FOR many years, passengers on Long Island Railroad trains were whirled past the sign "Yaphank." They must have wished for the train to stop so that they could see for themselves whether the sign indicated that a village was concealed there, or whether it was just a lone signal for the engineer to speed up.
One day, with other war news, the papers stated that the Government had purchased thirty thousand acres of land at Yaphank, and that the whole outlay had cost one dollar. Six months later, some thirty thousand men pulling stumps on every acre of that bleak terrain, agreed that the Government had been cheated, and that the man who had sold the land should be arrested as a profiteer.
By August, 1917, there had sprung up at Yaphank, clapped together by the clattering hammers of thousands of carpenters, a wonderful mushroom city of wooden barracks heated, electrically lighted, and furnished with modern plumbing through which ran hot and cold water. September 1st found three thousand officers on hand to receive the new army. Two weeks later saw this great army congesting the terminal at New York; pushing to board the train to find out all about the new city.
Officers were sent to meet each train a few stations down the line. These gentlemen of shiny gold and silver bars, mostly newly commissioned at the First Plattsburg Training Camp and eager to assert their new-found authority, received a great shock as they walked through the aisles of the trains to get the men grouped according to the local boards they came from and to collect their credentials. Some regarded the officers as good friends to meet, and shook hands and explained how glad they were to see them. Others must have thought they were a new kind of conductor, and stated their intention of refusing to pay their fares, claiming that the Government would have to see them through after having brought them this far.
Old John Barleycorn, was suspected of being a passenger on many trains, for hilarity of a somewhat bottled brand reigned supreme on not a few of them.
At the bleak camp station the new army detrained, and took a good long look, first at the patches of woods, and then at itself. Most had worn their old clothes to the fray. Some had parts of uniforms, -remnants of National Guard, Home Guard, or Military School days, and the picture was motley. Many must have imagined Yaphank to be near Coney Island, for they carried with them bathing suits, extra straw hats, umbrellas, tennis racquets, bathrobes, pajamas, and all the comforts of home. All lugged souvenirs given them by relatives as they departed from streets, boulevards, and alleys, for the war. "
Who will ever forget the first nights spent in Casual Barracks? Everything seemed so strange and conflicting. The sudden change from beds and rooms at home, to bunks, blankets, and barracks, with a hundred or more vigorous snores outraging the atmosphere after "lights out," and the breeze playing in and out of the knot holes in the clapboard walls,-a mocking echo.
Friends had convinced the rookies before leaving that they were great heroes, yet in spite of their virtues, it was announced that fingerprints would immediately be taken. After two physical inspections and the "needle" they waited for assignments, and one by one left for various parts of the camp to report to their new organizations.
Then came the wild scramble for equipment. There was much haggling, bartering, and exchanging with the newly-made Supply Sergeant, already half-sick of his army job. As the Supply Sergeant was usually a former Bowery Clothing merchant, a cloaks and suits cutter, a tailor's assistant, or a dry-goods clerk with a lengthy experience at Shabelowitz & Kaplan's Grand Street Emporium, the newly-fitted soldier emerged from his neat-setting business suit into his olive-drab costume feeling and looking not unlike a hunk of mispulled taffy! But what could the Supply Sergeant do, poor soul? He had to issue made-by-the-million uniforms " ad lib " and " as is. " Those outfits, with their billowy seams and mismatched material, must have been bewitched by some kind of demon who frequents tailors' shops; for they were all tight where they should have been loose, loose where they should have been tight, and too long or too short. But in ranks, viewed from a distance through a bad pair of binoculars, it wasn't a half badly dressed army. The accommodating cloth in the uniforms learned to conform itself to the notches and crotches of Buck private's contour after the first rain.
After the 306th Field Artillery took form and finally settled down in its permanent home on 16th Street, it took six weeks or so to organize the batteries, learn close-order drill and read the Army Regulations. The art of stump-pulling was so highly developed that hauling guns out of the mud at the front came to be as easy as doing physical drill in the rear rank. The Liberty Loan was no small item in the curriculum, and no one thought of canceling bonds before the end of the month. Some did it then only because it entailed so much red tape to owe more than each month's pay to the Government after Insurance Premiums and Family Allotments had made their inroads. During the day, the rookie artilleryman wore his heels down doing "squads right" and holding the pivot, for it was part of military doctrine that a man who could cut a square corner in camp could not fail to run rings round the Germans in battle.
Then there was an invention for making German mince-meat, called "Bayonet Drill." The new soldier was taught that on the battlefield he might at any moment be confronted with armies of Germans charging at him in Y. M. C. A. canteen-line formation. In that case he would have to stand to his guns and take to slicing up Fritzes into inoffensive particles. Accordingly, while his fingers froze around the barrel of the rifle, he was shown the short and long thrusts, and the uppercut with the butt. But Jerry, like a rag doll, will take a lot of mauling around before he is unpresentable, so these two were followed up quickly with a straight thrust of the butt against his nasal protuberance, and a final overswing on the top of the head. By that time both parties would be exhausted. It was cruel stuff to practice on thin air.
When the fundamentals of military training were completed, the intensive training schedule began. Bunks were used for gun-drill, so that the men would be thoroughly trained upon the arrival of the material. Finally it came, in the form of several rusty caissons. The guns, except for several " three-point -twos," had probably been lost in the Civil War. The "Duties of the Gun Squad" absorbed an hour each day, while semaphore and wigwag took two hours. Work on the buzzer was added, in case the signal-flags might be torn or shot out of the men's hands in the thick of combat. This was a pleasant feature of the training, for it could be performed indoors during cold days. The " Manual of Interior Guard Duty ... .. Military Courtesy," "Care and Handling of the Feet," and "Firing Data" were incorporated into lectures given by officers each of whom had a scheme of teaching all his own. Officers' School and French classes at least served the purpose of occupying part of the time of that portion of the commissioned personnel which was not at the School of Fire at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
Gun emplacements were dug among the scrub pines near camp. Not knowing what kind of gun to build them for, and having only the bunks as gauges, the artillerymen made holes big enough to fit anything from a machine gun to a six-inch rifle.
Now, no matter what kind of Artillery the 306th was to be, it was prepared! Lectures on the horse and instruction in handling motor cars lent added versatility. The coming of winter and intense cold did not conquer the regiment's aspirations. During many days, at the end of an instruction hour, the officers hands were so cold he could not pull the schedule out of his pocket, and his mind was so congealed with frost that he could not remember what it said. It was cold enough for the men to wear ear-laps, so they couldn't hear him, anyway. A hike would be proposed to restore circulation. The trip to the rifle-range was a long and a cold one usually, and rifle-practice, with officers and men lying in the prone position in mud and ice, was always conducive to a great longing for mother and hot coffee. The only warm thing around was the language.
Although the schedule took up most of the men's time, other diversions monopolized their thoughts. Camp Upton may have been crowded with obsolete misconceptions regarding war during business hours, but when retreat had blown and shop was closed for the night there was a wild rush for Acker, Merrill & Condit's store, the Hostess House, Y. M. C. A., K. of C., Jewish Welfare Building, the Library, and the Liberty Theatre. Inter-battery basketball games and boxing bouts were closely contested.
But all these things were incidental to the weekly Friday night debates that took place in every orderly room with the First Sergeant as referee. Between all drills of the week, and at every turn of the squad, new excuses for getting passes on Saturday were developed. Business always failed on Thursday, and births were sure to occur on Saturday that demanded the presence of those concerned. From cases such as these, the First Sergeants caught melancholia when they thought of keeping their rosters straight.
Saturday morning inspections were interesting, but they were regarded only as an overture to the great weekly departure. Trains left for New York every half hour, and this thought reflected from every button, cup, and rifle inspected. As the inspection moved slowly, tantalizingly along, one could see the next battery all through, making for the station, or piling into a car that was to make the great journey. And what a trip it was, to the big city! If one went by car, one either was arrested, or broke down. If one went by train, one was assured of a comfortable seat, no stops, the prospect of two good days in New York, and a pleasant trip back on the 11:44 or the 2:59 Sunday night, in an officially well-heated electric-lighted train with no noise, and every reason to be perfectly comfortable. Then there was the cold dark walk from the station to barracks for those who didn't care to trust their lives to the robber barons of the jitney tribe that flourished on the quarters of the opulent, with no regard whatever for the ups and down of Upton's streets.
Each battery had occasion to visit the city in a body and to take in a show. One night regimental review took place at the 69th Regiment Armory. When the regiment marched down the armory floor in Battery Front, it was such a contrast to drilling over stumps that it lost its head, but cheers rang out just the same, for the regiment's admirers thought it was making a figure " 306." The bands-men were unaccustomed to the echo that rumbled under the arched roof, and couldn't hear one another, so each blew his favorite tune. The mixture of melody was equaled only by the forms of cadence and step in the regiment which naturally followed.
Those of the regiment who was unsuccessful in their weekly bouts with the First Sergeant, made merry over the weekend at Camp Upton. On pleasant Sundays, camp was transformed from a drill ground into a picnic park, with basket parties welcome. From ten o'clock on, trains brought in the mothers, wives, and sweethearts of officers and men, and they all had to run the gauntlet of craning olive drab that packed the road from station to barrack. Big boxes of "eats" always accompanied these family parties from home. Tables of organization for a " Family Squad" were (front rank): In charge, One Papa, equipped with package containing pie; One Mamma, equipped with expression " My Goodness! " One Sweetheart, pretty, never dressed warmly enough for the cold weather (her silk skirt battling with contrary winds en route up Fourth Avenue); and One Brother, either above or below draft age, looking gawky and out-of-place in his civilians. The rear rank consisted of assorted Uncles, Aunts, Cousins, and Friends, very poorly drilled. The admiring " Family Squads" were marched from the station to barracks, and thereafter they were shown all the natural, scenic, and artificial wonders of the place.
The more adventurous climbed up the water tower on Headquarters Hill, and obtained from there a magnificent bird's-eye view of the camp. At night, seen from the hill, the barracks dissolved into the darkness, but thousands of lighted windows shone as from a magic city. Some of the battery barracks boasted pianos. Dances were held, and amiable cooks, with the help of the unfortunate Sunday Kitchen Police, made hot coffee to go with what was in the pie-box from home. Then at night, waiting trains took all the folks back again, after smothering kisses and tangled hand shakings at the station with "Gawge." Papa marshaled his squad into seats, and got into the aisle, where other Papas were preparing to make the journey standing on one foot apiece.
With the consolidation and organization of the regiment, came the establishment of a regimental newspaper, The Howitzer, under the supervision of Chaplain Thomas. The paper was so named after the gun the regiment was always hoping to get. A Post Exchange, or canteen, was run on a co6perative basis, and the more wily would steal thither during drill hours to consume oranges, crackers, pie, and ice cream.
All during the winter of 1918, new drafts were placed into the regiment, and large numbers came from Camp Devens, in Massachusetts. At the same time men were taken out and sent to Camp Gordon, Georgia, and other camps, as replacement troops in organizations being recruited to full strength for overseas service. This kept rosters and organization in a state of continual change and disruption. Battery and Company officers made great efforts to keep the best of their men together. It was because of this nucleus which breasted the almost daily transfers that the regiment retained its individuality. Rumors floated in from time to time that the entire regiment would be converted into infantry either as a whole or as individuals, and the growing preponderance of infantry drill in the schedule lent added weight to these rumors. There had grown in the regiment a stubborn pride in the name "Artillery," and no one wanted to be taken away from the "big guns" that were always arriving from somewhere and never came. With all its drawbacks, Camp Upton was the proving ground for all the regimental, company, and battery spirit that was to be such an important factor abroad. If Camp Upton did not turn out finished artillerymen, it at least made fighters.
The date of moving came, late the night of April 21st, and early the morning of the 22d. After seven long months at Camp Upton, and with many changes from the original line-up, the regiment quietly emerged from those second "homes" on Fifth Avenue. With a peculiar silence, officers and men filed out of each bleak barrack for perhaps the last time; the rolls were called by flashlamp, the lights were extinguished, and the regiment tramped the resounding road to the station in a new frame of mind. No one in Speonk or Moriches had any idea that troops were leaving for Europe so well did the dark conceal the exodus. The wonderful clapboard city had served its primary purpose. Its inhabitants were prepared to board the argosy for battle -the first National Army Division to do so.
A short train ride to Long Island City; a ferry trip to Hoboken; a last look at New York's skyline from the river, and the regiment pulled into the looming shadows of the sterns of two steamships. One was a little freighter, the Mercury, and the other, a monster, the Leviathan, formerly the German Vaterland. The men had visions of mal de mer on the old Mercury, for she looked as though she might make Albany, but never France! Finally, amid a flurry of hot coffee and crullers from the Red Cross, the regiment trooped up the gangplank of the Leviathan ready to sail for France.
KENNETH O'BRIEN,
First Lieutenant, 306th F. A.
ATLANTIC OCEAN,
April 27, 1918.
DEAR OLD PAL:
Well! Well! here's a letter from your old friend right out in the ocean.
Can you amagin, Al. "Me," who's been kicking up the dust on the old diamond, or chasing 'em over the grass in deep center. "Me," who's never had no use for water, except what's in the pail and you know, Al I only hit that for appearances sake cause you know, Al, it's the regular thing to do after banging one over the garden wall. Yes, Al, I am now doing a high diving act on the high seas. Said diving being into the lunch. But I'll tell you about that later.
To begin with, we started for France from Camp Upton about 9p.m.onApril 21st. At 9 P.m. we falls out of the barracks and had roll call with full packs until 3 A.M. April 22d. Every time a guy coughed they'd put over another roll call on us. Meantime the boys was getting restless like lions in a cage to get over there and get in some good barracks again, and put in a few more months at squads right, in which we ain't quite up to the handle yet, in fac far from poifect.
Well, at 3 A.M. the foist sargent for the last time, very gently bawls " CALL THE ROLL," and off we go for France to get the 5.30 train for Long Island City.
