find that men you have grown to depend on begin to disappear. Bill Jones, the foreman of your machine shop, has been sent with forty of the best men to another depot, and Jim Brown, your crack roofer, has been detailed to the kitchen police. At the end of four weeks your detail musters but half the strength, so in comes another and it all begins again."

Mehun was selected as the site for the great Ordnance Base, and of Mehun Frederick L. Collins says in the July, 1919, McClures, "Mehun like Gievres is a hole in the ground that was never registered even as a depression on the typographical map of Europe until the S. O. S. of the A. E. F. put it on the military and industrial map of European America. In the first days those awful days when a handful of ordnance veterans and industrial experts found themselves building warehouses and repairing roads and wallowing in Gallic mudMehun was known as a Hell-hole of disease and death." And he says further, "The first ordnance troops to arrive found a sea of mud on which floated the makings of several monster warehouses. These men - the pick of the supply service who had enlisted to give their country the particular abilities for which they had won recognition in their various trades went to work with picks and shovels and sledge hammers to build an American city on a French dump. And they succeeded. They couldn't help succeeding. They were go-getters, American go-getters, the most virulent type of that primitive breed. They built the warehouses - great structures like the Union Station in St. Louis or the South Terminal in Boston -- and they built railroad tracks to their doors and roads on which motor trucks could pass through the rainiest of France's almost daily rainstorms. They recreated Pittsburgh in a sea of mud; they brought forth Kansas City in a long dark night of labor; they transplanted Camden, New Jersey, to Mehun, France. The frog pond disappeared. The industrial community arose with its neat houses for officers and men; its daily newspaper; its evening entertainments; its baseball teams in which the Camp Commander plays second base."

It was early in August, 1917, that Stone & Webster were invited to a conference with Colonel D. M. King of the Ordnance Department to discuss the possibility of their undertaking the layout and detail design of the proposed Ordnance Base, the purchase of machine tool equipment, material and other supplies and the supervision of the erection of the building,

installation of machine tools and construction of some auxiliary features. The negotiations proceeded rapidly and on August 27, 1917, the arrangement was formerly effected. Stone & Webster opened an office in Washington on September 1st, with Mr. J. R. Lotz designing and purchasing. Their force was rapidly assembled and on December 29, 1917, comprised 300 persons, including 6 executives, 24 engineers and 100 draftsmen. Early in September, J. H. Hood of the Stone & Webster organization sailed for France. To conform to the custom in France he was given the title, Director General of Construction. He was followed by a force of superintendents, engineers and foremen.

The plant was laid out to serve an army of 2,000,000 men in France, to be mobilized there at the rate of 80,000 men per month beginning August 1, 1917. Following is an estimate of the requirements of an army of this size. The gun repair plant should be of sufficient capacity to reline, per month:

The reloading plant should overhaul and reload 114,000 cartridge cases daily, the various sizes being as follows:

The other plants should have monthly capacities as follows:

There was first contemplated one main repair group comprising 28 storehouses 240' wide by 500' long, 10 large shops and numerous small buildings (over 100 acres of floor space) where all ordnance repair and reloading operations could be handled. In order to distribute the storage facilities to better advantage this plan was abandoned and the plant was separated into seven groups located at different points along the lines of communication from our ports of debarkation toward