racks.

Driving along a road you are liable to see rough signs nailed to
trees, with such words on them as "Forage," "Groceries," "Meat,"
"Bread," etc. Wait a little, and you may watch the Divisional Supply
at a further stage. A stream of motor-lorries--one of the streams
sprayed out from the rail-head--will halt at those trees and unload,
and the stuff which they unload will disappear like a dream and an
illusion. One moment the meat and the bread and all the
succulences are there by the roadside, each by its proper tree, and
the next they are gone, spirited away to camps and billets and
trenches. Proceed further, and you may have the luck to see the
mutton which was frozen in New Zealand sizzling in an earth-oven
in a field christened by the soldiers with some such name as
Hampstead Heath. The roasted mutton is a very fine and a very
appetising sight. But what quantities of it! And what an antique way
of cooking!

As regards the non-edible supplies, the engineer's park will stir
your imagination. You can discern every device in connection with
warfare. (To describe them might be indiscreet--it would assuredly
be too lengthy.) . . . Telephones such as certainly you have never
seen! And helmets such as you have never seen! Indeed, everything
that a soldier in full work can require, except ammunition.

The ammunition-train in process of being unloaded is a fearsome
affair. You may see all conceivable ammunition, from rifle cartridges
to a shell whose weight is liable to break through the floors of lorries,
all on one train. And not merely ammunition, but a thousand
pyrotechnical and other devices; and varied bombs. An officer
unscrews a cap on a metal contraption, and throws it down, and it
begins to fizz away in the most disconcerting manner. And you feel
that all these shells, all these other devices, are simply straining to
go off. They are like things secretly and terribly alive, waiting the tiny
gesture which will set them free. Officers, handling destruction with
the nonchalance of a woman handling a hat, may say what they
like--the ammunition train is to my mind an unsafe neighbour. And
the thought of all the sheer brain-power which has gone to the
invention and perfecting of those propulsive and explosive
machines causes you to wonder whether you yourself possess a
brain at all.

You can find everything in the British lines except the British Army.
The same is to be said of the French lines; but the in disc