HISTORY
OF THE 305th FIELD ARTILLERY
by
Charles Wadsworth Camp
1919
XIII
BARRAGES AND RAIDS
IN LORRAINE, however, liaison with the infantry was never
the bugbear we had feared. One had to be diplomatic. The
gravest danger lay in a slip there.
We had, as a matter of fact, forward guns nearer the Hun
than infantry battalion headquarters. We were ordered to
place these as soon as we were in position. They were
called pirate guns. Their code name was, appropriately,
the goat. Their mission was to deliver harassing fire, to
snipe at fleeting targets, to safeguard the battery
positions from sound and flash ranging by making it
necessary to fire only barrages from them. In other words
the pirate gun went into action with its eyes open. The
Hun could spot it by sound or flash ranging. The Hun did.
Those guns were always shelled more or less.
Battery A sent in the first pirate gun for the First
Battalion under command of Lieutenant Ellsworth Strong.
The emplacement was an excellent one in the cellar of a
ruined house in Fenneviller. It was heavily casemated. To
guard against emergencies it was necessary to keep the
limber and teams at hand in a stone stable.
The Second Battalion pushed its gun forward to a French
emplacement in a piece of woods. Lieutenant Watson
Washburn took it up.
We wanted to keep an officer with each of these pieces.
We had too few. It was necessary to put them in charge of
non-commissioned officers. It was a good thing. The
results increased the confidence of the officers in their
enlisted assistants.
Both of these positions were shelled. Fenneviller got it
nearly every day. It was the custom when the music
started to take the men off to a flank and keep them
there until the concert was over.
Later the Second Battalion put out a piece from Battery
F.
Another phase of organization concerned the
observatories. To be serviceable they had to run
according to a perfect system. Conduct of fire was only a
short side of their usefulness. Rocket signals from the
infantry were relayed through them. Scouts sat at the
instruments all day watching for signs of enemy activity
and for fleeting targets. Minute watchfulness will often
locate enemy positions and observatories; will indicate
to a certain extent his immediate intentions.
There was always an officer at each battalion
observatory, and at the regimental one, far back behind
Neuf Maisons. Battle maps were carefully marked. Dead
space and visibility maps were made, and elaborate
panoramic sketches. Anything observed on the terrain
could be reported by its coordinates.
Our organization was good, but the question of rocket
signals disturbed it always. It seemed simple enough in
the beginning. Heaven knows why it wasn't always. We
placed at each observatory a circle on which the limits
of our sector were fixed. When a rocket went up an
indicator was turned so that it pointed to the burst.
That showed us at once whether or not the rocket was
intended for us. The rocket guard was always on duty.
There were very few rocket signals-one for each of the
various barrages, one for short firing, another for gas,
but among the higher officers there seemed to be a
diversity of opinion as to which signal should indicate
what. It gave the men in the front line lots of fun
guessing what signal to use in an emergency, and the men
in the observatories an equal pleasure gambling on what
was wanted when a rocket appeared.
The system was altered frequently. That's where the
confusion lay. One morning during a reconnaissance of the
front line a captain of infantry asked our advice. He ran
through a batch of orders and memoranda. He flung up his
hands.
" If I should need a normal barrage tonight,"
he said,
I honestly don't know what I ought to send up. Anyone of
three rockets might be right-or wrong."
Such a situation could not be tolerated. Our officers in
liaison with the infantry did what they could. Both
branches were equally anxious. There's enough danger in a
rocket signal anyway, and that is no reflection on the
doughboy. An inexperienced non-commissioned officer with
a small squad in an exposed and lonely place, when he
becomes aware of danger or fancies it, wants help in a
hurry. He may in his anxiety send up the first thing that
comes to hand, or everything he's got. Or in the dark he
may easily mistake a rocket. The artillery must sense
such mistakes. When signals are changed too frequently it
requires a clairvoyant.
A new order came down, settling the matter. There would
be a rehearsal of the new signals that night.
The telephone officers had arranged a system of barrage
calls by projector with the infantry. While the rehearsal
was in progress that and the telephone were the only
means open to the infantry to cry for help. The Hun
didn't catch on and attack. The rehearsal proceeded
peacefully. It was like a pleasantly conservative display
of fireworks. The telephone system was given every
conceivable test. Runners were sent breathlessly from
organization to organization, and to and from the
infantry. Bicycle messengers tore along the dark roads.
Everything worked. Towards midnight we talked it all over
and went to bed with a sense of security that had
hitherto lacked.
That's the way things go in war. Within an hour we were
awakened by our first real emergency. And there was
plenty of confusion that the night's display had not
accounted for.