We just gets on the road long side the barracks when we gets a halt, and by this time we was pretty sore about the way we was delayed from getting at the Germans when some guy put over a rumor that an order just came from Washington that the war was over, believe me, Al, we was so disappointed, that if it was true, we was willing to go right back to civilian life and leave the army flat. But we was soon off again after another roll call and got the 5.30 train at 4 O'clock-
Soon we pulls into Long Island City and gets on a special ferry-boat resoived for us, and when we hears that we are making for Hoboken, and that we would have a few roll calls in that good old Irish town, the boys all feel pretty good. Also pretty dry, cause it was excrushiating hot. But I guess the gink who was running the excursion was one of them bone-dry guys and we lands flat on the dock.
Well, Al, I wasn't much surprised to see that we was going to make the voyage on a boat with smokestacks. I had a tip on it from a guy who's pretty thick with the barber who shaves the Major. And what do you think the name of her was? Yes Sir! the Leviathan. Some giant, boy! She's the old Dashund or something like that, made over, and listen Al, the guy who give her the new name knew something, 'cause the foist part made a hit with the Irish and Algerians in the outfit. We get as far as the gang-plank and we have another long delay on the dock. But this was just military courtesy and we didn't mind. It seems the Commodore of the vessel was just dining at the time. And he takes about three hours to dine! Which is mak-in- a good job of it eh, Al? So right here is where we gets our foist knockdown to corned beef. Our Cap. commands, (1) Eats, (2) Rations! Rations is the command of execution but before he says it we have forty-two cans open, and when the Red Cross ladies hands us coffee and cake for desert, which was delightful, we calls it a meal. (The coffee and cake part of it.)
It gets to be about 2.3o and at last we move. Yes Al, she's some boat! A whale! But I hear that an Irishman drawed, the plans for her, I had a laugh, Al, when one guy sees the boat and says he don't get it as how such a boat made of steel cud float. So I tells him as how the boat was made of iron, not steel. And she's made of wood inside, plenty of wood in proportion. That's where a guys education comes in Al.
Well it don't take us long to get consigned to our staterooms, and right here, Al, is where I gets sore on the Irishman who made the plans. I figures right off that he's a blood relation of the guy who invented bob wire. No doors or walls or curtains or anything on the staterooms, everything open! Amagin Al, you know how we made the circuit on pullmans. I asked a naval guy on the ship, "What's the idea?" and he says it was the " Iron Pipe Demountable System " and I tell him I calls it, " The Sardine System." But then he tells me about the idea being that if the boat was captured we could be safe because the Germans couldn't get thru the ailes of our bunks. That's where I lurns something Al. But I couldn't kick, because the side of the boat I slept on has holes in it, portholes they calls em.
Well Al, once we gets under way there wasn't much excitement until Mess time, then all hands makes a dive for the Grand stairway what leads to the Ball-Room. That's where we dine Al, in the Ball-Room. Can you amagin it Al, privates in the Ball-Room with hand paintins on the walls and ceilings! I don't know where the Officers feed. J guess they have to take care of themselves as best they can. As I was saying Al, the boys make the big rush for the lunch and every time I sees that rush it reminds me of the riots at the gates on the days that McGraw had me slated to pitch. Once we gets into the Ball -Room it's all big-league stuff Al, with Officers standing all around umpiring and any guy caught going to the plate more than three times in one inning is out. We only have two meals a day and that is enuf Al. Breakfast and dinner. For supper we have abandon-ship drill by the numbers in case the ship goes down.
And we have nifty little life-presoivers that go on like a chest protector. We was told that if the ship went down, to keep cool, and take one blanket with us, and take an Annie Kellerman off the stoin. I guess we would keep cool, eh, Al? Can you figure as how the - a guy's going to swim with a blanket on
him? That may sound all right to a naval gazoop, but take it from me, Al, I always have my belt filled with ammunish and my rifle handy. And if the boat goes down yours truly will take a Brodie off the stoin with his gun. That's a guy's best friend, Al, -his gun. And you know there's quite some wood on her too, and I figures I cud hang on to it if the presoiver got loose and went down. I guess that's quick thinking, eh, Boy? Well, you know me, Al! But believe me the "Subs" never had a chance. Our deck is decorated with guns all camoflowed and each of 'em run by the best Navals we got in West Point.
Every night we close the portholes so as no sound can get out and hold an entertainment with movies which we enjoy, Al, but most of the nights we spend trying to shave ourselves with salt water. We always have our evenings to ourselves, Al, and I spend most of em on deck taking in most of the scenery which is always about the same,--one cloud follows us all the way over. I guess that's obsoiving things pretty close, eh, Al. Well that's my way.
Well Al, old boy, I'm sorry I can't tell you just where I am, but here's a hint. One day I asks a petty Naval just about where the ship was and he says, " We are now passing thru Military Channels." So there's your tip, Al, look itupon the map and you can figure about where we will land. Now Al, I guess I will have to close as I just hears the whistle blow for medical exercises which we have every day.
Assuring you that I will keep in touch with you and hoping that you will give my regards to all the boys in the league, and wishing you the same, I am your old Pal.
HEN.
CAMP SOUGE,
DEAR OLD PAL: May 10, 1918.
I suppose everybody on the circuit is wondering how I am and how I got across the ocean. Well, the ocean ride was soitinly wonderful. In my opinion every young guy should make it once in his life, and believe me, Al, it looks like every young guy is going to have a good chance.
Well Al, I suppose you took my tip and found that we landed in Brest, which is in France, on the coast. We blew into the harbor and sunk the anchor on May 2d, about 6 bells A.M. (which is about the general time for doing anything in the army) and it was soitinly a gorgeous sight. The harbor with the hills was wonderful and put me in mind of the Blue Ridge mountains which I heard tell of in song. And then there was a sausage obsoivation baloon up, which, with a few French "Subs," was the only things that made the scene look like war-time.
About noon we was escorted ashore on a lighter and lined up in the street for a march to our rest camp. It was funny to see the youngsters run up to us and beg cigarettes and pennies. They soitinly take up smoking at a delicate age over here. I saw one kid about 9 years old working on a cigar like as if it was a herring.
Finally the band plays and off we go making a big impression on the population of Brest (about 180) who gave us a big hand. It was a pretty good hike of about 3 miles to our barracks, but the scenery was new to us and we gave the country the double 0 for it looked pretty nifty with the green hills and little white houses with orange colored roofs.
Towards evening we hit our lodgings which are called the Pantanezen Barracks. And believe me Al! They sure was a rumy bunch of stone houses. They say that Napoleon put up his outfit at this joint. But that's letting it down easy. I'd say that Noah used it for a Zoo right after the flood.
It sure was a swell place to rest. Rest Camp? It was a Summer Resort! All we had to do was drill all day OR go down and work on the docks. We also took a march while there to one of the nearby towns just to show the natives what a crack regiment looked like.
On May 7th we blew Napoleon's joint and marched down to Brest and here's where we gets the low down on the French Railroad Sistem. Well Al, we line up longside of a row about a mile long of box-cars; each one about the size of a packing case with four wheels on it. Can you amagin the sensation AV Oh, it's great! And get this Al! On the outside of each car are some nice hand painted words which reads: 8 CHEVAUX, 40 HOMMES. This means that the car don't care who gets on, 8 horses, or 40 men. So we pile in, wishing we was horses.
You've seen the cars pull in at the stock yards Al? Well that's us pullin out. And I used to think it was pretty tough makin the circuit on Pullmans. Anyway we didn't get along so bad. For dinner we had canned Irish Turkey, Tomatoes, and Hardtack. For supper and breakfast we had the same, which is as good as you can get on any box-car.
All along the road we piped the scenery, which we gave the 0. K. It was really gorgeous Al. But mostly hills.
Well, on May 9th we blew into a burg called Bonneau. I guess this is the joint the wild guy hailed from. It is in the Department of the Gironde, southwestern France, and can easily be found if you look on a map about 9 by 12 feet. Any-way we shake our overland special. And putting our packs gently on our backs in the prescribed manner we hike about 2 miles to this ranch which is called Camp de Souge. And here we are givin Squads Right a battle for further orders.
Well Al, I'll try to write again soon but to tell the truth I've been pretty much engaged since landing on French soil. What takes up most of a guy's time is counting his pay what he gets in French money and believe me, Al, the French Sistem of cur-rency is awful. But I'm only a private, Al, and if it's an ordeal for me to count my salary, you can guess what the Officers are up against when they computate their stipend. Everything goes in franks over here, Al. So many centimeters makes a frank, so many franks makes a kilo, so many kilos makes five franks, and like that. I'm getting the hang on it now. It's the old story, Al, If a guy's got the education, it don't take him long to get the combination.
But being as I'm able to interprete French money, it gives me a considerable of extra work, cause the boys all ask me to go with them when they buy something, so as I can tell 'em how much they spend and how much they have left (which ain't never much).
Things is pretty high over here. The French talk about franks just like us Americans talk about collar buttons. Iguess it won't take long to build up France. If we stay here long enuf they'll have side walks inlaid with Poils and Solid gold, ball-bearing door nobs on the doors, to.
Well Al, I guess I'll close now, asking you to give my best
regards to all the bone-heads in the league and wishing you the same I am, your old Pal Hen
LAWRENCE H. FOSTER,
Private, 306th F. A.
(With apologies to Ring Lardner.)
WE had experienced a rest camp; somewhere ahead lay a work camp. We looked forward to it with misgivings. It was a long walk from the railroad station at Bonneau. The heavy packs galled us. The dust was an evil omen.
Then as we made a turn in the road, a great arched gate in a frame of trees came into view. " Camp de Something " said somebody in a vain attempt to decipher the lettering that spanned the arch. " Camp de Souse! " shouted someone else with all the natural wonder and delight such a name would arouse. By that time we were near enough to read: "Camp de Souge," and that matter settled, gave our attention to the strange county-fair colony that clustered outside the gate.
Here stood a gaudy wagon that promised gaudy cinema entertainment when the gaudy engine worked; beside it were several push-cart venders of oranges, nuts, cherries, and dates. Opposite, stood a complete mercerie on wheels offering a thousand gim-cracks -of no value at exorbitant prices. But most interesting of all were the wine shacks, which bore the names " Le Petit Caporal, " doubtless in commemoration of Napoleon, and " Caf6 New York " certainly in preparation for us. Later, we were to discover the little stationery shop, with its diverting stock of " La Vie Parisiennes " and the tiny charcuterie with its aromatic sausage, suspiciously cheval and undeniably garlic.
Inside the gate, a new world. An endless line of brown barracks stretched on an endless yellow road through a drab and endless desert of sand. There were trees here and there, as there are oases in the Sahara. There was even a lake-surely the little pond in which so many of us bathed deserves that title if the Ourcq, the Vesle, and the Aisne may be called rivers. Yet Souge was a barren place, more barren than the barrenest stretch of No Man's Land in the Argonne.
Place was found for us in the dismal colony of dismal barracks and we settled down to the business of learning the art of war. It seemed that our artillery methods of old Upton were most excellent for fighting Mexicans but painfully inadequate against Germans. Officers and men were told to forget everything they knew and begin all over again. From Colonel Miller down to the lowliest greaseball, began weeks of school in which we were initiated into the mysteries of dvo's corrections of the moment, canevaux trenches, splices, tuning coils, panels, and the nomenclature of the piece, ~ la Francais and according to each man's special function as laid out in the tentative organization tables of the time.
Meanwhile, those who weren't bitterly regretting the innumerable occasions they bad cut math classes in a former incarnation, were taking advantage of such diversions as the camp afforded. Principal of these were those most picturesque Allies, the coolies. France had drawn them from her Asiatic colonies with the magnet of fabulous pay: in return all France seemed to demand was that we be amused. As Corporal Cabbie remarked, " They can get more rest out of a shovel than most of us can got out of a bed! " Never was there a more leisurely road gang. Never more sublime and complete defiance of the latest program communique from Beaunash with regard to "what the man will wear." Here lounged a bland heathen in pink pajama drawers, his bronze and glistening torso bare from the waist up, a yellow scarf at his neck, a prim suburban straw several sizes too small for him perched precariously on his head. There under a black umbrella, basked a more elderly, a more weazened specimen, attired in blue overalls, his crossed legs unevenly encased in ragged 'khaki wrap leggings, a red bandanna knotted at each corner serving as a hat. Everywhere were reclining and colorful Chinois; nowhere was there a sign of life save for an occasional Oriental who, desperate for "les cigaret Angleesh" and in hopes of a reward from an appreciative audience, would rise and wait a ludicrous chant in a high falsetto to the weird accompaniment of a violin made from a cigar box or gasoline can.
Yet, somehow, the road in Souge was a good one, kept in good repair. Perhaps the Chinois worked in the cool hours before dawn; more likely it was the handful of downcast Austrian prisoners de guerre, with the big P. G-'s painted on their tunics, who performed this marvel under the eye of the diminutive but entirely self-possessed little brown Algerian guard.
Then there were the passes-the little white tickets that permitted us to visit St. Medard, St. Jean d'Illac Martignas, Isaac and the precious blue ones that meant Bordeaux. How we ate in Bordeaux! How we stared! And, since this is history and the truth, how we drank! The good Bordelaise wondered at our capacity, but soon took our affluence for granted. Madame-Monsieur was always ii la guerre-would shrug her shoulders: Les bons gourmands soldats Americains and added that it was well that we were all millionaires. It was indeed.
And then, calamity. The horses arrived in camp. Here was a regiment almost entirely recruited from the City of Disappearing Horses. And here were something like twelve hundred horses. Consternation and curses in as many languages as you will hear in that same city of New York. For these horses were not your amiable milk wagon nags, nor the knowing cabby's plugs of an older day, but great, raw, burly, snorting, untamed monsters for the guns, and scraggly, mean, vicious mounts for the officers and special detail men.
