When hostilities ceased over 70 per cent of the timber in use on the western front by all the Allied armies had been supplied by the Forestry Corps. Up to December, 1918, the corps had supplied nearly 814,000,000 board feet of sawn lumber.
"It is largely due," wrote Lord Derby, in the spring of 1918, "to the operations of the units of this corps in France that we have practically stopped the shipment of British-grown timber to France, thus saving cross-channel tonnage, while we are also able to save the shipment of foreign timber by having the production of the corps in England to meet the various national demands."
CHAPTER VIII
THE CANADIAN RAILWAY CORPS
Never did railways as a means of transportation play so important a part in warfare as during the recent World War, in spite of the remarkable development of motor vehicles. It was her superior railway systems which gave Germany her principal advantage over the Russians on the eastern front, and as the great struggle developed, it became daily more obvious that the Allies would have to draw on their resources in railway construction to the uttermost to offset the initial advantage which Germany had in this respect on the western front.
At first the French undertook to direct what railway construction it was thought would be necessary, but it was not long before the French Government was forced to call on the British for help. Finally the British found themselves unable to keep pace with the demand, and what was more natural than that Canada, the land of marvelous railway construction, should in her turn be appealed to?
It was in the spring of 1915 that the British Government asked for two railway construction companies. The Canadian Government turned the request over to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, with the result that from the employees of that corporation were recruited the first five hundred members of the Canadian Overseas Railway Construction Corps, which landed in France in the following August.
In May, 1916, the situation in France had become so pressing that the British War Office was compelled to ask for another unit, of about one thousand men, for railway construction behind the lines in France.
The task of organizing this body of men was assigned by the Canadian Government to Lieutenant Colonel J. W. Stewart, who combed the railway workers of the whole country for technical experts and efficient workers. These men were then formed into the 239th Overseas Railway Construction Corps.
Meanwhile Sir Eric Geddes had been assigned the task, as director general of transportation, to reorganize the transportation service behind the lines on the western front. He immediately called General Stewart over to England for a special conference, the outcome of which was a further demand on Canada for railway men.