Lieutenant-Colonel Stimson's telephone buzzed. The
officer at the First Battalion observatory was on the
line. A red rocket, he said, had just gone up from the
infantry. He had repeated it to the batteries. A red
rocket under the new system called for a barrage on the
line of resistance. It was not, therefore, to be fired
without confirmation by telephone. Yet those at the
observatories were certainly under the impression that
they had been told to pass red rockets directly on to the
batteries. Our line of resistance was full of men,
happily asleep.
It was one of those times when the switchboard is busier
than one on the stock exchange during a panic. Colonel
Stimson got to work. He put in calls for all three
batteries at once. He wanted infantry battalion
headquarters, too, to find out what the emergency was,
for certainly there had been a mistake in the rocket. Our
officer with the infantry wanted him. The battery
commanders had judgment. They wanted him too, to find out
why the red rocket had been relayed to them. Regimental
headquarters wanted the battalion commanders. The
regimental observatory was in the same case. It was
necessary to report to three outside stations that a
barrage was to be fired.
Meantime while waiting for the battery commanders to
respond we listened, apprehensive, for the sound of our
own guns, firing that short and murderous barrage.
As has been said, the battery commanders had judgment.
They didn't respond to the signal. Our operators were
good enough for the stock exchange on a panic day.
They got the calls through. They put the battery
commanders on Colonel Stimson's wire as they came in
until he was talking to all three at once. That situation
was saved. But what the deuce did the infantry mean,
firing a red rocket? They wanted something, and they
wanted it in a hurry. It might mean anything from a small
trench raid to the attack in force we always felt was a
possibility in that thinly held sector.
A captain back in pleasant Neuf Maisons evidently sprang
at the worst. We had no time for him. Lieutenant Graham
was on the telephone, calling from infan-try battalion
headquarters. They hadn't been able to get anything from
their front line. Infantry brigade took a hand.
As far as we could get any satisfaction the infantry
seemed to want the Negre barrage, a barrage similar to
our so-called normal, but to the right.
The battery commanders had the receivers at their ears.
Lieutenant Colonel Stimson called the single word
"Negre. " The guns spat. The rapidity of their
fire filled the night woods with an evil, staccato
crashing. And although it has taken moments in the
telling, that response came in an amazingly swift period
after the red rocket had awakened us.
Infantry brigade headquarters took a hand again. They had
had enough of the Negre. They wanted the normal. Two
batteries were about through and finished before
shifting. Another, a trifle behind, shifted nonchalantly
in the midst of its firing.
The Second Battalion was in much the same case. Its
central boiled, too. Neuf Maisons informed it that the
Huns were breaking through the center, and cried for the
Chamois barrage. One battery was ready to respond to the
red rocket ' but was stopped in time. Another fired the
Grand Bois, and then shifted to the Chamois.
"By gad!" the infantry said afterwards,
"it was bully to hear those shells ripping over.
Sounded efficient and safe somehow."
We smiled in a superior fashion. Why had they sent up
their red rocket anyway? No one ever found out. As far as
we could learn it spoiled the evening for everyone except
the Germans. They seemed particularly peaceful that
night.
While the firing continued, the details were armed with
the few rifles available, and runner relays were got out.
But most of the men agreed with the infantry. It was
worth staying awake to hear such a superior noise.
When quiet descended upon the woods, except for some
distant firing, a call came through from Battery C for an
ambulance and the surgeon. Three men had been struck by
shell splinters.
That was our only material damage. But the night's work
disturbed us. There was a vagueness about the whole
proceeding. It intimated that the infantry was not in
that close liaison with us that we conceived as necessary
to success. And other sectors would offer nastier
problems.
Only one unpleasant incident followed this affair, a
charge of short firing against one of our batteries. It
was not pressed, because of the strain under which our
under -officered brigade was working.
In view of the generally peaceful nature of the sector
sleep was surprisingly scarce in Lorraine,. We tried to
do everything at once. We felt that a multiplicity of
endless conferences was necessary. A man needs a clear
head, especially when he is new at the game, to figure
complicated corrections for modern artillery.
Nor should it be forgotten that Paper Work had taken a
new interest in us. We had foolishly imagined he would be
left behind when it came to killing Huns. Absurd dream!
He stalked into our midst with a new confidence. He
destroyed friendships. He threatened reputations.
The morning report and the sick book were complicated by
the fact that each organization had men in two or three
places. The firing battery, for instance was at the
position. The drivers and extra cannoneers were at the
echelon several miles away. Communication between the two
was seldom good. A few men would be at the observatory,
at a pirate piece, with the infantry, or on detail at
battalion headquarters. Yet reports on these men must be
consolidated and at regimental headquarters at the usual
hour.