Some of us in our innocence still believed in Black Beauty, the Noble Horse, and similar romantic fables. Lieutenant Ketcham gave one group a preliminary lecture. "When this war is over," said he, " and the Hun has been licked and you go back to civil life, there will be one thing you will miss more than anything else, one thing above all others that you will hate to leave behind, and that is your horse!" We didn't believe you then, Lieutenant, and Captain, we know better now. If there is a Camorra, a Black Hand, and an I. W. W. among horses, our horses belonged. They were desperate characters. Some of us who fed, watered, and manicured them at imminent peril of our lives, will never forget them. Nor the long plow through the hot sand from the stables to the watering troughs. Let them boast of our dangers and conquests on the Vesle and in the Argonne-the scene of our greatest dangers and most heroic deeds was the stable at Souge.
There was one other ordeal-the gas chamber and the gas masks. The We Fear the Worst Department at G. H. Q., desiring that all men should know what gas was like, had a huge concrete tank constructed with an attractive little gas-tight doorway. Then they filled the place with a mild but sufficiently nasty concentration of tear gas, bade us don our "respirator box," and invited us into the parlor. We suffered more from ten minutes of gas in that blue-gray hole of a tank than during our whole tour of the Front.
At length came word that we were to proceed to the artillery range for practice. As a child with a toy pistol longs for the Glorious Fourth we longed for the chance to pull the lanyards of our big howitzers and see a hundred pounds of super-steel travel from here to miles-away in a few seconds.
It was here on the range at Souge that the regiment received the training that made it a factor in the fighting A. E. F. The range was the scene of the finals in the great contest for promotion within the regiment. Here officers, gun crews, the telephone, radio, scout, and instrument details for the first time put their theoretical knowledge to the test of actual practice. We were told at Souge, that no regiment of artillery had done so well at the range before. And certainly if we did not set the world afire we made a brave and all but successful attempt the day the range was aflame. Hundreds of us fought and conquered that fierce brush fire with no better tools than picks, shovels, and rakes. The smoke filled the sky for miles, alarming the whole countryside-even as the roar of our guns had caused a temporary panic in Bordeaux, for these were days when the Boche was a very real terror and the end of the war ten years away, if you were logical and understood European affairs.
On July 4th we did our best to reassure Bordeaux. We paraded her streets in force. The bands blared, the caissons rolled along, quite as the song would have it, and our path was strewn with roses and invitations to partake of Bordeaux's best.
At length came orders to pack up and leave Souge, its sand, its flies, and its Bordeaux passes forever. We had come to Souge a regiment of rookies, masters of obsolete artillery methods, minus the very guns needful. We left Souge, a trained and powerful fighting force, well-organized, well-taught, well-equipped, ready to take our place in the line, the first regiment of heavies in the First National Army Division in the First American Army in France.
MILTON GOODMAN,
Sergeant, 306th F. A.
ENFIN, Au FRONT! Ended at last all the riding of sharp-spined horses amid the dust clouds of the boiling plain of Souge! Never again would we waste good shells on the innocent dummy trenches of its target range. Finished were our long months of training, and before us lay the Front-that belt of upturned earth and rusted wire which for four years had separated the Boche from civilized man.
Sometimes,-usually, in fact, we had not thought much about the Front. But when, on July 11, 1918, we saw our Supply Company moving out of Camp de Souge-wagons, trucks, horses, men-and leaving the low brown buildings which had been our homes since early May, marching out to Bonneau to entrain, and we knew that we would not be many hours behind them, the Front suddenly became a thing of personal interest to each of us. We would soon be making communiques, not merely reading them from our bulletin boards. Our good howitzers would be talking to the Boche in the only language he understands. There was a sense of elation about it, but a rather nervous elation; of course each of us hoped and expected to be lucky but we could not but know that some of us would not return. However, training was finished; it was time to go. In those days things had been going none too well on the Front; they needed the 306th there, and the 306th was ready.
But before reaching the Front there was the little matter of a railway journey across France, and preliminary thereto the task of entraining. Coming from Brest we had loaded ourselves into these funny little four wheeled boxcars labeled " 40 men, or 8 horses," and found it fairly simple but we never tried putting those eight horses aboard. Some of us loaded our horses by day and some of us by night, but the hour made no difference in the degree of their perversity. Many of them became insulted at the notion of boxcars and declared for a first-class passenger compartment, or nothing. Many others seemed convinced that the quickest way to the Front was not via the boxcar door but by trying to fall through the narrow crack between the car and the loading platform. Did their objections to entering betoken an obscure equine presentiment that they, at least, would never return from the Front? Certain it is that there were few among them whose carcasses were not to rest along the Vesle, in the Argonne, or beside the long white highways of Champagne. However, willing and unwilling, led, cajoled, or pushed aboard by brute force, they went with us. Our kitchens, our rations, our fuel, our cooks were aboard. Our fantastically painted howitzers and their caissons were on the flat cars. The engines emitted the thin anTmic shrieks characteristic of the French locomotive whistle, and, one by one, between the 12th and the 15th of July, our long trains crawled away from Bonneau, headed we knew not where except that it was " Au Front!"
For three days then we journeyed through the pleasant land of France. Now and again we stopped -to form lines at our kitchens for coffee, to carry pails of water to the thirsty horses, or to wash at the water tanks we passed and stretch ourselves after the tedium of our cramped quarters. As often as possible we ate corned willy and hard bread were the staples, eked out by such jam or cheese as the fore-handed and enterprising had secured. Between the diversions we slept (in relays, for there was not room for all the occupants of a car to lie down simultaneously) or dangled our legs comfortably from the open doors, while we watched the trim landscapes gliding past. We became steadily darker, with accumulating layers of soot and dust, and no man might call us for appearing with unshaven jowls, for shaving facilities there were none. Then, too, there were the appreciative audiences which watched our trains crawl through the towns or stop in the stations -strange mixed throngs of American soldiers, small boys, French girls, British Tommies, donkeys, poilus, market women, Moroccans. It was such an audience that greeted us at Limoges-the whole city seemed to be taking its promenade and, moreover, was sumptuously decorated with French and American flags. We took this as a generous tribute in our honor, disdaining the suggestion of those few wise acres who thought Limoges might be celebrating Bastille Day.
No mishaps marred our journey; even when Private Folvig of A Battery felt off the train he was not suppressed for long, but reappeared a few days later, somewhat tardily but in good order. Occasional excitement would be caused by the habit of the French railroad authorities of unexpectedly and surreptitiously detaching a car, now and again, and permitting its train to proceed without it. Invariably it contained something we needed-instruments, caissons, a few of ourselves perhaps-and retrieving it always afforded an interesting diversion. Possibly the best play of the trip was executed by an A Battery mare, which, while endeavoring to get a really good view of the scenery, fell out of her car, landed, catlike, on her feet, and then, realizing her mistake, set off at a patriotic gallop to catch her vanishing train. She won, of course, cantering briskly down between the rails, whinnying signals to stop the train, and was finally hogtied and hoisted aboard again amid the plaudits of the Battery.
Thus, in warm and delightful weather, we crossed the beautiful land of France. We shall never forget those green and well-kept fields and the gray little villages clustering about their church towers. And thus we came to Luneville, in Lorraine, and the first traces of the Boche. From Luneville on we saw many evidences of his presence houses burned, or with ragged holes in roofs and walls, broken down bridges which might have been mined during the first weeks of the war, and the little brown crosses which, scattered here and there along the highways or among the scarlet poppies of the fields marked the resting places of those who had died in the first great battles, when the Germans had swept over the frontier to be stopped and driven back by the men whose graves we passed.
It was at the little town of Baccarat, so far south on the Lorraine Front that it was not many kilometers from the Alsatian border, that our trains finally stopped, arriving one by one between the 14th and the 18th of July. Generally they arrived at night. And so most of us detrained and moved out to our first camps unaided by any light save the stars, for lights are taboo in territory where the Boche planes patrol nightly. In darkness, then, we dragged our guns and wagons from the flat-cars, fumbled in the boxcars for our personal belongings, led off our horses, sorted ourselves out, hitched the teams to the gun carriages, and battery by battery, moved out upon the dim roads which led toward the east and the Boche. Through strange villages, all lightless and seemingly empty of human life, and under trees standing dark against the sky, we wound off into the unknown hills, until before daylight, we had turned into woods which would conceal our presence when the light came, and our first night march had ended. Then picket lines could be stretched, packs slipped from tired shoulders, and presently, with dawn breaking through the dripping trees, our cooks could begin their task of preparing the breakfast coffee. They were not the soul-trying affairs which our later night marches proved, but they were our first experiences of moving by night in an unknown country and going into camp in the dark in a strange bit of woodland, and the first practical lesson which the Front taught us.
And in the sunlight of that first morning each man began to take stock of the Front. Under a sky of the purest blue our rather sleepy eyes beheld a land of rolling hills, dark thick woods, and fields as orderly and well tilled as any we had yet seen. French farmers-old men, women, and children-were working about us in those fields in a way which seemed to us rather reckless. There did not seem to be any trenches about, at least not in our immediate neighborhoods. True, there were strips of brown burlap hung across roads and sometimes forming curtains along their sides to hide one's movements from the Boche balloons-" camouflaged" roads-but on the other hand there was no noise of guns and nobody was shelling us. We carried our gas masks religiously and took care to have our helmets handy, but there seemed to be nothing to require their use. We kept under cover, too, under the trees which sheltered our guns and our picket lines. We received many strange orders against wandering about in the open, and the sin of walking where none had walked before and thus making new paths for the Hun camera to photograph from its plane was suddenly explained to us as being cardinal.
And presently we saw that plane. We all came out to look and were sternly shooed back under cover like small chickens beneath a hawk. Very high and small it was, with wings glinting silver-gray in the sun, while around it sprang out against the blue the fluffy little puffs of white where the Archies' shrapnel was bursting. And it paid no attention whatever to the little white puff balls but sailed on about its business, whatever that may have been, and everything became charmingly peaceful again. So this was the Front!
In fact it was a "Peace Front" to which we had come, where there had been no serious fighting for years and which was being used as a finishing school for our new divisions. But for all that there was much to be learned there and many new things awaiting us. First, there were our doughboys, who had been in Flanders and already had a month's experience of Baccarat and whom we now rejoined, with their tales (sometimes highly imaginative) of trench life in both sectors. There was the novelty of sleeping in the open in those tiny shelter tents we had practiced pitching but never slept in-and pitching them by daylight and in inky darkness when one's tent pins mysteriously vanish are different things. The regiment was scattered to the four winds, too, with its Headquarters Company in Baccarat itself and its batteries stretched over many kilometers of hills and woods to the north and the south of the town. And each battery promptly divided itself into the echelon, which stayed with the horses in the rear, and the firing battery, which lived with the guns in their concealed and camouflaged positions in range of their probable targets. Then, for the first time, Battalion P. C.'s sprang up, close to the batteries,. where the majors took up their abodes and gathered around them the Battalion details, which, until now, had lived happily in the bosom of their own company. There was also, for some of us, the first experience of living in billets, in those really thickly populated villages which had looked so deserted when we first passed through them by night. We had imagined that soldiers were usually billeted in the pretentious mansion of a count, or the marble palace of a duchess. Actually it appeared that as a rule they found themselves in a hayloft, approached by a rickety ladder and requiring caution in its use, lest while sleeping peacefully, you should roll through a hole in its floor and disturb the night's rest of the antique cow which bunked below you. Also some of us met dugouts-affairs with reassuringly solid roofs of timbers and sand bags, but of such inferior ventilation that we preferred to sleep outside in pup tents, pitched conveniently nearby in case Boche shells should make dugouts a necessity. And here we first heard of spies-by all accounts the place was reeking with them. On the very night of their arrival Sergeant Brown and six other members of Headquarters Company were suddenly drafted, armed to the teeth, to surround a totally empty house from which-according to a strange and excited officer-a spy was flashing signals to the Boche planes. Here some of us first made the acquaintance of observatories and had the pleasure of sitting therein for ' hours watching through scissors or monocular telescopes the generally deserted and lifeless landscape which stretched away beyond the enemy's lines, alert to catch and report the least sign of animation, and very occasionally rewarded by the sight of a camion (well out of range) on a distant road, or of two Boches proceeding leisurely " from the point K 4932 to the clump of trees about one hundred meters south of that point." Of an evening we listened to far-off bombardment, or enjoyed the displays of signal rockets rising from the distant trenches. And also of an evening some of us improved our command of French by chatting in International Language with the inhabitants of Merviller and Reherry, learning something from those kindly people, who had suffered from invasion in 1914, of why and how bitterly they detest the Boche. " All the evil that has ever come to Lorraine, has come from Over-Rhine." And there we studied the manners and customs of the people among whom we lived and tried to philosophize on why a French villager prefers to keep his ancestral manure pile before his front door instead of behind his back door, and exactly for what reason he installs the family cow in a room which, by rights, should be the sitting-room of his dwelling. Others explored the town of Baccarat-a considerable part of it the bare walls of houses which the Boche had burned in 1914 before evacuating the place. Our special details clambered over the hills, solving the manipulation of the com-pass goniometer and the mysteries of Italian resection. Our telephone details ran and patrolled their lines and our radio men set up their wireless sets and began to take and send messages. D Battery acquired muscle in the process of digging gun emplacements and we began to develop expertness in spreading camouflage nettings to screen our guns and dumps of shells from overhead observation. They were busy and interesting days-those first days of our fortnight in the Baccarat Sector-while the Regiment began, haltingly but earnestly, and with every man putting forth his best, to function as a unit in the line. And finally we sent a few of our good F. A.'s and 0. A.'s over the intervening kilo-meters of hills into Hunland.
It was on July 24, 1918, that the regiment fired its first shot at the enemy, and the first six-inch shell fired by any National Army Regiment on any front and in any war was sent on its way by Gun No. 4 Of E Battery. Captain Allen commanded the battery while Lieutenant Chipman acted as executive. Sergeant Blake commanded Gun No. 4, which had been laid by Corporal Birnbohm, gunner, while First Class Private Worn had the honor of pulling the lanyard which started our first "present for Jerry"-with the names of the whole gun crew chalked on it-to its destination.
