HISTORY
OF THE 305th Infantry
by
Frank Tiebout
FOREWARD
FOREWORD
IT all began on the banks of the Meuse River. No sooner
had a colonel of French infantry approached one of our
junior officers on November 12th, saying, "Tell your
commanding officer that he can pull his regiment out any
time he wants to," than a couple of the Old Timers
found themselves of the opinion that an account should be
written of our experiences. As a result, about the first
of January, Colonel Sheldon decreed that one officer, to
be designated as Historian, should not be compelled to
spend all his time driving imaginary machine gun nests
out of the wooded hills bordering upon Chaumont.
The work of writing
A History of the Three Hundred and Fifth Infantry thus
commenced, gaining headway by almost imperceptible
degrees, for the Historian was rendered practically hors
de combat by the consciousness of his small degree of
new-found, unprecedented freedom, incapable of sane,
consecutive effort. Nevertheless, three photographic
teams were sent back over all the fighting ground,
obtaining almost a thousand pictures from which two
hundred have been selected for publication, and many men
of the Regiment were persuaded to write of their
adventures. Be it said that some made startling
disclosures to which propriety and practice deny the
light of print. Much of it is, however, in the of t-times
inelegant but graphic language of the American Doughboy,
rough of speech but ever kind of heart and keen. If one
or another company is quoted too frequently in the story
it is simply because that scribe, squatting upon the
floor of his billet, bending low in the flickering
candlelight over a piece of Y. M. C. A. paper and a
stubby pencil, succeeded better than his fellows in
expressing the American soldier as he is. His
observations and experiences are but typical of all the
others. The thought arises at this point that too much
space may have been devoted to the rifle-men-that not
enough has been said of the services of supply, of the
runners, of the signal men and linemen, braving
unspeakable dangers to perfect and maintain the
"nerves" of the Regiment. Of the Auxiliary-we
cannot say enough.
It was early a
question, in the minds of those displaying the greatest
determination that there be a permanent regimental
record, whether this book should be so prepared as only
to thrill posterity with a recital of glorious deeds, or
so constructed as to reveal the man in the ranks as he
really is. Should it be an idealistic or realistic
representation? Should it assume the guise of a glorified
Operations Report, setting everything down in painstaking
chronological order? Should it be a series of Company
Histories, or Battalion Histories or one big Regimental
Story?
A story it is, rather than a
history. We do not go " over the top " in every chapter, waving the Flag
and shouting, " Forward! " as the posters depict. We spend a
lot of time growling and grumbling with the other boys;
we try to show the mud on his shoes, the humor that never
deserted him even in the very blackest moments; we
picture him with a suggestion of budding horns, instead
of Cupid-wings-and have a lot of fun living over again
with him the crowded hours of the last two years.
When Captain
Kenderdine was asked to prepare a roster of officers,
past and present, he obligingly said, " Sure,"
expecting to be detained half an hour. Four weeks later
he came up for air. You can therefore guess, without much
difficulty, how stupendous was the task of Sergeant James
J. White who assembled the roster of enlisted personnel,
with statistics pertaining to seven thousand men! To
Captain Garner goes the credit for the preparation of the
maps, and to Captain Crosby-well, the book would not have
been a true account of the Three Hundred and Fifth
without his cover and his inimitable sketches.
Of sage conclusion
as to war, prohibition, Prussianism and politics there is
none. Only this: that had there been such a thing as
universal service, we might have got over sooner and back
earlier. Some of our other ideas have changed a whole
lot. No longer shall we sob if the bed seems short. No
longer shall we scoff at eating warmed-overs. After
twelve months of canned corned beef and hardtack the old
hash will seem like a political banquet. When we think of
chlorinated water, cold coffee will be as welcome to us
as cream to a cat. In short, we think that members of the
Three Hundred and Fifth will be a whole lot easier to
live with, and that America is the only real place in
which really to live.
F. B. T.