There were reams of extra paper work. The war diary
became a bogey. If, the men asked, they had to have
anything of the sort, why not do away with all the other
reports. For the war diary brought everything together,.
positions, men, animals, casualties, rations, forage,
ammunition. At the front where we had less time than we
had ever had repetition haunted us. The information on
that little war diary blank had to be collected from many
sources, and the batteries had to have their figures
together by five in the morning, for battalion
headquarters wanted them by Six, and regimental
headquarters insisted on receiving them by seven. That
meant somebody had to sit up nights, and usually it was
the battery commander.
The figures didn't always come through on time. They
couldn't understand that in Ned Maisons. One makes no
excuse for these delays. Those at the front were engaged
in the biggest and most dangerous war in history.
It is incredible, perhaps, that they should have been
more interested in hurting the Run and sparing their own
men than in compiling innumerable neat figures that
scarcely changed from day to day. It took some harsh
words from Neuf Maisons to bring them to their senses.
Paper work had to be fed, for regimental headquarters had
many people whose only duty was to look after the thing.
And Brigade was voracious, and Division was unappeasable.
Then there was an observatory report in code to go down
at 5:30 A. m; a munitions report at 6.; another at 11; a
third during the afternoon. There were firing reports,
and supplementary observatory reports.
In spite of all this, we did manage to annoy the Hun at
times, and after a while we got enough system to run the
thing after a fashion.
Another ideal was shattered in Lorraine. At Souge they
had told us that while supplies might be difficult to get
there, we would need at the front only to telephone the
echelon to have anything we needed brought up the same
night. Our instructors had been at the front during a
period of stabilized warfare with only a handful of
Americans on whom our entire service of supplies had been
concentrated. Conditions had altered when we got in.
There were more Americans, and warfare was no longer
stabilized. Echelons were further back, and roads were
not so well protected as they had been. Actually the
material didn't exist to satisfy everybody. Yet we were
absolutely dependent on equipment. We learned, therefore,
to be economical, to improvise, to salvage.
Camouflage was one of our chief needs. We got enough flat
tops to take care of the batteries, but we needed
protection for ammunition dumps, wireless stations, the
observatories, the entrances to command posts and
positions. We made a careful study of camouflage in
Lorraine, and the experience we had there was invaluable
in Champagne and the Argonne.
When we were left in complete possession we found a
number of fresh tracks that had to be covered up. The
springs were danger points. Water is heavy, and men want
to carry it by the shortest route. We covered such places
with fresh cut foliage, and established penalties that
kept us all in the desired ways. For larger work, such as
entrances to positions, we used small trees to supplement
our insufficient nets.
The engineers helped all they could, but they had many
organizations to look after. They gave us what material
they had for our dugouts, which progressed day by day. We
needed gas proof curtains, and got them somehow. A sly
spirit developed here and there. A man who got much
needed material usually went around with an expression
that connoted:
"Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no
lies."
And one watched carefully what one had got.
While all this work of organization continued we paid
some attention to our more strictly military affairs. One
does not recall the number of supporting barrages we
figured for one purpose or another, and never fired. It
was splendid practice, but the futility of it depressed
us. Things didn't always come off as one planned in
Lorraine. The show for which Battery A had been rushed
into the line had never got beyond paper.
That wasn't the only case.
No one in the regiment is likely to forget Sunday, July
28th. We figured a box barrage for a raid that day. We
were a good deal concerned about it, for we had been told
it would be a daylight raid whose object was the bringing
back of prisoners. Capt. Barrett of the infantry would be
in command of fifty men. It seemed a hazardous
undertaking to us. We knew that the most accurate fire
would be necessary. That noon we were informed that we
would not fire. Yet the raid would go on.
Between two and three o'clock we heard machine guns, and
the popping of grenades. The rest is history.
Eighteen men, we were told, came back, just two of them
unhurt. Capt. Barrett and the rest were killed or made
prisoners. Evidently the secrecy which had eliminated the
artillery, had failed to mystify the Huns.
Many other raids were projected and died. There was, too,
the usual crop of rumors. You would hear after nightfall
that the Huns were going to attack before dawn, and to
hold yourself in readiness. You sat up all night, waiting
for the first guns, and as a rule, nothing happened.
Sometimes, as you waited, sleepless, you almost wished
for the real thing. Our officers in liaison with the
infantry were lavish with these rumors. It is inevitable
that the infantry should get its wind up, and one must
take its fancies as seriously as its facts.
False gas alarms were more annoying than anything else.
You can't fool with a gas alarm, for discipline's sake,
even though your judgment tells you the presence of gas
at a given place at a given time is impossible.
You would hear far in the distance towards the front line
three rifle shots in quick succession. They would be
repeated nearer. Steadily they would drift back, exigent,
uncompromising, accompanied usually by the jarring
screech of gas horns. Weary men would turn over and
groan. Our own alarm would belch, and you would struggle
into your stifling respirator, and give up all idea of
sleep until you got the all clear.
It may as well be said now that where gas was infinitely
more plentiful we weren't so conscientious. We had too
much work to do, and we formed the habit of trusting our
own noses.
After one of these alarms the whole world would seem to
lie awake and ask for trouble. A screech owl would set a
dozen alarms going. A runner would tear in from the
infantry, gasping in his mask. He'd got a whiff of
something on the road, and the wind was blowing in our
direction.
The men at the echelon usually wore their masks in the
alert position when they came up. That was proper, and
they had to put up with it for only a few hours at a
time. They had become strangers to us. Often we envied
the more comfortable conditions under which they lived.
They appeared at the front only by night when they
brought up rations and ammunition.
No one coveted that side of their job. Registered roads
don't make for contented travel.
The drivers announced their approach by shouts and a
cracking of whips. The details rushed to the entrance to
the position. The contents of the G. S. carts or the
fourgons were unloaded and carried away with anxious
haste. The drivers would chat with the cannoneers for
awhile. Now and then a nearby battery would cut in, and
the horses would grow restless. Then the drivers would
mount and rattle off again to the remote and desirable
woods they inhabited.
That's the way our rations came to us. Food, too, brought
its new problems at the front.
A book might be written in praise of the army cook. His
name, as everyone knows, is no stranger to the casualty
lists. His devotion to his work was nearly fanatic.
Others might falter or straggle by the road. The cook
clung to his rolling kitchen or his field range with
pathetic devotion. And always, quite naturally, I dare
say, he craved to build fires. Flame became to him a sort
of god, and its resultant smoke was incense from an
altar. The rest of us couldn't look at it that way. Smoke
was as dangerous as the flash of our guns. For the enemy
it was a banner, advertising our positions.
As long as wood was dry we could manage to keep the cooks
at their devotions, not without benefit to ourselves; but
in damp, chilly weather the wet wood was too much for our
experimental smoke screens. It was frequently necessary
to scatter and extinguish fires while the cooks stood by
with an air of witnessing a sacrilege.
Fortunately it didn't rain much in Lorraine, and we were
sufficiently far back to make fires practicable most of
the time. We weren't destined to fare so well again until
the close of the war.
Nor did we dream we would be left in Lorraine for long.
The fighting was taking a new turn, that destined to be
its final phase. We had been rushed into the line. So, it
developed presently, would we be rushed into the hottest
battle of the war at the war's supreme strategic point.
As the truth faced us more and more frankly we reviewed
our slight training, our mistakes on this front, and we
asked ourselves if we were ready.
The powers were in no mood to consider such things
meticulously. We were a regiment, and we could shoot, and
so we were needed.
We had erected our wireless station on the hill above
battalion headquarters, and from it the communiques
slipped down to the command post, unofficially but
vividly. Newspapers, a trifle stale, came up at night from
the echelon. So, after a fashion, we kept in touch with
the vast workshop of the western front. We could see
there roughly the modeling of our immediate future.
We read of the Hun's last great offensive on the side of
the Chateau Thierry salient. We shrank from a repetition
of the anxious days at Souge when Paris had been menaced.
That menace seemed to exist again, uglier than ever. But
all at once the spirit of the news altered. Foch's
brilliant counter attack was under way. And as green
American troops had stood with smiling ease and
confidence on the defensive against those vicious thrusts
of May and July, so now they were tearing forward with
the French, laughing and singing as they went, killing
Huns and dying themselves with a courage superb and
indifferent.
Chateau Thierry came back to France, and many smaller
towns. The Huns were going out of the salient like water
from a pressed bulb. Fere-en-Tardennois, their base of
supplies, was threatened, had been entered by American
troops. The allies stood in front of Fismes, were in the
city. Except for a few outposts the enemy was between the
Vesle and the Aisne.
Rumors thickened into fact. We were to move almost at
once. No one shirked the fact that we would probably be
thrust into that vast, sanguinary, and decisive battle.
Battery B offered a complication. On July 15th Corporal
Samuel W. Telling was sent to the field hospital in
Baccarat, and back to us drifted the dread word typhus.
The battery would be quarantined and the most minute
sanitary precautions would be taken throughout the rest
of the regiment. Except for its officers, Battery B was
passed through the delousing station, and placed in
shelter tents in the woods near Baccarat. Yet the battery
could not conceivably abandon its share in the missions
assigned to the regiment. A detail of cannoneers, drivers
and telephone men were sent from each battery to
Lieutenant Montgomery, and in his stride, as you might
say, he welded them together so that his work suffered no
interruption.
At the echelon, however, things didn't go so well. The officers there
were very few. This influx of green drivers added much weight to their
already great burden. When the regiment finally pulled out some property
was left, paper work was involved, the colonel was annoyed,
and there was a good deal of harsh language about. From a
broader point of view, however, the meeting of this
emergency by Battery B was an extraordinary
accomplishment.
The situation was a little relieved about this time by
the arrival of two officers, fresh from Saumur. Second
Lieutenant Charles F. Wemcken was assigned to us by order
of July 10th and was sent to Battery C. Second Lieutenant
Charles F. Perry was assigned by order of July 20th and
was sent to Battery B, while Lieutenant Robinson was
shifted from B to C with which organization he fought
with pronounced success until the armistice.
Another encouragement came in a telegram for
Lieutenant-Colonel Stimson. An extraordinary exception
had been made in response to his plea. We would soon have
Captains Reed, Ravenel, and Delanoy back. On the other
side we lost definitely
First Lieutenant Watson Washburn who was transferred to a
staff job at Corps headquarters; and First Lieutenant
Paul Pennoyer, who, while on a temporary mission from
Souge, had been given a corps staff job, too.
The Hun probably had got some of our rumors. At least he
was extremely attentive during our last days in Lorraine.
Nearly every night now we got some kind of an alarm from
the infantry, and we retaliated by planning many coups de
main, ordered by infantry brigade headquarters, few of
which materialized.
One morning towards the end we were awakened by a heavy
bombardment. Shells were bursting close to the First
Battalion command post. Either the Hun was registering to
transport directly on us, or be was after Nenette.
Lieutenant Brassell was at Nenette with Corporals Tucker
and Goldberg, and Private Braun. Lieutenant Brassell
telephoned down while we snatched a bite of breakfast,
and, to all appearances, dismissed our uncertainty.
"I think they're bracketing Nenette, sir."
We settled our tin hats on our heads and climbed the
hill. The arriving swish of the shells and the noisy
bursts were not comfortable. With each burst, close at
hand, little volcanoes of jet black smoke sprang out of
the pretty wheat field.
Thirty odd projectiles fell over and short of Nenette and
to either side. There the show ended. Nenette had not
been touched. We tried to assure ourselves that all we
had got were overs intended for an anti-aircraft battery
near the Pexonne road. Yet Nenette was always an an-xious
place after that, and we held ourselves ready at the
first alarm to shift to the alternative observatory among
the birch tops. And we endeavored again to find other
points suitable for observatories near the front line.
During one of these reconnaissances Colonel Stimson came
upon an observatory unique in conception and treatment.
It is doubtful if the war produced anything of the sort
more admirable.
We were on a defiladed road immediately behind the
infantry front line. To the right was a hill, thick with
tall pine trees. A fundamental protection of the place
was its patent antagonism to terrestrial observation. You
can't observe through pine trunks and heavy foliage. But
the French had got around that. They had gone above the
foliage and without using the common expedient, which
sooner or later gives itself away, of building a platform
in the trees. They had constructed a huge new tree. They
had a tower raised from similar trunks, and covered with
the same foliage. You could stand within a few feet of it
and remain unsuspicious of its existence. You climbed
many ladders to the observatory at the very top. There
you had a sense of Peter Pan come true. You swayed in the
breeze. And you looked almost directly down into the Hun
lines.
The infantry was in possession and we went back to
Nenette and our poor makeshift.
On July 30th French officers appeared at the command
posts and informed us they were going to take over,
beginning the next night. These men had just come out of
the great battle. We, who suspected an immediate entrance
into that which they had left, listened breathlessly to
their talk of unheard of artillery concentrations, of
long casualty lists, and of a supreme exhaustion.
"Formidable!" was their favorite word.
"You've never dreamed of the noise and the effect of
their barrages," they said. "Formidable!"
One glanced about our pleasant woods. He sighed
contentedly.
"It is tranquil here. A sector for fin pre
defamille."
In spite of ourselves there was a little envy in our
hearts. Certainly the Bosche guessed something was going
on. We had known all along that he had control of the air
in Lorraine. His planes were constantly overhead, and the
bell like note of the archies was with us much of the day
and night, and there were nearly always white clouds in
the air undetermined by the weather. Still Jerry had not
been very aggressive. French planes had been up and given
us one or two reglages undisturbed. The night of July
30th, however, the Huns came over in force loaded with
bombs. Unquestionably they fancied the relief was under
way that night.
A huge ash can dropped beside the Battery F position. The
force of the detonation knocked Lieutenant Derby down,
and spattered a dozen men with dirt and twigs. By an
incomprehensible good fortune the hot, ugly pieces of
metal touched no one.