That same afternoon F Battery registered and during the next day or two all the batteries did some shooting. But we did little firing at Baccarat. To begin with, too much firing might result in reprisals from our friends, the enemy, thereby disturbing the serenity of a Peace Sector, and, in the second place, ammunition was expensive and the supply limited, So when B Battery expended ninety-one shells in one afternoon the authorities promptly requested explanations as to why a whole week's allowance of ammunition had been dissipated in a single joyous hour. There were other impediments to our destroying Huns-the farmers persisted in working in the fields in front of our guns and it was necessary to warn them away when we wanted to annihilate their enemies. And D Battery had thoughtlessly placed its howitzers on the edge of a potato field, with the result that their blasts prematurely dug many valuable hills of potatoes. We did not understand exactly what the owner of that field said when he came to talk the matter over with us but somehow we gathered that he had not come to congratulate us on the excellence of our gunnery. In fact he seemed rather blind to the necessity of slaughtering Boche and unduly impressed with the importance and monetary value of " pommes de terre. " Apropos of the inhabitants, they had a disconcerting manner not only of taking you for granted, like people who had seen almost enough of soldiers, but also of not taking the present hostilities in their fields and farm yards very seriously. Of course they had been at the Front f our years longer than we had but it seemed to us that they ought to treat the Front-any Front, indeed-with more respect.
As for the Boche, he was almost as casual in his conduct toward us as were the inhabitants. He seemed for the most part content with watching us carefully from his observation balloons, which hung continually above the horizon, and from the planes, which came over steadily despite the efforts of our Archies. It seemed that, so long as he observed nothing unusually suspicious and we behaved ourselves peaceably, he was resolved to do likewise. Certainly he never shelled our batteries and indeed only a few of us ever heard a hostile shell on that Front-and those few shells were comfortably far away.
But if, on any front where there exists a tacit agreement that neither party will seriously annoy the other, you are so faithless as to disregard that agreement, you must expect that the outraged enemy will probably give vent to his indignation. Prisoners had reported that the Boche had some five thousand minnenwerfer shells stored in the church of the village of Nouhigny. F Battery sent forward a gun to a point from which this munition dump could be reached, and destroyed it utterly. In spite of the coincidence that the day was a Sunday, the target a church filled to the doors (with shells), Captain Ketcham of F Battery a minister's son and, that Sergeant Berkmeyer, commanding the piece, was a priest's brother, everyone considered the affair a complete success and went to bed with a feeling of something accomplished, something done. But Jerry did not seem equally pleased and robbed us of our night's repose by sending his planes over and bombing the whole sector all night long, paying particular attention to our munition dumps. The annoying part about it, after we had exercised so much care to keep under cover and not betray our position, was that he bombed dumps with a precision which demonstrated that he had known where they were all the time.
This was not Jerry's sole performance in the role of bomber; apparently he considered an occasional air raid de rigueur even in a Peace Sector, and, the nights becoming fine and moonlit, he came over to Baccarat and spent several evenings with us. He had an annoying habit of arriving about eleven o'clock, when everyone was enjoying the first sweet sleep of night. Then one might hear the unmistakable pulsating drone of the Boche motor-coming nearer -and presently the Archies would open viciously to a staccato accompaniment of machine guns stuttering from the house tops of the town. Presently the custodian of the Baccarat steam siren would awake, and, soon after the first crashes of exploding bombs had set the townspeople to shivering in their cellars and "caves" he would add his pet's weird notes to the general pandemonium. By this time its unearthly howl was a little late to serve as a warning for approaching aircraft but at least it officially stamped the event as an air raid-and no air raid on a French town is complete without a siren accompaniment.
We did not know that at first, and consequently many members of Headquarters Company, who lived in the town, took the siren to be a gas alarm, so that much excellent and prompt drill in the assumption of gas masks resulted. In this sector we suffered severely from gas. Not that any of us were gassed, for the Boche never fired a gas shell at us, but that we underwent the usual epidemic of false gas alarms which assails untried soldiers. Imagine being awakened about midnight, because an A Battery driver passing through Merviller had seen men wearing gas masks (?) and brought back news of the same to his battery, and then donning your suffocating rubber and isinglass affair and perspiring in it for an hour and a half while the truth of the report was being investigated. Then, too, certain officers displayed the execrable taste of deliberately giving occasional false gas alarms to see how quickly masks would be assumed-they should have been pleased with the results!
And yet even the false gas alarm has its uses. For on a pleasant afternoon there rolled up to E Battery an impressively large touring car, whence issued several resplendent staff officers and, in their midst, a vision in straw hat and white flannel trousers -Congressman Blank, come to share the dangers and hardships of "the boys in the trenches." Most unfortunately Sergeant Bonner, E Battery's Gas N. C. 0., an excellent man who always obeyed orders and who had received careful injunctions from Captain Allen as to how to receive visiting staff officers, after first craftily waiting until our visitors had separated themselves from their car by about one hundred meters, sounded the gas alarm. Where-upon E Battery lifted up its voice and shouted " Gas " as one man. And Congressman Blank, without lifting up his voice, but turning suddenly and strangely purple, unhesitatingly sprinted the hundred for that car, where, after desperate fumbling, he hid his countenance in an ill-smelling French mask. With the distinguished legislator departed, with somewhat greater dignity, the resplendent staff officers and the impressive car bore them swiftly from the tainted airs in which E Battery was strangling in efforts to render its laughter inaudible.
One other event should be recorded; we were, for the first time, "deloused." Under the chaperonage of our Medical Department we marched dry and dusty kilometers to the Divisional Delousing Plant, bearing with us to their doom our all unconscious cooties. There we were usually privileged to sit some hours, waiting our turn, and watching the exits of those who had preceded us-sad exits too, of once brave soldiers, who now emerged in a condition of primitive undress and profanely set to work to find out in which of the innumerable wrinkles of their now unrecognizable clothing they belonged. But our Medical Department was inexorable-it always is-and we in turn found ourselves sadly regarding the damp wrinkles of our presumably cootieless clothing and wishing that we owned more than one uniform apiece. Let not the uninitiated suppose this a trivial or unimportant happening; he who has experienced the sad shock of discovering that little Brother Cootie has come to live with him, who knows the breathless excitement incident to the chase of those carnivorae, and has felt the stern joy which surges on hearing his death rattle, knows better.
We spent only a fortnight at Baccarat and when it ended we realized that we had not been doing real fighting but only putting finishing touches on our training. But without those touches we would have found ourselves in evil case in the sterner work to which we were sent. It was on July 31st that we were relieved by French artillery and on the same day the regiment lost its good friend and leader, Colonel Lawrence S. Miller, our commander at Upton and Souge, who was transferred to other duty. Our Lieutenant-Colonel, Frederick Harrison Smith, took command in his place and, on the night of August 1st, led us away from the Peace Sector of Baccarat. We did not know our destination-rumor gave us a choice of Toul, Rheims, Soissons, or Italy. In one particular only was rumor correct-that we were going to a front where real fighting awaited us.
ALEXANDER GORDON,
Captain, 306th F.A.
BY August first the regiment was again in motion. One starlit night, with the ever-present danger of air bombing, the regiment passed over the Meurthe Bridge at Baccarat, and hiked over the rolling hills of the surrounding countryside to the entraining point,-Bayon. The route ran through country villages that bore the grim marks of 1870 and 1914,-always it had been the Boche who was the invader. Followed a few days rest in a wood near the village of Loromontzey,-where on one occasion a regimental entertainment was given f or the villagers only a short distance from the fighting front.
Entrainment at Bayon was by night, on August 8th. The first part of that journey was a mystery shrouded by dark night, and sleepy rumors ran ram-pant through the slowly rumbling boxcars. But day-light dispelled doubt,-the regimental trains were running through one of the great iron channels that fed the battlefields. Military trains, Red Cross cars, supply trains, and munition-carrying trains passed in both directions, sometimes to switch off to the north. The sandbag-protected and cave-honeycombed station at Bar-le-Duc showed it too plainly to be the prey of Boche fliers by night. Then, as the train glided through the Marne Valley it passed by mammoth railway guns on sidings, huge hangars, and the squat barracks of the French troops. On a flat-car of each train, anti-aircraft machine guns tilted their sharp snouts skyward-on the alert. The road led towards the battlefields of the Marne and beyond, that was clear.
A little more than thirty-six hours of ride, and the train was abandoned at St. Simeon. Then began that memorable series of cold night hikes, and hot daylight rests which rushed the regiment close on the heels of the troops who had pushed the Boche from Chateau-Thierry to the Vesle.
Passing through shattered though still magnificent Chateau-Thierry and beyond, the roar of the heavy guns at the Vesle echoed ever nearer and nearer, and on the road, and in the fields and woods that slid mysteriously by at night,-war and its specter began to be evident. Unpleasant odors of the battlefield filled that noisome area, and the rutted roads were full of ugly craters into which the horses slipped and stumbled. By day one could see that on both sides of the road the fields were strewn with the mute evidence of the great struggles that had taken place there,-broken rifles, bits of khaki cloth, piles of ammunition, pack carriers, helmets, and even a child's doll lay among the shell holes and the rough wooden crosses, the latter the most eloquent testimony of all to the price paid by the Yankees for Chateau-Thierry. Those were tragic fields surrounding Comport Woods.
The morning of August 14th saw the tents of the entire regiment pitched in the Foret de Nesles, close to the sounds of battle from the Vesle. With knowledge almost uncanny, that night the Boche planes circled and buzzed and hummed over those woods while the air was rent with the crash-crash-crash of exploding bombs. But the men of the regiment, fresh from the air raids of Lorraine, were accustomed to this sort of terrorization by now. Attacks from above were varied that night by the sounding of gas alarms,-the whirring of hundreds of horns, and the cymbal-like clinking of shell cases hung from trees. The sound was born as a barely audible, tiny tinkle from somewhere north, and swelled to an ever -increasing roaring and ringing, until all the trees seemed to bellow forth the danger. The alarms in every case were discovered to have been relayed from the front line,-they were false alarms, but they had the unpleasant result of keeping awake a regiment of gas-ignorant artillerymen. Later, a veteran sniff was enough warning for all.
The Vesle
The sector that awaited the 306th Field Artillery was one of the most active artillery sectors of the latter days of the war. It was at the Vesle that the Boche turned and held his shattered line after the July-August counter offensive. It was here, aided by the natural protection of the snake-like, sluggish narrow and deep little stream, and by the dominating heights to its north, that he barked forth his defiance and spit his steel hail for a few brief weeks. In the valley of Perles and Vauxcere he concentrated his light artillery, and his more ponderous pieces he hid in the draws near Barbonval. From the southern banks of the Aisne he sent his long-distance greetings. Such were our targets, some visible, some not,
Around the village of Chery-Chartreuve, with its record of 1, 6oo incoming gas and high-explosive shells a day, centered most of the regiment's activities on this sector. To its north lay the Vesle and the front lines, and to its south, west, and north the rolling wooded hills and copses into which the howitzers were tucked.
Then, from the middle of August on, came busy days and dreadful nights. The First Battalion moved into La Tuilerie Ferme, and placed its pieces west of Chery. The Second Battalion located in the much shelled village itself, with the guns on both flanks of the village. At La Pres Ferme, the Third Battalion installed itself, with E and F Batteries further forward to the north of the town, behind Hill 210, upon which some of the Observation Posts were later established.
Day and night, except during occasional lulls, the air whined, wailed, and whistled with the miscellany of shell sent over by the Boche, and droned with the hum of his airplanes. Men moved about furtively during duty and while getting their meals, for the Boche was a wily kitchen-destroyer. They lived in cellars and under battered houses, and at the guns themselves, in hastily improvised dugouts and funk-holes. Dig in! was the slogan of the day. A little hole, about two feet deep and large enough to hold a man prone, saved many a life at the Vesle. Under these conditions the men of the 3o6th pulled their guns into position, dug their gun-emplacement, dug in, and established their horse echelons in the woods. By day, the sun shone his hottest, and the cannoneers sweated as they toiled at the guns, while millions of flies swarmed over everything, alive and dead. The nights were often damp, cold, and foggy.
New to war, for Lorraine proved a gentleman's battle for the artillery, the regiment came to know by many nicknames its fast friends of the opposition. There were the much-hated "whizzbangs," whose explosions shattered the air so close on the heels of the warning wail that the two were almost simultaneous. German 77's, 88's, 105's, and 150's, rifle and howitzer, held revel on almost every square inch of that ground at all hours. "Jack Johnsons, " "Whimpering Willies," "Tons of Coal," and "G. I. Cans" were favorite names for the iron bouquets whirled over from behind the Vesle.
The Regimental Post of Command was at first established in Chartreuve Ferme, about a kilometer southwest of Chery-Chartreuve, with the horse echelon in the woods still farther south, and the rear echelon in Nesles Wood. The old chateau had been left partly in ruins by the fleeing Germans, who had blown up not only the main building, but also a beautiful chapel, which had contained a deep and safe vault that the Boche feared would afford shelter to the Americans. American artillery, also, fired heavily upon it during the drive just over. There remained a complete library of French classics and modern works, with a sprinkling of English volumes, which for some unknown reasons the Boche had neglected to destroy. To the rear of the library, the flowers still bloomed in a garden that had once been laid out with great care. It was no uncommon sight to see Lieutenant-Colonel Smith or his men, during an odd hour, walking apparently unconcernedly in that garden, gathering the superb roses, dahlias, sweet peas, and asters that grew there. Throughout the hell of gas and explosives, those flowers continued to luxuriate, and to furnish posies for the Colonel's mess. It was one of these touches of sentiment and beauty,-sometimes found amid the general ghastliness of war.
August 23d, the Regimental Post of Command was moved to the woods near Dole, for it was found impracticable to carry on the work of regimental direction with the concert of explosives prevalent at the chateau, several direct hits having been registered in its courtyard and upon surrounding buildings. The Boche ceased shelling the chateau soon after it was evacuated. This caused the 306th to sneak back into the old building one dark night and to reopen business at the old stand. Shells fell less frequently during this second occupation.
