If G.H.Q. is the brain of the Army, the Base is as certainly its heart.
For hence all the arteries of that organism draw their life, and on the
systole and diastole of the Base, on the contractions and dilatations of
its auricles and ventricles, the Army depends for its circulation. To
and from the Base come and go in endless tributaries men, horses,
supplies, and ordnance.

The Base feeds the Army, binds up its wounds, and repairs its wastage.
If you would get a glimpse of the feverish activities of the Base and
understand what it means to the Army, you should take up your position
on the bridge by the sluices that break the fall of the river into the
harbour, close to the quay, where the trawlers are nudging each other at
their moorings and the fishermen are shouting in the _patois_ of the
littoral amid the creaking of blocks, the screaming of winches, and the
shrill challenge of the gulls. Stand where the Military Police are on
point duty and you will see a stream of Red Cross motor ambulances, a
trickle of base details, a string of invalided horses in charge of an
A.V.C. corporal, and a khaki-painted motor-bus crowded with drafts for
the Front. Big ocean liners, flying the Red Cross, lie at their
moorings, and lofty electric cranes gyrate noiselessly over supply ships
unloading their stores, while animated swarms of dockers in khaki pile
up a great ant-heap of sacks in the sheds with a passionless
concentration that seems like the workings of blind instinct. And here
are warehouses whose potentialities of wealth are like Mr. Thrale's
brewery--wheat, beef, fodder, and the four spices dear to the delicate
palates of the Indian contingent. Somewhere behind there is a park of
ammunition guarded like a harem. In the railway sidings are duplicate
supply trains, steam up, trucks sealed, and the A.S.C. officer on board
ready to start for rail-head with twenty-four hours' supplies. Beyond
the maze of "points" is moored the strangest of all rolling-stock, the
grey-coated armoured-train, within whose iron walls are domesticated two
amphibious petty officers darning their socks.

In huge offices improvised out of deal boarding Army Service Corps
officers are docketing stupendous files of way-bills, loading-tables,
and indents, what time the Railway Transport Officer is making up his
train of trucks for the corresponding supplies. The A.S.C. uses up more
stationery than all the departments in Whitehall, and its motto is
_li