The transport suffered from three great scourges: the pest of
horse-sickness and fly and the calamity of rain. For after twelve hours'
rain in that black cotton soil never a wheel could move until a hot sun
had dried the surface of the roads again. Roads, too, were mere bush
tracks in the forest, knee-deep either in dust or in greasy clinging
mud.

Never has Napoleon's maxim that "an army fights on its stomach" been
better exemplified than here. All this campaign we have marched away
from our dinners, as the Hun has marched toward his. The line of
retreat, predetermined by the enemy, placed him in the fortunate
position that the further he marched the more food he got, the softer
bed, more ammunition, and the moral comfort of his big naval guns that
he fought to a standstill and then abandoned. Heavy artillery meant
hundreds of native porters or dove-coloured humped oxen of the country
to drag them; and heavy roads defied the most powerful machinery to move
the guns.

In order to appreciate the great difficulty with which our Supply
Department has had to contend, we must remember that our lines of
communication have been among the longest in any campaign. From the
point of view of the railway and the road haul of supplies, our lines of
communication have been longer than those in the Russo-Japanese War. For
every pound of bully beef or biscuit or box of ammunition has been
landed at Kilindini, our sea base, from England or Australia, railed up
to Voi or Nairobi, a journey roughly of 300 miles. From one or other of
those distributing points the trucks have had to be dragged to Moschi on
the German railway, from there eastward along the German railway line to
Tanga as far as Korogwe, a matter of another 500 miles. From here the
last stage of 200 miles has been covered by ox or mule or horse