The enemy was plainly master of the air. The United States had not yet set into operation the program that was to send majestic fleets of planes in hundreds across the German lines, and the French and English spared us what planes they could. The ominous hornet-like hum of the wily Boche was continually over the Post Commands and the pieces day and night. During sunny days he would circle over the position, regardless of the heavy anti-aircraft shrapnel of the " archies " or of the rattling machine guns directed against him from below. The radio details would shortly catch him sending data to his guns. Then a bombardment would begin, and still the daredevil Boche would hover above, directing and correcting the shots from the very finest vantage points possible. " Why don't we have more planes? " was the impatient query of many men at this time. Frequent was the blast of the shrill "under-cover" whistle,-when every man stopped in his tracks, and the pieces ceased fire until the intruder had passed.
Almost every nook behind Chery was under ceaseless observation from eight Boche "drachen" or observation sausage balloons that floated in a long, lazy line several kilometers north of the Vesle. Wiring parties, 0. P. details, or even one lone man crossing an exposed field, were observed by these monster eyes of the German army, and were fired upon with shrapnel and high explosive by sniper guns.
The American balloons hung above the woods to the north of Mareuil-en-Dole. A continuous game of hide-and-seek was on between them and the German planes. On August 12th, German artillery fired upon them point-blank, and punctured the gas-bag of one, sending the balloon up in flames, and the observer down in a parachute. Enemy 'planes, bent on observation or destruction, often attacked the balloons, as they did that same day, when the Ger-mans seemed to have made up their minds to " strafe " the air. Shortly before noon, the balloon patrol of three 'planes about our balloon warned the winchmen who controlled the whale-like monster that an enemy flier was approaching. Before the winch could haul the sausage down to a safer altitude, where our "archies " could attend to the Boche, he was circling high above it, dodging the high-explosive and ma-chine-gun charges that were sent at him. Then he maneuvered the most beautiful series of spiral dives, and with a final dip, launched a phosphorus bomb at the bulging bag, and set it aflame. Tilting his nose skyward, he disappeared in a cloud.
Although the roads, woods, and points south of Chery, including Dole and Mareuil-en-Dole, were regularly shelled Chery-Chartreuve was chosen by the Boche as a playground for his shells. Battery F had forty men badly gassed on the night of the 2oth of August, and during the nights of August 22d, 23d and 24th, the enemy bombardment of the village was especially vigorous. During the day, shells whistled into the village at a harassing fire rate, but, beginning at dusk, volleys and salvos followed each other in rapid succession. At times Chery became an inferno of exploding shells, its streets alive with flying bricks and mortar, and soaked with deadly gasses, while the tumbling walls echoed and reechoed weirdly with shell-shriekings. It was interesting to watch the reaction of the men to the hell of Chery-Chartreuve. Some moved with an excess of caution, some with the bravado of' carelessness, but all soon became accustomed to it; walked, shaved, laughed, ate, read, and wrote cheerful letters home for all the world as if the village were a training camp in America. Day after day our batteries returned the German fire two to one, manning the guns despite the continuous counter-battery work of the Boche.
Two days after the gassing of Battery F, Battery A received a touch of the same punishment. The night following, the brave little church tower of Chery disappeared, shot away by a Boche hit in the very center of the town. Another shot that night wrecked the Second Battalion Headquarters kitchen, and gas shells close following made all the food stores there unfit for consumption. Early the next morning, during a bombardment of the First Battalion Headquarters, shells landed so thickly around the building, that two drivers were killed in the road that led past it. The courtyard of the Ferme was filled with stones and debris scattered by exploding shells. Down in the telephone dugout, by candlelight, the roll of the First Battalion was being called, to insure that all of the men were safe. The Battalion Headquarters was moved to a clump of woods farther south.
During all of this activity, the Supply Company had the task of keeping the battalions and the batteries supplied with rations, with material for gun emplacements, and with the odds and ends of ordnance. Never did one of the units go without hot meals. In the dead black of night, Supply Company's men drove their trucks from the supply echelons to the dump in the woods where the ration carts collected their daily portion. For these men there was no hope of shelter from bombardment; doggedly, quietly, they performed their dangerous work each night. They got little glory and did much sweating. There was nothing spectacular about it, only the springless truck bumping over the holes in the road, while shells burst about, and guns spat back from every copse.
But if the Boche was hammering from his side, the 306th was administering a terrible drubbing in return. In addition, the "Traveling Salesmen" of the Corps Artillery, would move about from spot to spot on the sector, giving away samples of their " iron cigars " indiscriminately, and popping away from the most unexpected corners. In fact, scarcely a bush or tree was there that did not have poking from it, the steel muzzle of some sort of gun.
Though the regiment was part of a divisional artillery brigade, placed in position to support its own divisional infantry, on more than one occasion the gun squads were called upon to fire in aid of the French on the left. The Tannerie, where machine-gun emplacements made it uncomfortably hot for our infantry, was so completely demolished by our guns that the accomplishment won for the regiment the hearty commendation of the infantry colonel whose regiment had been suffering.
The village of Bazoches, a few hundred meters within the Boche lines,-a railroad and. supply center, was the continual bone of contention between the opposing infantries. On the night of August 27th, and the morning of the 28th, an infantry movement on the village was planned. The regiment participated in a terrific box-barrage, which was placed about the town to cut off escaping Germans. The Germans were successful, by skillful placing of machine-gun nests, and by means of a counter- barrage, in holding the northern part of the village, so it was decided to blow them out of it with artillery. Harassing fire had been thrown into the town each day, but from August 30th to September 4th the regiment delivered a bombardment which reduced the town to powder, at an expenditure Of 3000 shells, a cost Of $105,000 and gallons of sweat.
The Observation Posts, from which battery commanders were able to obtain a panoramic view of the German strongholds, were on the ridges to the north and west of Chery-Chartreuve. The towns of Paars, Perles, Haute-Maisons, Blanzy and Bazoches were visible or partly visible from these vantage points, which in some cases were constructed in trees, and in others, in funk-holes roofed with corrugated iron. The Observation Posts were continually shelled, and the entire ridge was swept with zone fire at least twice a day, with intermittent fire at other times. To sit in one of these Observation Posts peeping at the inmost secrets of the Boche, was a thrilling occupation. Before the observer spread the vista of battle. Sometimes our shells bursting in towns on the Boche's side would cause figures that appeared like tiny specks to scramble hurriedly out of danger. Again, a lone German would cross a field, and the observer would duly record the place of his appearance and disappearance, and wonder, between bites of cold corned willie, and swallows of cold raw tomato, where " that dutch-man could be going." An occasional transport wagon would risk the road by day, but, as a rule, the Boche kept discreetly under cover from sunup to sundown. By night, the vision spread before the observer became a grim sort of fairyland of lights and noises. Behind, the big guns of the regiment boomed, coughed, and bellowed, and drifting back from the infantry lines, the sputter of machine-guns and rifles tingled on the ear. Rainbow rockets sizzed up into the bestarred midsummer sky, and hung there. Flares transformed the landscape for miles about to midday. Again, a red-light barrage rocket would call forth a still greater chorus of barks from the artillery behind.
Under the unremitting hail of shells communication was subject to constant interruption. The telephone formed the main type of liaison but runners, mounted and foot, were used to transmit firing orders from the Regimental Post of Command to the Battalion and Battery Headquarters, while the radio also played its part, more especially with the planes that directed artillery firing. Radio transmission was practical from the plane to the ground, but in reversing the sender and receiver, the only means of communication was by white linen panels exposed in an open field, where the plane observer could see it clearly. Panelmen, as they were called, worked in dangerous positions at times. Battalion agents had many a wild ride over the much-shelled roads, which by day were empty but under vigilant observation, and by night were as crowded with the traffic of ammunition trucks, supply wagons, and ambulances as any busy city street. It was a difficult matter to thread one's way through this tangle, without lights -for to show even the gleam of a cigarette-tip meant betrayal to the Boche above.
But most thrilling and dangerous of liaison jobs was that of the telephone linemen. Within his telephone dugout, which houses the switchboard and the operators, and is usually the deepest and safest, he is well-protected while off duty. But let the ominous call come from the operator-" Blue line is out!" and your lineman is up and out, with helmet and gas mask, telephone, wire, tape, and pincers to look for the break. He must crawl through ditches in the dead of the dark night; he must feel along the wire where it is hitched to trees in the pitchy-black woods-and, the break found, he must mend it under gas and high-explosive fire. Most often the break occurs where there is a continuous shelling. Repairing lines in peace times is not a sinecure. Add to this work exploding shells, darkness, the ever-present danger of death, and you have the wartime telephone man.
The regiment's own linemen laid and kept in repair the entire " artillery net" of wires. Its starting point is the brigade, where it hooks into the main arteries laid by the Signal Corps. From Regimental Headquarters to Battalion Headquarters, and from there to the batteries, with auxiliary lines to the Observation Posts, the lines spread out fanlike. As many as six lines were often laid between the same points by different routes in order to insure constant communication. Hill 210, where several Observation Posts were located, was pockmarked with shell-craters from base to crest, necessitating the use of steel cables in places. Linemen found it impossible to work on the hill by day without being spotted by a Boche airplane observer, and by night shells flew in such profusion that it was a heroic task to accomplish anything there. La Pres Ferme, too, the Third Battalion Headquarters, was a constant target, and lines running there were bound to be "out" many times.
THE ADVANCE
There came a day, September 2d, when the men in the Observation Posts saw the Vesle-Aisne plateau clouded by heavy smoke. Fires and explosions occurred at Paars, Perles, Vauxcere, and Blanzy. The Boche, pounded out by our own merciless fire, was laying waste as he prepared to retire. His planes, more than usually inquisitive, peeped about back of our lines to see what we were going to do. Fleeting glimpses were caught of transport wagons and troops bound north for the fastnesses of the Aisne. September A fewer shells fell about Chery-Chartreuve, and the following day that entire area, only a short time before noisy with explosions, lay peaceful under the hot summer sun. French cavalry passed by the pieces at a trot, in pursuit.
September 5th and 6th, the regiment advanced. Camouflage was taken down, guns were placed in the march order, and wagons were packed. Never, except in the advances of the Argonne, was there such a spirit of exultation and satisfaction in the regiment as during that first advance. Each man felt within himself that he had helped to hammer out the Boche, and that at last he was to tread that gruesome ground over which so much blood had been shed in the past few weeks. Over the ridge and down into the valley of the Vesle the pieces rumbled and clanked. For a day or so, while the Boche ceased shelling the river area, the engineers were able to get a good start on the artillery bridges, but, placed in a new position behind the Aisne, the Boche again sent over his shells, especially at the bridges. The bodies of our doughboys lay about as they had fallen on the field of honor, and Boche lying near them testified that hand to hand struggles had been fought. Burial details were engaged in the grim task of interring American and Boche.
Bazoches was a ruin, utterly destroyed and un-fit for habitation; building after building tumbled queerly upon its foundations. One of the members of the regimental reconnaissance detail, the morning of September 4th, in an effort to find a table upon which to spread some maps, was poking about the ruins of the old chateau in the town, when, not twenty-five feet from him, a resounding explosion threw dirt and stones high into air. The man was unhurt, but two Frenchmen on the opposite side of the battered walls were instantly killed. The Frenchmen had evidently stumbled, either on a trap, or on a pile of fused minnenwerfer ammunition that lay there. The men were warned to be especially careful regarding mines and traps, and all springs and wells were carefully investigated by the Regiment's Medical Department, for fear of poisoning. If the wells were unpoisoned by the enemy, the seepage from d6bris, refuse, and bodies of men and animals often found its way into them. It was here that the regiment suffered severely from dysentery, despite the precautions that were taken.
Regimental Headquarters remained in Bazoches one night, was shelled severely, and moved the next day to the heights of Haute-Maisons, behind a steep ridge which was thought to offer adequate defilade protection. But the Boche enfiladed from the left, and made many direct hits upon the buildings and in the courtyard. The men of the detail were forced to move into the abandoned German dugouts close to the crest of the hill.
While Colonel Smith, Regimental Headquarters, the First and Second Battalions crossed the river below Villesavoye, the guns of the Third Battalion were stalled temporarily at Fismes, where the engineers were working beaver-like upon another bridge, which, because of the heavy shelling, had not yet been made passable. During this wait, a call came from the Division Commander for artillery support for the advancing infantry. The immediate services of F Battery were offered by Colonel Smith; the pieces were unlimbered and seventy-nine rounds were fired at the Boche from the street corners. One has only to imagine a 155 howitzer firing from a busy cross-ing in New York to picture the weird scene. Shortly after, it was reported that the enemy fire had ceased.
Viumes is a town of considerable size, and before the war, was a thriving railroad center and summer resort, with many stores and hotels. The streets had once been lined with magnificent shade-trees, and neatly paved. Now, in striking similarity to Chateau-Thierry, the beauty of its edifices was marred by ugly gaping holes where shells had struck, and the trees stood as mutilated stumps, their foliage torn by shell and shrapnel splinters. Some were cut and cast across the streets as barricades to retard our advance.
The First Battalion pulled into position west of Haute-Maisons on the Rouen Reims Road, behind a ridge. The Second Battalion established headquarters in a large natural cave at Vauxcere, once our target, and now a mark for the Boche. C Battery took position in a narrow-gauge railway cut south of Vauxcere, and D Battery was emplaced on the northern outskirts of the town. The Third Battalion was to the east and north of Fismes, with F Battery only five hundred meters behind the advancing infantry. Vauxcere, Blanzy, Fismes, and Bazoches now became the targets of the Boche, and beside his harrassing fire upon these points, he swept the entire Vesle-Aisne plateau.
