ovel. They could not march any great
distance, and we helped them along in motor buses; but once set them
down by their tracks, though the road might be chaos and the
shell-holes innumerable, obstacles were cleared away, holes filled up,
and the new surface well and truly laid with a magical rapidity....
The idea of taking shelter never seemed to occur to them; they openly
rejoiced at being under fire.... Perhaps though they mended our roads
and gave us easy walking, they helped us most by the quiet
steadfastness of their example. One never saw them toiling away in the
deathtrap of the Ypres salient without realising that they were the
fathers of our generation, men who had already spent themselves in
Britain's cause when we were children, and had now come out to serve
her again, at her call, and to watch how we young ones played up."

Some more recent notes from G.H.Q. dwell warmly on the invaluable
services rendered by the Labour Corps in the Battle of Cambrai,
November, 1917, in the defensive battle of last spring, and in the
autumn attacks which ended the war. In the Cambrai attack the Labour
men were concentrated 1,000 yards behind the line, so as to be ready
for immediate advance. A light railway was run into Marcoing within
twenty-four hours of its capture, and another into Moeuvres under
heavy fire, while the approaches to the bridges over the Canal du Nord
were carried out by men working only 1,000 yards from the enemy
machine guns posted on one of the locks of the Canal. In the
withdrawals of last March and April, throughout the heavy defensive
fighting of those dangerous weeks, no men were steadier. Theirs was
the heavy work of digging new defence lines--at night--with long
marches to and from their billets. Casualties and wastage were heavy,
but could not be helped, as fighting men could not be spared. Yet the
units concerned behaved "with the greatest gallantry." "One company,"
says a report from G.H.Q., "worked day and night in a forward
ammunition dump for three days, and then marched seventy miles in six
days, working a day and night in another ammunition dump on the way,
with no transport but one G.S. wagon to help them; in their
retirements, effected as they were with almost no transport, they lost
practically all their equipment, and yet without getting time to rest
and re-equip, they had to be moved at once to work on defence lines."

The total number of Labour men employed in stemming the German ru