Another big one landed in the field back of Nenette, and
sprinkled fragments all about the observatory. That was
near enough to the command post to make it advisable to
get the men in the dugouts. Then the planes turned and
went back to Germany, sprinkling their foul droppings as
they went. We escaped, but there were casualties close by
in Ker Arvor woods.
The next day our formal orders arrived Two pieces. from
each battery, except B, whose position would not be taken
over by the French, would be relieved that night. The
whole of B and the remaining guns of the other batteries
would go out on the night of August Ist-2nd.
The first guns out would go to the echelon and wait there
until the next night when they would join the last guns
which would proceed without stopping at the echelon to
the division regrouping area two marches away. The Huns
were evidently satisfied with what they had done a night
too soon. The relief was undisturbed.
Battery B again presented a special problem. Since its
position was not to be taken over by the French it was
necessary that its plant be kept intact until the last
moment. Yet it could not delay to the point of losing its
place in the column. There were miles of wire to salvage
and much equipment to be packed at the very last.
Lieutenant Montgomery managed it, and pulled out on time.
Lieutenants Camp and Fenn remained behind with the two
French groups for twenty-four hours to induct them into
the mysteries of the sector. The French weren't exigent.
Half a morning served to organize them completely. Again
one was forced to admire the way they achieved the
completest results with a minimum of effort.
The first night of the relief Lieutenant-Colonel Stimson
left the regiment never to return to it. A telegraphic
order had reached him that afternoon, instructing him to
report to America for duty with the Field Artillery
there. We watched him drive away that night with a sense
of grave loss. Afterwards we heard that he had been made
a full colonel and given command of a new regiment in
training at home. The armistice came before that regiment
could sail.
XIV
THE FIRES BEYOND CHATEAU THIERRY
OUR movement from the Baccarat positions was not as
simple as we had expected. The road for its entire length
was perfectly visible to Hun airmen, so it was advisable
to march at night. The column was late starting, and it
crawled, as such columns do, on traffic-laden roads. Our
schedule called for a bivouac at Magni6res during the day
of August 2nd. But it was long after daylight when the
regiment arrived, anxiously glancing aloft; and by the
time horses and men were settled the hour of departure
was at hand.
Again the roads were packed, and progress was snail-like.
It was nearly noon of the 3rd before the column, dusty
and tired, entered its regrouping area on the Moselle. We
hadn't imagined the movement of a single division could
be so complicated and tedious.
That march, however, was not without its valuable
impressions. For the most part it lay through the
district of Lorraine, destroyed by the Germans during
their retreat after the battle of the Couronne de Nancy,
the eastern phase of the battle of the Marne. The smashed
villages were now sketchily inhabited, and the fields
were under cultivation again, but about this resurrection
still clung an appearance and an odor of death.
Our own area was just beyond high tide of the Huns. To us
after that journey it was impressively undisturbed and
peaceful. We felt that our ugly carriages parked in
fields along the Moselle were out of place in such a
landscape.
Regimental headquarters and the Second Battalion were at
Bainville. The First Battalion was at Mangonville, two
kilometers to the south. The Headquarters and Supply
Companies were in and about the charming chateau of Menil
Mitry, three kilometers to the east of Bainville.
Significant changes were announced here. Among them was
the transfer of General Rees, who had commanded the
brigade, to other duties, and the appointment of Colonel
Manus McClosky, soon to be made a brigadier general, to
replace him. For a few days Colonel DoyJe, as senior
colonel remaining with the brigade, was in command. There
was a feeling in the air that the changes wouldn't stop
there.
Captain Dana, of course, was again in temporary command
of the First Battalion. Captain Reed reported back from
Souge on the first day and took over his duties of
battalion adjutant while Lieutenant Klots went back to
the Headquarters Company. These two officers set to work
with a will to get the battalion ready for the serious
work just ahead.
Captain Mitchell was transferred from Battery F to the
Field and Staff as adjutant of the Second Battalion.
Lieutenant Derby took command of Battery F. -
We had expected two days in this regrouping area. They
stretched into four, and no one was sorry for the delay.
It was pleasant there, and we had a great deal to do. We
settled down to straightening out the tangled paper work
situation. We made more complete than before the divorce
of the three details from the Headquarters Company. Men,
animals, and equipment were reported to regimental and
battalion headquarters, and were assigned to
organizations for travel and rations. The Battery B men,
released at last from quarantine, reported back.
We were ready when the order came to march on the
mornings of August 6th and 7th.
