The Glamour of Logistics:
"The next day we started moving back and they told us we were going to operate on the Red Ball, so we did. What a grind that turned out to be, and we would haul from either the beaches or Cherbourg all the way across France. Many times (we hauled) as far as Belgium and it took several days to complete this, and the trucks would break down and all kinds of trouble developed every day. Just the same, plenty of supplies were moved this way and all of it was worthwhile. We were not on the Red Ball too many weeks before the railroads were getting in operation, and soon they replaced the trucks in this sector, so we moved again.
This time we went north to Rouen, and this was all British territory and at first it was a little difficult to do things as they did. In fact, we did not do things their way, but our way, as it was only a matter of time before the yanks had control of the whole situation in that city. While here we operated on the White Ball highway system, which was similar to the Red Ball, only not on such a large scale.
Many of our trips were to Paris, and many times we lost men in that city, as there were too many good times to be had there. It was October when we moved into a field north of Rouen and the fall rains were just starting; in less than ten days we were in mud almost up to our necks and every day it became worse (as it rained every day). The trucks would run off the side of the narrow road through our area and soon they had holes so deep they could not get through them. One hole was so deep that a truck would nearly upset when it got in there, and it always took at least two more trucks to pull one (truck) out of that place. We tried to fill that hole with rock, and finally gave up after hauling rock into it for three days. We would slip and slide through the mud over to the kitchen truck, get our chow, take it back to our tent and eat it in there where it was warm. We had some German prisoners doing work for the company at this time, and they were good workers, too—and plenty handy to have around. Near the end of December and the first part of January it was plenty cold living in those tents, and many a morning our tent would have the ice frozen to the ceiling in places, and frost all over everything in it. Our drinking water in the water cans froze and it was COLD! We had a stove but had nothing but wood to burn, and it would only hold fire as long as someone sat near it and continuously put more wood in the stove."
Mr. niteowl77
“For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost; being overtaken and slain by the enemy, and all for want of care about a horse-shoe nail.”