Major Osborne chanced to be at luncheon at the moment of the explosion. He jumped from the table and speeded to the main garage of the Red Cross in Paris as quickly as the nearest taxicab could take him; there he ordered five ambulances to be equipped and manned and held for orders. The superintendent of the motor division of the service also had seen that beacon, and he, too, had driven at top speed to the garage. The two men, with the aid of that beacon and a good map of the environs of Paris together with their knowledge of the war activities around about it, decided instantly that it must be La Courneuve that was the scene of the disaster, and without hesitation ordered the ambulances to hurry there. "Hurry" to an ambulance driver! It was part of his gospel and his creed. In fifteen minutes the squad was at the smoking ruin, and the Red Cross, as usual, was the first ready to render help. It was needed; for although the death list was comparatively small--and one can say "Thank God!" for that--owing to the fact that the first of three thundering detonations had given the workmen a chance to run for their lives, practically all the houses in the near by communities had been shattered, and a great many folk wounded in their homes by falling walls and ceilings. The depot was ablaze when the Red Cross ambulances arrived, and from the center of the conflagration came the incessant bursting of grenades. Although pieces of metal were flying through the air with every explosion, the Red Cross workers went to the very edge of the fire, crawling on hands and knees over piles of hand grenades in search of the wounded. It was courage, courage of the finest sort; courage--I may say--of the Red Cross type. * * * * * On the morning of the twenty-second day of March, 1918, Parisians read in the newspapers that came with their matutinal coffee that the long-heralded and much-advertised German drive was actually beginning. Major Osborne and his fellows saw those startling headlines. Instead of wasting time upon speculating as to what their final significance was to be, they interpreted them as a direct and personal call to duty. Within the hour they were at the big garage in the Rue Louis Blanc, realizing that the Transportation Department once again had an opportunity to demonstrate its real efficiency. The drive was on; the pathetic and tragic seeming defeat of the allied forces begun. Retreat meant that refugees would soon be fleeing from the newly created danger areas, that there would be necessity for increased medical supplies for the rearward hospitals, and a vast amount of incidental work for both camions and men. The work of a transportation function in war is by no means limited to armies that are advancing or even stationary.