These horrible threats remained on the notice-board until long after the tide of battle turned and the German was in full retreat back to his lair.
And we rather liked the story which the German press had to the effect that a deputation of German business men had put before Hindenburg in February the gloomy prospects of the country's food supplies, concluding: "In May, Germany will be almost without food." Hindenburg thereupon replied: "My reply is that I shall be in Paris on April 1st."
The date chosen seemed so appropriate!
Still, it would be foolish to say that we had no anxieties. Some of our stoutest fellows were up at "advanced G.H.Q.," a temporary H.Q. near Amiens, from which most of the really exciting work was done. At Montreuil we had not the exhilarating feeling of being within the sound of the guns, but had to face perhaps the hardest of the toil. It was rare for an officer in some branches to leave his room before midnight, and the usual hour for starting work was 8.30 a.m. Meals ceased for a time to be convivial affairs. One rushed to the table, ate, and rushed back to work.
The work was so overwhelming because of a combination of circumstances. The character of the War had changed from stationary to moving over almost all the British Front, calling for a return to the mobile system of supply and for new classes of material. British reinforcements were arriving from other Fronts, sometimes without their full supply train and without the full equipment for our Front, and not familiar with its system of working. There were large movements of French troops into British Areas, and in some cases these French troops relied upon British sources for some of their supplies and transport, and in all cases their line of supply had to be dove-tailed in with ours. American troops were moved into British Areas and relied upon British sources for many items of equipment, transport and supplies. British Administration was thus being called upon for supplies to British, French, American and Portuguese troops, at the same time as our lines of supply had to be re-organised and co-ordinated with the new French lines of supply. Further difficulties were created by the necessary frequent changes of railheads and the great movements on the roads of civilian refugees. Territory threatened by the enemy had to be evacuated as far as possible of civilians, and of civilian goods and stock likely to be of use to the enemy in case of capture.
The extent of this accumulated difficulty from a transport point of view can be gauged from the fact that a British Army needs on a day of intense fighting 1,934 tons of supplies of all kinds per mile of front.
The railways came as nearly as possible to a complete breakdown under the strain. After the first Battle of the Somme, our military railway system in France was thoroughly reorganised by civilian experts. It was a reorganisation which followed, I believe, the best models of the great railway companies of England, and it coped with the very heavy traffic during the period of fixed or Trench War quite well. Unfortunately it was not a system adapted for moving warfare.
A civilian railway expert would doubtless find many reasons for amused criticism in a military railway system in the running. It would appear to be rather haphazard, to be run a good deal on the principle of a train getting there if it could, and to be very faulty in the matter of time-tables and so on. Well, the German advance in its brutal practical way simply riddled with holes that admirable railway reorganisation which the civilian experts had conferred on the B.E.F., France.
Perhaps it was only to have been expected. Trench War in its railway requirements was deceptively like peace. You had your railway termini, and the requirements of a Division were fairly stable. You ran so many trains a day and, except for an occasional rush on some sector when fighting warmed up suddenly, there were no problems that differed greatly from those say of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway.