in a few months a transformation from miles of farms and vineyards to long rows upon rows of iron and steel warehouses, each fifty by four hundred feet and affording, all told, nearly ten million feet of storage. At Gievres, what was a region of scrub growth upon uncultivated land became in a few months an intermediate supply depot of three hundred buildings, covering six square miles, needing 20,000 men to carry on its affairs and having constantly in storage $100,000,000 worth of supplies.