"What about the railroads?" You ask the crowd of soldiers, "Are their any quick routes from Columbus to Saint Louis?" There is some quiet murmuring among themselves before somebody answers, "Yes. There is a freight train that goes from Columbus to Saint Louis. But I doubt that there is any organization of the railroads given the state of this nation. It could work though. But only for a few people, the trucks and tanks would have to make it there some other way. And we don't have any fuel reserves." You take the information in, and formulate the remainder of the plan. "Then we take as many on the trains, and the rest will have to use the rivers. We are in Ohio, so we just need to find a large enough river, and float down it until we reach Saint Lois, since they all flow into the Mississippi." There again is some murmuring, but this time with a tone of assent. "If nobody has any objections, we will send as many men as we can on whatever freight trains we can find ready in Columbus, and the rest of us will build rafts and carry the heavy vehicles and the rest of us down via the rivers." You wait a few seconds, but nobody gives any objections. You tell everybody, "Get some sleep, tomorrow we will get to Columbus, and see how our situation looks." You leave, and everybody calms down and crawls in their foxholes to sleep. You just get your bag from your hunting pack, and fall asleep in it. You release Argos so she can do her nocturnal hunting, and retire for the night.
When you wake up, it was still dark out. You try to figure out what it was that woke you when you hear the faint chugging of an engine, lots of engines in fact. It was coming from the enemy territory. You try to think what it could be, two things come to mind, either it is the supply line, or it is reinforcements.