These and all the other depots had to have their barracks for the housing of the thousands of men for their operation. In each one a sufficient supply of pure water had to be developed, for nowhere in France was there enough wholesome water for American needs. Usually either artesian wells were sunk or existing sources were enlarged and purified, and reservoirs, tanks and piping were installed. One water-works and pumping station had a capacity of 6,000,000 gallons a day. Let a supply depot at which 8,000 enlisted men were employed illustrate them all. Rows of neat, two-story barracks housed the men and a huge mess hall, which served also as church, theater and entertainment hall, accommodated 3,100 men at a sitting and allowed 6,200 to dine in an hour. Planned on scientific principles, its overhead service, from which the food was heaped on the mess kits of the doughboys, enabled them to pass quickly in an unbroken line from the serving stations, of which there was one for each company, to the dining tables. Four smaller dining halls seating 500 each added the accommodations necessary for the entire camp. The food was cooked in two large, concrete-floored kitchens, each 312 by 60 feet and having thirteen big stoves, and in two smaller kitchens of three stoves each. An underground sewer carried the camp refuse to the sea, there were plenty of hot and cold shower baths and the whole was lighted by electricity. At all large supply stations and permanent camps there were huge bakeries, each baking thousands of pounds of bread every day, coffee roasting and grinding plants--one of these prepared 70,000 pounds of coffee per day--ice and cold storage plants that made their own ice, of which one had a daily capacity of 500 tons of ice and held 6,500 tons of beef, big vegetable gardens cultivated by soldiers temporarily unfit for duty at the front, hospitals, nurses’ and officers’ quarters. Within a few weeks after our entrance into the war, and before the first troops had sailed for France, a railroad commission was at work there studying the transportation problem which would have to be solved and preparing for the huge organization which would have to be set up before we could give efficient aid. At first the American Army was simply a commercial shipper over French lines, then American cars and engines were sent over and operated by American personnel on the French roads, under French supervision, and a little later most of the American lines of communication were taken over by the American Army. And hundreds of miles of railroads and switches were built and operated at terminals, between base ports and supply depots, in the supply stations, at the front, and between camps and other centers.