Regimental Headquarters, the remnant of the Headquarters
Company, and the Second Battalion proceeded to Charmes on
the 6th, where they entrained. The First Battalion and
the Supply Company entrained at Einvaux on the 7the
This movement was unlike the one from Souge. There a
brigade had had a week to entrain. Now from a small
section an entire division was going out practically in a
single day. While there were a number of points of
departure the congestion at each was such that a careful
schedule had to be made and followed.
Each battery broke park and took the road at a stated
moment. It arrived at its entraining point at a given
time. It fed and watered according to the clock. We
passed large parties of our doughboys maneuvering in the
fields while they waited their turn at the trains. They
interested us. We intrigued them. Their glances followed
the long, overladen column from which the sleek snouts of
the pieces, escaping from burdens of forage and
equipment, peered at them encouragingly.
The Supply Company was off first. Battery A commenced
entraining at 2 o'clock and was completely loaded at
3:30. Before the train had pulled out the head of
Bat-tery B was on the ramp. Before B had gone C appeared
and was ready to load.
At Charmes there was a similar precision of movement.
We were surprised to learn how much we had profited by
our one previous experience. The drivers made short work
of refractory animals. The carriages seemed to roll into
their places on the flats automatically.
These days were warm, and such speed makes men thirsty.
There was a little Y. M. C. A. hut on the ramp. When the
job was complete the men were allowed to line up for a
glass of raspberry syrup and water, and a limited
quantity of chocolate, cakes, and tobacco.
Not until the trains had left did any one know the
projected destination of the regiment. That is, we had
moved under sealed orders. Before the departure of his
train each battery commander had received an envelope
with a typewritten command that it was not to be opened
until he had passed a certain station. Inside each
envelope was a rough engineers' map of the district North
of Paris-a map covered with significant names-and a small
typewritten slip of paper which said:
"You will detrain at Nanteuil-le-Houdin.
We spotted it eagerly on our maps. Its location indicated
to us that we might either go in with the British, or
swing more to the cast through Soissons. There was
another possibility. Were we going to lie in reserve
behind the lines? Didn't the powers think us good enough
for the big show, except in an emergency?
Whatever the original intention it was altered the next
day, as everyone remembers.
Except for the customary struggles with a few unruly
animals the trip was tame enough, but there were plenty
of reminders the next morning that we were close behind
the busiest portion of the front. We saw many spreading
nets of tracks, crowded with flat cars on which reposed
battle-scarred cannon, camouflaged tanks, trucks,
automobiles. On everything the deep wounds of shell fire
could be seen. We passed huge gun parks, ammunition
dumps, airdromes, dreary and interminable hospitals.
We gazed at such sights with a depressed interest, and
wondered if we would crawl through the outskirts of
Paris. Then the trains halted shortly after noon at a
small station, and an officer climbed aboard each one,
presenting the commander with a new envelope. Everyone
guessed as soon as be saw it that our destination had
been altered.
There was a map inside a 1-80,000, marked Meaux. And
there was an order, brief and to the point. The division
would detrain at Coulommiers and nearby stations, and on
August 10th would commence a movement forward into the
zone occupied by the First United States Army Corps. The
infantry would be moved by motor busses to be furnished
by the French. The artillery would go on its own wheels
and legs.
Within half an hour after receiving that order the
batteries were detraining.
Battery A detrained in the yards at Coulommiers;
Batteries B, C, and F at Chailly Boissy; Batteries D and
E, and the Headquarters and Supply Companies at St.
Simeon.
There were huge evacuation hospitals at Coulommiers
through which thousands of Americans, gassed or wounded
in the Chateau Thierry salient, were passing at that
time. We listened, fascinated, to the gossip of hospital
orderlies about the effects of big shell fire and
concentrated phosgine and mustard gas.
The sky was full of aeroplanes. Constantly they circled
overhead. We tried to impress on each other that,
although, they were our own planes, discipline must be
maintained as if we were at the front. The bugle,
consequently, blared alarm after alarm, and our work was
retarded. Still we were willing that it should be, for in
our ignorance we believed this great flock of airmen
behind Chateau Thierry meant that we had control of the
air, that, therefore, our offensive and defensive
dispositions would be made simpler and safer on this
nasty front.
Battery A was billeted for that night and the next at the
comfortable little village of St. Germain-sous-Doue.
Battery B went to La Loge Farm, Battery C to Epieds.
Regimental Headquarters, the Headquarters and Supply
Companies, and the Second Battalion were at the
comparatively large town of Doue.
Things had been fairly hectic on the Moselle, but that
wasn't exceptional. Going into billets for a battery is
always much the same problem, much the same mad strug-gle
for a solution. And, when it's reached, the solution is
always about the same. Yet invariably out of the co..
fusion emerges a sort of order and comfort. Eventually we
became more than ever like a great traveling circus whose
discipline automatically repairs the mistakes of a poor
advance man. And that isn't intended as any reflection on
our billeting officers and non-commissioned officers.
