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 rush on Amiens, by the construction of new lines of defence, was no less than 62,000--two-thirds, nearly, of the whole British Army at Waterloo! Then, when our counter-attack began, the task of the Labour men was reversed.