Now it was for them to go forward, well ahead of the reserves, and some 1,000 yards ahead of the skilled transport troops and the construction trains that were laying the line for which the Labour men prepared the way.

Death or wounds were always in the day's risks, but the Labour men "held on." By this time there were 350,000 men under the Labour Directorate--a force about equal to our whole Territorial and Regular Army before the war.

They were a strange and motley host!--95,000 British, 84,000 Chinese, 138,000 Prisoners of War, 1,500 Cape Coloured, 4,000 West Indians, 11,000 South African natives, 100 Fijians, 7,500 Egyptians, 1,500 Indians--so run the principal items.

The catalogue given of their labours covers all the rough work of the war household.

They were the handy men everywhere, adding on occasion forestry and agriculture to their war-work, and the British Labour battalions were, of course, the stiffening and superintending element for the rest.
In the handling of the Coloured Labour Units there were naturally many new and occasionally surprising things to be learnt by the British soldiers directing them.