The Boche grew still more active in air, and sent over his planes in droves, bombing Bazoches and vicinity the night of September 10th. On the exposed table-land, covered with standing wheat and with not a tree for miles which could afford camouflage, enemy planes grazed the ground and turned their machine guns on our men crossing it. Again the Boche had excellent observation, and on our side, from the reserve infantry trenches, artillery observation took in a large part of the terrain across the Aisne,-the formidable fortifications of the Chemin-des-Dames,-cut into the soft sandstone of the cliffs across the river. The towns of Bourg-et -Comin, Pont-Arcy, Euilly, Beuarieux, Pargnan, Moulins, Vendresse-et-Tyron and the roads leading out of them were in our view, and no movement that took place there escaped the observers' eyes. One road, clearly visible, which ran out of the last named town, was observed to be alive during the day with men and wagons, and farther behind, a wagon-park was visible. They were beyond the range of the howitzers, and the Boche seemed to know it, for he moved about there with impunity. The long-range rifles of the Corps Artillery had been withdrawn, and officers and men could only sit and fume at their impotence. But upon the other and nearer targets, the batteries fired profusely. La Petite Montagne, south of the Aisne, a German strong point of machine-gun nests, and a suspected sniper-battery position, received a good share of our fire.
On September 13th, orders came for a supporting barrage to assist our infantry. For forty hours, Vauxcere, Bazoches, and Fismes rocked with the tumult of the howling howitzers. The air was in a turmoil so that it was impossible to hear anything but a shout. Forward observation details saw spread before them as pretty and dramatic a sight as modern war affords. There in the valley grew a magic garden of shell-bursts, two parallel lines like the hedgerows of some garden plot. As fast as the slight wind dissolved the cloud of a burst, a new burst grew in its place. Behind this protecting shield infantry crept forward and before this hell's hedge-row the Boche withdrew and began the last stage of the retreat from the Soissons-Reims line.
That day, a division of Italians marched into the battle area and took the places of the Americans in the line. Our regiment fired all through the relief up to within an hour of its departure from position the morning of September 15th. The Boche must have been a bit dumbfounded on his retreat from Chateau-Thierry to the Aisne, for during that drive, he met French, Americans, and Italians in close succession.
It was the Garibaldi Division which relieved us its commander said to be a grandson of the Italian liberator. As our columns passed them on the road, the good-natured badinage of the ever-cheery Ameri-can artilleryman flew from outgoing to incoming. " Hey Wop! Shine? " would ring out from the ranks. The tanned sons of sunny Italy, thinking that the Americans meant " Howdo " would return flowery and courteous salutations. But occasionally a touch
of home would evidence itself, as an Italian would greet an American with " Oh you subway," or "Me worka Grand Central!" while another told him that the price of shaves in New York was then fifty cents.
The boys of the regiment knew that their Italian Allies were now to make the Aisne their " Grand Central," and if there was haircutting to be done, the Boche would be the victim.
Through the narrow Vesle valley once more the columns rumbled and clattered while gas and heavy caliber high-explosive shells fell in that low saucer. The streets of Fismes reverberated with terrible explosions. It was dark, pitch-black, as the columns of the regiment pulled through the crowded streets.
The relieving columns of Italians were still coming in, and there were exasperating blockades and delays.
Gas alarms passed from rear to front and back again, and with the encumbering masks upon their faces, the men groped to keep the road, breasting as best they could the opposing stream of traffic. It was nerve-racking, this farewell salute of gas and shell, with safety just beyond. Wheel scraped on wheel and splinters sprayed the long train as explosions occurred often only twenty-five or fifty feet away by the side of the road, but, the river reached, the men dismounted and stood quietly by their horses until the block at the narrow bridge should resolve itself. It was not until the Vesle was several miles behind, the ridge to its south had been cleared and a stop was made to give out hot chocolate and cakes, that the strain was released and "rest" actually accomplished. The regiment, its work on the first active sector of its history well done, was collected in a wood near Coulonges, ready to sleep away the night hours in perfect peace-peace in comparison to the noisy battle area. But they were prepared for any tasks that might come. They had learned the lessons of battle.
EDGAR G. HERRMANN,
Corporal, Hq. Co.
THE relief by Garibaldi's Italian Division had become a reality. Already the regimental Post of Command had been taken over by the general himself.
Bazoches and Fismes looked innocent enough there in the afternoon sun. Both were but heaps of broken stone and brick. Now and then as you watched, a bit of Hun Kultur would go screaming over, and a dirty black cloud would mark the spot where it struck. Fismes was receiving particular attention. Hour after hour, the town and roads about it seemed to vomit flame, black smoke, and debris.
The time to start approached and a strange stillness settled into the little valley as the sun gave way to a brilliant moon. Everyone's hopes went up as nine o'clock was reached. For some reason Jerry was quiet, and we might slip through the valley and across the river before he got busy. The column was formed. Horses and men stood motionless so that the airplanes overhead would pass them by unnoticed.
Coming across the narrow bridge was an endless column of Italian Infantry, and French artillery, all hastening to get by the congested shelled area. Suddenly the shrill whistle Of 77's floated overhead. The lurid flashes in the town and beyond showed the targets.
Overhead throbbed a heavy bombing plane in search of prey.
Into the crossroads at Fismes, the column pushed its way, men and horses bending forward in the dark to accomplish their unpleasant task as quickly as possible. The crossroads were blocked. The French and Italians were trying to come in on the road on which we were going out. Shells were bursting just beyond the turn and the air was heavy with gas, which tickled the nose and choked the throat. We moved ahead and swung the corner. Every man crouched low, wondering where each screaming shell would land. The pace was terrific but no one minded, thinking only of the flash,-the noise of the close falling shells. At first they burst all ahead, then all around, and at last, all behind us.
We began to realize how far and fast we had traveled. It seemed as if a heavy load had been lifted from us. We pushed on. Occasionally a plane hovered overhead. Here and there, we could see the flash of a gun in a ravine and way off to the right a converging circle of searchlights, punctured with little red bursts of flame, told the story of a night bomber. The marching became easier. The strain was gone. The sound of the guns was far be-hind and our month on the Vesle was but a memory.
Early in the morning, camp was pitched in the woods near Coulonges. After a few hours' sleep there was readjusting of packs, inspection of equipment and horses, and a big meal (the first the regiment had had together for over a month). At dark, the moon came clear and brilliant in a nearly cloudless sky, and the long column, like a dark snake, uncoiled from the woods of our camp and started its long journey supposedly to rest. A little after midnight we crossed the Marne on a pontoon bridge and started eastward along the broad highway. Little did we know where it would take us but soon there grew a feeling that this was a race against time and that such a race would never end in a mere rest.
There were nights of cold and drenching rain; when men were so weary that they slept on their horses and the horses stumbled and staggered under their loads; when the troops and guns going by took on weird outlandish shapes like ghost things herded onward. There were early mornings; when camp was made where everything was wet and there was little fuel; when the tired things would just fall asleep drenched and cold. There were marches by day when the sun shone and all were happy. The fields were bright with the green and the sun. The country folks smiled and we smiled back. The horses did their best and we put many miles behind us. There were camps outside of interesting old places (Epernay and Chalons) where (in spite of their tired bodies) the men would go to buy food and souvenirs.
One morning, it was whispered around that we were going back to the Front and that the biggest " show " of the war was to begin. The elation an excitement of participating in big things began to creep in, and by night, excited whispers told of some mighty battle in which we were to fight.
Indeed there was, and each day we saw new evidences of it-miles and miles of marching troops, trains of motor transports, and huge lumbering guns, all pressing on as if striving to be first at some worthy goal. Then the great Argonne Forest was in the rumors, coupled with stories of a great offensive from "Switzerland to the Sea."
On a beautiful frosty night, we passed through St. Menehould, the gateway of the Argonne. There were high dark woods, hard long hills, and quiet water in glades, which gave back a bluish haze from the moonlight.
Soon word was passed back that the lines were very close and, driving off the road into the woods, we camped for the night, sending the guns forward and camouflaging them near their positions north of Florent. We were in the Argonne Forest, soon to start one of the greatest battles of the war, having marched one hundred and eighty-five kilometers in eight days.
Next day, a gun boomed out just ahead and we realized that the appreciation of things of beauty would have to be suspended until our work was over. Again, it was brought home, for there was the unmistakable whistle of one coming in-just the old desultory firing of an inactive front. All were cautioned to be careful and keep out of sight and any reconnaissance forward of the batteries had to be in French uniforms.
The battery positions had to be prepared, the trail pits dug, and the troublesome orienting completed. Cover too, had to be found, for no one knew exactly how much the Boche suspected and he usually backed up his suspicions with a little H. E.
The woods bristled with guns. Here you could see the little graceful 75's, and there the long serpent-like heavier rifles, and, in little unexpected nooks and hollows, the uglier businesslike snouts of our own howitzers.
We found our first real dugouts, some that would hold six hundred or seven hundred men, well equipped with bunks, water, and electric lights. A single small hillside could swallow a regiment and still yawn for more.
Overhead the sky was bright blue, spotted here and there with fleecy clouds, behind which an occasional plane would dart to escape the avalanche of bursting shells sent up by the anti-aircrafts. Time and again the Hun would try to come over, only to be driven back. Late in the afternoon, two huge bombing squadrons drifted over to harass the lines of communication. The night came and again the stillness of the great forest closed down. The stars were large and near, and a bright moon flecked the ground with silver between the trees. Now and then a shell went over, and now and then one came back; and it was still again.
Another morning was here and no news. The telephone lines were laid, but we were under orders not to talk or even ring up, for fear of Germans listening-in and discovering our preparations. The last work on the guns was finished and the regiment reported ready.
Just before noon a messenger arrived, his arms full of papers. He told us as he handed them over that all lines were to be tested by noon by ringing and saying "Oui" or some other French word. The papers were maps and barrage orders-the first news of our part in the great offensive. There followed hours of feverish figuring so that all data for the guns would be ready and checked, the shells separated, and the charges prepared for action at any time. By nightfall, everything was set and ready for the word that would send over the greatest avalanche of shells ever poured on any enemy.
Darkness came on. Suddenly a ruddy flash and then another lit the heavens, bringing the trees and battered buildings into sharp relief against a lurid field. The heavens were filled with never-ceasing lightning that sent ugly screaming things on their way to destroy, while the air beat on our ears and the very earth rocked with the thunder of it. Not until three hours later did the iron throats abate their howl of hate and then only to shift-some to the creeping barrage, others to zones where men and material would collect.
The morning was bright but the unceasing roar rolled on and on. Now and then, away to the left, could be heard the singsong of a French seventy- five barrage, and to the rear, the heavy crash of a big one sending over its hundreds of pounds of high explosive. Noon came and the fire slackened, but there was no news. We knew that the infantry had gone across, but scattered battalion reports gave little information.
By noon the order to advance had arrived. Not far, but over the ridge, through the old French reserve line and down into the valley of the Biesme. Here, we saw, for the first time, what four years of war meant. Heaps of grown-over ruins, myriads of trenches and wire, and cleverly built dugouts that made each hill a protective abode. Such dugouts could have been conceived only by the French. There were ornate homelike entrances, comfortable rooms with fireplaces and long extending tunnels that burrowed and intercommunicated within the hills. In one of the larger ones, there were the unmistakable recent evidences of cows, chickens, and pigs. Such were the hardships of the Argonne before September 26, 1918.
The road running through the valley north of the river was a slowly moving mass of supply transports, infantry, engineers, and artillery, all pressing forward to their new battle line. Near this road at La Harazee, the guns first went into position. Here the artillery sat down to wait, for there were indefinite reports and no chance of observation and the firing was confined to scattered shoots at definitely dangerous areas.
Now we had our first chance to see the real Argonne. First a slightly battered, grand old strip of woods, filled beneath with heavy brush through which were strung masses of heavy wire. Here and there a few logs and sandbags showed where some old wet and musty dugout went down thirty feet or more into the clay, where one might find a doughboy's full equipment, except the very fighting tools. Then the old No Man's Land, a waste of broken stumps, blackened and burned and everywhere thrown up in masses of yellow and grayish dirt.
For two days the lines did not seem to move but reports showed them farther and ever farther away until the news of the "Lost Battalion" reached us. At first, it was only a rumor spreading as rumors go but later confirmed in the regimental Post Command itself where every word was interrupted by the whine of the bullets overhead. All this time we waited, firing now and then as targets were given, but never performing any carefully adjusted work.
There was one day of fire to help this " Lost Battalion" of advancing infantry that had lost contact on its left and right and had been surrounded by the Germans. General Johnson himself led his men in a heartbreaking futile attempt at rescue. By day, planes loaded with food and ammunition attempted to reach the sorely tried men but always the precious parcels dropped in enemy hands.
Situated as they were in the cross part of a T-shaped ravine with the top pointing towards the enemy, the lost or beleaguered battalion was completely dominated by the fire from concrete emplacements on all sides. After many unsuccessful infantry attempts the artillery was called upon to demolish the emplacements on the left side of the T. There was a heavy concentration put on this area by the whole regiment, which although not adequate to effect a breach for a successful infantry attack, succeeded in relieving the situation and breaking up a gathering German attack.
Soon after this, news came back that they had been reached and that the Germans were falling back. Everyone had a new eagerness to get on. Here was the first real feeling of victory that carried us on to the end. Traces of pitted mud, each pit filled with yellow water, showed where the shell-torn road had been. It was a bottomless sticky affair that would swallow hooves, shoes, and wheels and hold them fast against the best efforts of man or horse. Such were the roads that ran forward through the battered, twisted maze of stumps, trees, and wires.
On and on, the horses and men struggled, through rain, mud, and darkness. Finally we came upon one of the wonders of the war-the German dugouts -modest entrances, well protected with overhanging concrete lids, nicely modeled rooms with stained wood trimmings, mission furniture, and tinted walls. Beds, too, with springs could be found tucked away in cozy little rooms where open fires gave them charm. There were complete lighting systems, hot and cold baths, and central mess establishments. However it was not safe to be too curious, for often-times, opening a door, lighting a fire, or switching on a light, blew dugout and all beyond all possibility of recognition. There were whole towns of these luxurious quarters, for thus had the Germans been living when caught by the barrage of September 26th.
