Aurand became the Commanding General, Services of Supply (SOS), in the China Theater on May 25, 1945. The theater represented enormous logistics challenges. Much of the country was occupied by the Japanese, the logistical infrastructure of the hinterland still in Allied hands was undeveloped, and it lay at the end of a very long line of communications over the Himalayas, known as the Hump. As in Europe, the organizational structures were not those found in the manuals. He found that there had been conflict between his predecessor, Major General Gilbert Cheves, and theater headquarters, which invariably had been resolved by the theater staff removing functions from the SOS. Given the size of the theater, Aurand felt he had no choice but to adopt a decentralized structure, with a base section around its headquarters at Kunming and broad authority delegated to the intermediate and advance section commanders.