ooking back upon the operations of 1916, and in anticipation of the battles to come, the French prime minister, Aristide Briand, remarked that military offensives had become ‘really like a great industrial undertaking. There were so many miles of front, so many troops, and so many guns required; all had to be calculated to a nicety, and all kinds of preparations made’.1 In the wake of 1917’s inconclusive campaigning season, The Times provided a more concise observation: ‘Modern war is modern industry, organised for a single definite purpose’.2 The years between 1914 and 1918 witnessed the ‘advent of a totalising war strategy that pitted industrial nations and their citizenries against each other’.3 The conflict’s dimensions made it impracticable for all of the belligerents to rely exclusively upon their cadre of professionally trained soldiers both for its conduct and its coordination. All turned to the manpower of civil society to enhance the size and strengths of their martial forces. In Britain, an influx of volunteers and conscripts provided the world’s foremost naval power with an army capable of matching the vast forces raised in continental Europe. Their presence imbued almost every aspect of the British war effort. Examples of their bravery, sacrifices and eventual mastery of modern warfare on the industrial battlefield have inspired a prodigious literature in the century since the war was fought. Yet civilian brain power, as well as muscle power, played a vital role in the prosecution of the First World War.When did the potential utility of civilian expertise find acceptance within the higher political and military administration of the British war effort? How were the skills and aptitudes possessed by the members of a highly industrialized society like pre-war Britain applied to the conduct of an industrial war? Was the relevance of non-military experience recognized and valued within the War Office and the army’s various theatres of operations? This book addresses these questions. It comprises a detailed investigation of the roles performed by Britain’s transport experts in support of the British army’s military operations during the war.