After a few days of all these German comforts, fires told us of a new retreat. There followed a long march through muddy roads dimly outlined by the fires of German destruction, past a crossroad about which were grotesquely twisted shapes that back in 1914 had been Binarville, shown on the map as a fair-sized town and on the ground by an unmistakable German sign with letters a foot high.
Beyond, the Argonne ends, a pointed fringe of thick oak, covering sharp ridges which jut toward Grand Pre from the south and command the Aire for long distances on either side. Behind these ridges between Langon and Grand Ham were our new positions; the Second and Third Battalions on the west side of the forest, and the First Battalion on the east side, and along their sides the infantry and machine guns were catching their breath for the next plunge. This was to be one of the hardest phases of the war for us. By working twenty-four hours a day the masses of ammunition were brought up and one misty morning the hills rang again with the barrage that helped in the downfall of the German's second line.
This second line hinged on Grand Pre, a town built on the point of a ridge jutting down from the northern end overlooking all of the crossings of the Aire as well as the railroad leading up the valley. Above the town, the cemetery, with its heavy stone terraces, and embankment walls, overhung the town below like a protecting fortress and gave excellent machine-gun control of the surrounding valley. This cemetery was the main obstacle to the capture of the town. For this reason it was continually swept by our artillery until only a powdered tortured mass of stone and earth remained. On both sides, rolling hills stretched away to the north, behind which were many Boche batteries of all sizes which were deluged with fire as soon as discovered. These wooded hills were ideal for the cleverly concealed German machine guns. Perhaps the strongest of them was the Bois des Loges, a heavily wooded crest that sloped to the very banks of the river. Hidden in the protection of its trees, the Germans had done their utmost in machine-gun defences. It was the work of the artillery to crush these nests and kill or drive out their defenders. After the battle (so well had the guns done their work) it was hard to see how a sparrow could have lived through it. There were other difficult and sensitive places such as Belle Joyeuse Farm (the German forward Command post), Farm des loges, an excellent machine-gun fort, and the crossroads at Beffu le Mort Homme, always crowded with traffic. All of these received hourly attention up to the time of the attack, when every gun became intent on crushing each obstacle as the infantry opposed it.
Over across the railroad, the meadows, and the Aire, the infantry went to the heights beyond, where the rapidly thinning ranks dug in. It was then a question of one machine gun at a time, of appalling losses and just plain guts. Always, the shells went over and one by one the machine guns stopped their clamor until at night, St. Juvin and Grand Pr6 were taken, a main line railroad cut, huge stores captured, and the Argonne cleared.
Finally the welcome relief came, followed by a march back through roads crowded with troops, camions, and supply wagons to our old second position at La Haraz6e in the now quiet valley of the Biesme. There, many rumors, those phantom hearsays of armies that come from nowhere and amount to nothing, had the division on its way to various camps and rest areas.
At La Harazee there were baths, new clothes, leaves, and the old close-order drill. The horses were rested and put on fresh hourly. The guns shone under constant cleaning. There were band concerts and school. The war was left behind, we went about without helmets, strolled on the streets without an ever strained ear listening for one coming over. The very air seemed sweet and good to breathe.
One night, there was a visitor. All along the line the cry "Lights out!" warned us, before the heavy throbbing told us, of the hated prowlers of the night. He passed us up to bomb the more important target of railroads and dumps. Next morning, rumors of returning to the front were rife, and by night orders were issued that meant once more the 77th Division was to take up its part of the now never-ceasing push.
Just after noon, the regiment stripped to the absolutely necessary transportation-for the horses were far too few-started again to take its place in the line. That night, camped in the thick woods under pup tents, we heard again the old familiar whistle of the shells coming in. They were scattered, however, and did no harm.
With the morning came an early start and a long march to a gun-lined area. There were guns everywhere, along the roads, in buildings, under trees, and in the open. So many that it was hard to find room for a battery in the neighborhood of Cornay-Fleville without overlooking many of the ordinary requirements of a position. It must have been hard indeed, provided the Germans knew all, to pick their particular target, for a shot anywhere would have done damage.
Then came days of adjustment-for there was good observation-on which every gun was registered, so that every round would tell. The Germans were not idle, however, and flocks of snarling, whistling death were poured over with much too good precision.
Day after day the air was full of planes and the puff-specked sky told of their hearty reception on both sides. Occasionally one would topple and fall, and fill up the " brought down " list on the next day's reports.
Much was the information these 'planes brought -eight hundred guns behind one hill-seven divisions of Huns ready to cut us up. Often the new weapon -propaganda-would float down giving the arguments on both sides in innocent little leaflets that helped to win the war. It is easy to see how effective these missives were, for men went hundreds of meters over shell-swept ground in pursuit of them.
The night the blow that was to knock the Hun to his knees arrived, everyone was excited and eager. A heavy counter-battery was expected, but the tremendous weight of our own guns was to crumple the enemy up like leaves and blow them away as by an autumn wind. Soon the air was filled with the most dense and destructive barrage of our war. It seemed the heavens were shrieking with the agony of it. The night was made light as day. Morning came- the fire kept up-the infantry went over but the Germans bad orders to hold at all cost. Those left stuck to their posts and all the day it was the old story of clearing a nest here and a nest there. We fired until our guns smoked with heat.
During the morning the infantry had hard work of it, but by noon parts of the line broke through. Plans were made for us to follow, but because the horses were pitifully few, the First Battalion had to stay behind at Marcq, turning its horses over to the battalions going ahead.
Night came, we moved up and started the feverish dash at the German line that was to end with surrender on the banks of the Meuse. There were heartbreaking marches over roads seemingly impassable from mud, mines, and shell holes; days and nights without food (for ammunition came first), horses dropping in their harness, men eating cabbage from the fields, and drinking from filthy shell holes; and nights of heavy firing. Each man did the work of ten and would have died to ram home the last shell. But ever the spirit of victory pulled us on through hard-won St. Juvin and shell-destroyed Champigneulle, to Thenorgues and Buzancy; and on beyond to Sommauthe, to Raucourt, and to Haraucourt, where the Germans cried: "Enough!"
Behind them, the Boche, left a trail of blood where the big shells went home; there were men, horses, and material broken and smashed by the roadside. The Meuse was reached, the guns in position to fire on Sedan. Patrols were across the river, when on November 11th a breathless and beaming messenger brought Foch's message that hostilities would cease at 11 A.m. For a minute it was hard to understand; and a non-comprehending silence spread over all; then a burst of joy, given vent to as only soldiers can, marked the end of it all. " Fini la Guerre.
GEORGE E. DYKE,
Captain, 3o6th F. A.
THE, final epoch in the career of the regiment was the return from the heat of battle to the discipline of routine. The night of November 11th, for the first time in years, Raucourt and Beaumont, where elements of the regiment were quartered, showed lights in all of the windows; and soldiers, with the civilians so recently liberated, went singing about the streets. Automobiles and trucks which had hitherto groped their way about dark, deserted villages, now ran with their lamps gleaming through the night. The change to peace-this minute the world a hell of shells, the next a heaven of rejoicing-was so sudden it seemed unbelievable.
Ten days' stay at Sommauthe, Beaumont and La Besace for Regimental Headquarters and the Second and Third Battalions-and the forward elements rejoined the First Battalion at Mareq. There, in the ruined village that but recently had been the scene of fierce fighting, the regiment marked time, practiced on the rifle range nearby and stood its first Saturday Inspection since going into action. The regiment awoke with a start to the fact that war was over, and drill had come to take its place. To veterans, this seemed strange.
Thanksgiving was celebrated here, on a splendid dinner of corned willie and jam, while six or eight mess sergeants fretted and fumed on a stalled truck full of good eats and dainties somewhere on the road between Bar-le-Duc: and Marcq. The dainties were to have been the mainstay of the dinner. The afternoon of Thanksgiving Day the mayors of the twin villages of Marcq and St. Juvin, for which the Americans had paid a heavy price a few weeks before, arrived to make a reconnaissance to find out whether the village was still suitable for habitation. Their population was scattered through France, but most of it was collected at Paris, where it had fled in the early war days.
These two dignitaries were quickly included in the regimental Thanksgiving celebration in the public square of Marcq. The Mayor of Mareq, a little weazened old man, in baggy trousers, a frock coat, and a yachting cap, summoned enough courage to make a neat little speech, but the Mayor of St. Juvin, tall, angular, and brawny, could only stand on the platform and twiddle his fur cap furtively in one hand, while with the other he fumbled at the buttons of his leather hunting jacket. Perhaps he was moved by the occasion-perhaps stunned by the sight of so many friendly soldiers standing on the reconquered soil of his boyhood. He was cheered lustily for all that. Then came a speech in which Colonel Winn made veiled promises, saying with a wink for which he was cheered-that "somebody at Headquarters had whispered something that sounded good."
Three days later, the regiment moved by truck through Chevieres, and around the wreck and ruin of hard-won Grand Pre, to Autry for entrainment. Gradually, ruined villages and tousled fields blended into scenes more peaceful, as the Big Mogul puffed and panted along the tracks with its long string of real American-made freight cars. Each car contained seventy-two crowded and growling men, looking for a bit of floor on which to place their feet. They were happy to be moving just the same.
December A Regimental Headquarters, and the First and Second Battalions hiked from the detraining point at Latrecey to Dancevoir, while the Third Battalion marched to Boudreville, five kilometers from the former village. The regiment found itself billeted in the Department of Haute-Marne, close to Chaumont, where G. H. Q. was located.
These little villages represented the regiment's first real intimacy with French rural life. They had come into contact with French life in their training camp at St. Medard, but not so completely as here. The streets were winding, narrow, and muddy on rainy days, which were the only kind prevalent, but. the houses, unlike those of the battlefield, had four walls and roof intact, with a picturesqueness that is not found in the more modern American villages. The little river Aube flowed through the valley, and tiny washhouses on its banks gave promise of washerwomen and clean clothing once more. Ducks and geese waddled about, and piebald cows pattered down the street to the watering place by the river. Fresh from war, these were cheerful sights for tired men.
Everywhere in the village the American was hailed as a "bon soldat," and with his diluted conversational supply of half a dozen French words, the 306th Artilleryman was soon to be seen sitting before every village fireplace "chauffing" himself and recounting with the aid of arms, legs, poker, or anything handy, his battle exploits. These tales never failed of being stamped with the mark of approval "bon" by the French family. Fireplaces adorned with pretty daughters were especially desirable. Several estaminets-the little wine shops of France-put on their holiday fronts and prepared for an influx of francs. Many were the savory dinners cooked up for hungry soldiers by the excellent French housewives. "American soldats tous gourmands" they said of the ever eating artilleryman. Then, too, there were sly oglings between John Gunner and little Jeanne, Marie, and Rosemarie. It was here that the regimental interpreter took unto himself a buxom wife, after an argument with " M. Le Maire, " who objected strenuously to the reduction of the village population by bad bold men who carried away the demoiselles of his best families.
The village of Dancevoir, too, boasts of a chateau, a quaint place by the river, inhabited by a sure -enough count who regaled the officers with the best from his cellars, and took them on boar-hunting expeditions. He was often to be seen, strolling about the village streets in wooden shoes, a hunting jacket, and a yachting cap. He was a tall, gaunt figure, with fierce mustaches. As country counts go, he was most democratic, and not averse to eating buns at a battery kitchen.
The officers and men, upon arriving amid these scenes of rural quiet, were a bit proud of the regiment's record at the front, and felt that as artillerymen and soldiers they had made good. They were now promptly and firmly convinced, that as soldiers they knew nothing about anything. It appeared that the Number One men at the guns, who for months past had been hurling high-explosive shells at Jerry, had been pulling the lanyard with the wrong finger! The gunners and cannoneers, veterans every one of them had forgotten to go by the book. Although it was admitted that in an advance the regiment had never allowed an obstacle to prevent its marching well up with the foremost, it was now pointed out that the regiment really knew nothing of regulation marching. All this must be learned by hours of concentrated practice, in mud, sometimes in snow, and always in drizzle. Inspections were frequent and strict. Guards were placed at the public wells to see that no one drank the unhallowed unchlorinated water upon which the villagers grew fat and healthy and red cheeked. A sort of gypsy bath was rigged up by the river, with hot and cold water,-just those two kinds, there was no "in between." The cold water was administered by the sergeant in charge of the bath, who took more than gleeful delight in giving his favorite officer the icy pailful.
Some of the men were detailed to work on roads and streets, raking off the mud that the rain had formed. When the regiment pulled out of the village it was said that the street levels were several feet lower than they had been on its arrival!
Evenings were the bright spots in existence in the Haute-Marne. The Regimental Stock Company, then formed, regaled the men with shows of its own conception, and so good were they, that the Stock Company was allowed to travel over the entire Divisional Area of forty or more villages to present them. " Movies," entertainments, and athletic activities took place each night at the Y. M. C. A. A commissary was established in town by Lieutenant Vollmer, and for a time the regiment lived in a luxury of jam, cigars, and cigarettes. But Lieutenant Vollmer was called to work for the Peace Commission and locked up his thriving business. Thereafter the sardine profits of Madame Zaza, of the village Epicerie, again increased.
Then came Christmas Day. "Home by Christmas " had been the enthusiastic battle cry from the first day of action. And here was the regiment, many miles from the land of toy departments and Santa Clauses with red-brick chimneys, in a little village where they call the old saint " Pere-Noel. " But Pere-Noel; was good to us, and although we did not hang our sox-" four pairs, regulation issue "-on the mantel, we had the finest dinner that was ever eaten in any army. Roast suckling pig, mashed potatoes, gravy, green peas, cauliflower, coffee, cocoa, punch, pie, jam, crackers, crullers, cigars, cigarettes, and chocolate-went the way of the glutton in sa-vory array. It was a dinner that would have made any homeboard groan, but it was not home. Christmas night it snowed, and the next morning the muddy streets and the hills and valleys were covered with a clean white blanket that transformed everything magically.
Rumors flitted through billet and barrack as always. Dates of homegoing were ventured, and heavy bets were placed on paydays-yet always, the rumored date would come-and pass.