They, as a rule, had too much to do, and they were
restricted to too small an area by the advance agents of
the division.
Some towns had a better welcome for infantry than for
artillery, but that fact didn't seem always to be
appreciated. Besides billets for officers and men, the
artillery needed ground suitable for extensive picket
lines and gun parks, and no matter how suitable, the
ground you couldn't establish either near the front
without overhead cover.
Organizations, whether they arrived in the afternoon or
during the dark hours, ran into much the same conditions
in those billets north of Coulommiers. The billeting
officers couldn't be all over the district, so the
non-commissioned aides, as a rule faced the battery
commanders alone:
One always experienced a quick sympathy for these
unfortunates. Invariably they glowed with a naive pride.
They always produced careful lists, showing the billets
available, and the number of men that could be housed in
each. A battery commander going into billets, however, is
only interested at first in two things.
"The picket line and the gun park! " he cries
as he meets his man.
Perhaps the glowing advance agent has let the Battery
slip past these vital points, and it may be necessary to
turn the entire column around by sections in a narrow
street. Battery commanders never take to that kindly, nor
do tired drivers. It is seldom that the places chosen for
the picket line and the park please. The ground is
swampy, or there isn't enough room, or the tree trunks
are too small, or-
The most indifferent commander can find something lacking
in the most perfect park or line.
The advance agent, of course, isn't to blame for these
short-comings. The town major, as a rule, has given him
no choice.
"That's it," he has said. "Take it or
leave it."
But a battery commander doesn't analyze causes when he is
displeased by effects. He decides darkly to make the best
of things. He considers his disappointed advance man.
"All right," he says. "The thing's
impossible. You ought to have done better than this,
Smith, but it's getting dark. We'll make it do.
Undoubtedly you've arranged to billet the drivers in a
group close to the picket line, and the cannoneers by the
park. Explain your distribution to the first
sergeant."
If the advance agent is a man of parts he salutes, seeks
the first sergeant, curses, and with him arranges some
kind of a compromise. If, on the other hand, he flushes
and starnmers forward with facts about some of the
billets being large and some small, and everything
scattered through the town and the surrounding country,
he usually tries the battery commander's patience too
far. Then he sees himself as others see him.
As soon as the animals are arranged for, and he is
certain his men will have some kind of a lodging, the
battery commander turns his attention to the kitchen. The
site of this, too, has been more often than -not an
arbitrary selection of the town major's. It is nearly
always in a farmyard, redolent and wet with manure, and
thronged by an assortment of unclean animals.
It is at this point that the billeting non-commissioned
officer generally goes back to his section a sadder and a
wiser man. He mutters over his lists and his wrongs. He
tells everybody that he has done just what he was told to
do by those above him in rank. He has, probably. But no
one is sympathetic. The customary response of his friends
is:
"Can it, will yeh? It's a heluva billet yeh gave
me."
That detail became more unpopular than kitchen police. It
reduced corporals to the ranks. It made officers lose
faith in their men, and men in themselves. You see, you
usually billet at the close of an exhausting day.
Everything about you is strange. Often black night covers
the world. And, more than the rest, the whole battery is
hungry.
No meal tastes so good as the first one in billets. You
sit around on the grass or a stone wall, eating with the
comfortable assurance that for a few hours no violent
effort will be demanded of you, that in a little while
you will probably be able to go to sleep. Or, if it is in
colder weather, maybe you carry your dinner or your
supper to your new home where a hospitable housewife
gives you a corner by the fire and maybe crowns Corn
Willy with fried potatoes or a piece of cake.
Afterwards, except for the guard, and the few necessary
details, everybody seeks his bed. You climb a ladder into
the loft of a house or a barn, centuries old. You find
straw there, sometimes clean, sometimes not, but always
soft. You drop off to sleep with a healthy and abrupt
unconcern scarcely known to civilian life.
There was enough in the Coulommiers area to keep any but
the weary awake. As we strolled to bed that first night
we watched in the sky to the north vivid and endless
flashes spreading and contracting with a variety of
intensities.
Somebody chuckled self-consciously.
"Reckon the world has never seen such northern
lights before.
Judged by our experience of flashes in Lorraine it was
clear that highest battle, even according to the standard
of this war, raged up there. In a very few days we would
be among the flashes.
As you watched that pallid, violent display you strained
your ears for appropriate sounds. But the night was
silent, except for a distant and amorous song and the
rhythmical music of a breeze across the foliage.
The song vibrated away, and the breeze fell. All night
long before that distorted sky the silence was ironical.