While at Camp Upton, the War Department had given the regiment to believe that it was to be motorized. We sometimes rather wished the War Department would prove it while at the front, where no amount of "Allez!" could sometimes convince the horses that the artillery was a mobile and not a stationary unit. And now they did prove it. The S. 0. S. was going home, and had a good number of automobiles and tractors that might be spared us. Unfortunately the autos were delivered by way of Chateauvillain, and with the exception of one flivver " for the Supply Company, they were all borrowed " by Division Headquarters. But the tractors were smuggled in by railroad, and it was a proud day when the great camouflaged caterpillar power engines came grinding and rattling down the streets to their parks. But pride was short-lived, for in a few days nearly every one had been borrowed by sister regiments in neighboring towns. They returned to us in January just in time to be cleaned and repaired and turned in to the Ordnance Department! But we had been motorized. Our guns soon followed, and a final tribute was paid to the Regiment when the inspector from G. H. Q. declared our mat6riel to be without exception in the most perfect condition of any he had seen in twenty years experience.
Toward the end of December the many teasing rumors took definite shape. By January, moving was an assured fact, and the order arrived to entrain February 7th for Le Mans, the distributing center for embarkation points. Before the great day of departure came, we had been stripped of everything except uniforms and packs. And when the final policing had been completed, the last can buried, the last strip of paper covered, and we were plodding up the hill and out of the town forever, we looked back at the gray village, with its stone walls and muddy streets; its bareheaded children and red cheeked old women and men-and felt that in spite of restlesness and homesickness; in spite of drill and fatigue, the Haute-Marne had been not half bad. The villagers who thought us such "bons soldats" and who had so hospitably received us into their homes, waved a sorrowful good-by-and in the overseas cap of John Gunner flirted the tokens of little Jeanne, Marie, and Rosemarie.
ALLEN LEFFERTS,
First Lieutenant, 306th F. A.
IN this history of the operations of the 306th Field Artillery, but a general outline will be given of the work of the regiment from the viewpoint of the Operations Officer. It is difficult to set forth a history of the regiment without becoming involved in a general discussion of the operations of the entire division as the 155 howitzers operated as divisional artillery, and, taking part in all major operations and most of the minor affairs of the division, worked principally in conjunction with the infantry and therefore operated, as a rule, hand in hand with the infantry. Although the operations of the infantry and of the artillery dovetailed, it would be obviously unfair, and possibly even fallacious, to include in this outline an exposition of the results of operations of the infantry which are based on information not always authentic. For this reason and for the additional reason that it is rarely possible to ascertain exactly the result of artillery firing, this history will be confined as far as possible to statements of principal actions up to the point where the artillery preparations were completed, and no attempt made to set forth or analyze the ultimate result of operations as they effected the infantry situation.
The operations on the Lorraine front were comparatively simple. The regiment supported its own infantry covering a large front of some fourteen kilometers. Baccarat was in fact principally a rest and training sector, and for the artillery meant little more than the opportunity to enable organization commanders to learn to operate under field conditions, to smooth out problems of supply and coordination, to realize the difficulty of bringing up guns and setting them into position, and to give everyone a mild idea of what the Front was like. Probably no one was deceived into thinking that the regiment was in the conflict in earnest, although firing for registration was done and a pretty piece of work by Battery F in blowing up a church filled with minnenwerfer shells added a little real atmosphere.
The reason for the maintenance of a rest and training sector were obvious enough, although distasteful to American ideas of warfare. Lorraine was not badly damaged by the war, and the French, looking forward to the time when Alsace-Lorraine should be theirs again, wished to keep it so, successfully preventing American efforts to force aggressive fighting on that front-this aside from the desire of the French command to retain part of the battle line where troops which were exhausted from combat, both in men and material, could be rested and refitted without taking them to the rear and thus thinning the front. The Germans, also anxious to keep a rest front, adopted the same attitude, resulting eventually in a sort of " gentlemen's agreement " to refrain from any heavy action in Lorraine. This was carried out to such an extreme that there came into existence by unwritten mutual understanding a "retaliation schedule" clearly understood and observed by both sides. Under this schedule the shelling of a town within the French lines would promptly be answered by fire on two towns of comparatively equal importance within the German lines. The towns were listed side by side in copies of the schedule furnished to each artillery commander for his compliance. The ammunition supplied to American artillery was reduced to such a small quantity that a heavy bombardment on the Germans was rendered impossible, and action was confined to local infantry raids in which the heavy artillery had little part.
Finally came the order to pull out of the Lorraine front, and everyone knew that the regiment was about to plunge into the fight in earnest. And they were not in error, for from the easy life at Baccarat, the regiment moved into one of the most hotly shelled and bitterly contested sectors of the front,-the Vesle. It was clear in every mind that the regiment was nearing the crucial period-the entry into real battle, the carrying on of the tremendous victory of Chateau-Thierry. Early in the morning of August 13th the tired troops drew into the Forft de Nesles, and on the nights of August 14th and 15th the guns were placed in position, relieving the 13th Field Artillery. The relief was conducted amid heavy shelling of the roads without casualty to the 3o6th, but with heavy losses in men and horses to the 13th.
At 8.20 P.M. on the night of August 17th the commanding officer of the First Battalion reported to the regimental commander that Battery A was undergoing a heavy bombardment and in a few minutes the Second Battalion was greasing shells that were soon on their way to a suspected German battery. The fire on Battery A continued and at 8.40 the Third Battalion was called on to take part in counter-battery fire on another suspected battery. The fire on Battery A soon ceased and in the absence of a planned program our fire was also discontinued. With the exception of hostile shelling of our roads and the regimental Post Command all was comparatively quiet until 11:50 when the commanding officer of the Third Battalion telephoned that Battery F was being shelled and that the personnel had been forced to take cover. At midnight the Second Battalion was again busy firing on suspected German batteries to counter their fire. The rest of the night was comparatively quiet.
Each day and night was more or less of a repetition of the experiences of the first night, although we did not by any means each time await German fire before firing ourselves. As a rule, however, fire was not opened on a suspected German battery unless it was recently and accurately located, as it was well known that the Germans moved their batteries frequently from one position to another, but almost every night their main roads and cross-roads were heavily shelled by our batteries.
An account of the numerous firings engaged in, day and night, on German batteries, congregations of German troops, vehicles on roads, machine-gun nests, crossroads, etc., would be of but little interest and therefore will not be included in this outline of operations.
On the night of August 21st fire was opened by the First Battalion on the Tannerie. The Tannerie was near Fismes at the railroad and close to the Vesle. Machine guns in and about the Tannerie had been causing our infantry considerable trouble, and the 3o6th was ordered to fire on it preliminary to an attack by our infantry. The fire was duly executed but when the infantry got there the Tannerie was no longer in existence. It had been so thoroughly and completely destroyed that nothing was left but a scattered mass of debris.
Our line was pressed back slightly in the center on August 22d, but we still held the erstwhile Tannerie. During most of the night of August 22d-23d all of the batteries fired heavily in support of the infantry in their endeavor to straighten the line. The next night the infantry made another attack at the same place, again supported by the 3o6th Field Artillery, although without much more success. Early in the morning of August 25th, the French division on our left made a strong attack west of Bazoches in which the Second and Third Battalions took part.
On the morning of August 27th took place an unsuccessful attack on Bazoches. All the batteries fired heavily but the infantry were unable to take and hold the town. From this time on the 3o6th paid particular attention to Bazoches with the purpose of making the town untenable for the Germans, and although it was not taken until the Germans retired along the whole front, there is little doubt but that the Germans found it a terrible and an expensive place to hold. Day and night in addition to the firing of other missions our shells were dropped into Bazoches. At twelve midnight September 2d-3d, 1918, our fire into the town ceased, and Bazoches was unmolested for three hours. At 3.03 A.M. Corps Gas Troops poured a gas projector attack into the place accompanied by a rolling barrage by the 304th Field Artillery (75mm.) and the 3o6th Field Artillery. When the barrage was completed the 3o6th returned to the usual destruction fire. When the division advanced on September 4th, it was possible to observe accurately the extent of the damage inflicted by our artillery, and there is no question but that the 3o6th honestly earned the title, which it then received of the " Wreckers of Bazoches.
An attempt was made on the morning of September 4th to drive the Germans from the Chateau du Diable and surrounding woods, south of the Rouen-Reims Road. As at Bazoches, this terrain was wonderfully adapted for defense, the heavy woods surrounding the Chateau affording excellent concealment and protection for the defenders. The wall-rimmed road running along the top of the abrupt slope in the rear of the Chateau furnished almost impregnable machine-gun positions. The Third Battalion fired for several hours on the road over the Chateau, then on the Chateau and stables, and then again on the road. Within this period, the Ravin de L'Homme Mort, reported to contain a German camp, was subjected to a gas concentration by Batteries B, C, D, and E, the 304th Field Artillery blocking both ends of the ravine with a rapid fire of high explosive and shrapnel.
The German artillery fire had slackened considerably during the preceding two days, and many large fires in their rear areas were observed, indicating an early retirement of their lines. This was confirmed during the day of September 4th when the infantry reported that the Germans were retreating and that patrols were being sent over the Vesle to keep contact with them. During the night of September 4th- 5th the artillery followed as fast as the hastily prepared bridges flung across the Vesle would permit. It was then that the 306th disproved the generally accepted theory that the heavy artillery should follow the light, for but one battalion of light artillery of the brigade succeeded in crossing before the 306th. This advance marked our first movement in the " Oise-Aisne Offensive," aimed to drive the Germans back of the Aisne and the Chemin des Dames. At this time General Mangin's divisions were astride the Chemin des Dames and driving eastward while we were attempting to force the Germans back over the Aisne by frontal attacks.
At 8.40 A.M. on September 5th the infantry were reported held up by serious machine-gun fire from the ravines near Merval and Serval. Under personal directions from the divisional commander the Third Battalion halted in its march and unlimbered in the streets of Fismes, firing rapidly for thirty minutes into the ravines designated. This was the only occasion on which the regiment conducted fire without any concealment whatever, the operation being performed in full view of a German captive balloon.
During September 5th, 6th, and 7th many missions of harassing and interdiction fire were executed by the batteries, particular attention being paid to the defences on La Petite Montagne. The fire on La Petite Montagne, as a matter of fact, was almost continuous, day and night, from September 5th to September 15th. On September 8th starting at 6.45 P.m. the Second and Third Battalions took part in a rolling barrage followed by support fire, in an attempt to clear La Petite Montagne of the enemy. Beginning at 5.15 A.M. on the morning of September 14th and continuing most of the day all batteries delivered a heavy fire on German positions in support of another attack to drive the Germans back of the Aisne along the entire division front. In general, the fire of batteries from the time of the crossing of the Vesle until the division withdrew from the sector to proceed to the Argonne was conducted almost entirely against enemy infantry-a fire that continued without rest on scores of points which were known or suspected to harbor the enemy.
The batteries turned over their positions on the evening of September 15th to the 155's of the 8th Italian Division and withdrew, with few casualties, to the Bois de Meuniere, near Coulonges. After a hard road march the regiment drew into the Foret d' Argonne on the night of September 23d-24th and immediately commenced preparations to take part in a colossal attack of which whispers had already been heard-" from Switzerland to the Sea."
Extreme caution was taken to insure secrecy of the operations. For example, forward observers wore French uniforms, and a complete telephone system was installed but no conversations in English passed over the lines until the opening of the attack. The morning of September 26th was set for the attack, and until that time all movement within our lines was reduced to a minimum. Very little trouble from enemy artillery or bombing planes was encountered during this period, although the Germans were evidently suspicious, for there was considerable aeroplane activity for the purpose of observation and photography.
As registration would reveal the concentration of artillery, the guns could not be adjusted by observation of fire. The pieces were therefore laid with precise care, advantage being taken of every available means of orientation, including astronomical observation, to check and recheck. The battery positions of the Second Battalion were obstructed by trees, but these were not cut down and removed until nightfall of September 25th for fear of revealing the position.
All guns opened fire at 2.55 A.M., September 26th on enemy strong points, dugouts, crossroads, etc., and continued this heavy shelling until 5.30 A.M., when the fire was shifted to a heavy support barrage five hundred meters in front of the 75mm. barrage on the German front lines. At the end of twenty-five minutes the infantry went "over the top" and the barrage preceded them at the rate of a one hundred meter jump each five minutes. When the barrage reached a certain designated line, fire was again shifted to enemy strong points, assembly areas, etc., farther in the rear. The rate of fire was reduced several times after the completion of the barrage and fire ceased entirely at 2.40 P.M. September 26th. During this opening operation of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the regiment fired a total of fifty-three hundred rounds.
In the afternoon of September 26th the Second Battalion moved forward to La Harazee, further advance being impossible on account of the condition of the roads-roads that for four years had been in No Man's Land, and had now been made hopelessly impassable by our terrific bombardment and by German mines detonated just preceding the retreat. On the following day the Third Battalion also moved to La Harazee, and on September 29th the First Battalion advanced to the Abri St. Louis.
The advance of the infantry continued; we followed, the Second Battalion moving to position about two and a half kilometers southwest of Binarville on October 2d, the Third Battalion close by on October 10th, and to positions about two kilometers north of Langon on the following day. The First Battalion took positions south of Chatel-Chehery on October 10th, and advanced southeast of La Besogne on October 12th. The Second Battalion advanced about one kilometer southeast of Grand Ham on October 11th. One gun of Battery D was taken up close to the front lines on September 29th to afford closer liaison with the infantry in the reduction of troublesome machine-gun nests but more particularly for the moral support afforded the infantry.
After the opening attack and up to October 18th all batteries took part in firing to support the infantry advance, a total of about seventeen thousand five hundred rounds being fired during that period. This fire was delivered principally in the destruction of enemy assembly areas, machine-gun nests, barbed wire and trenches, in counter battery, and in harassing and interdiction fire on roads and crossroads.
The infantry activities were in the nature of a steady pressure rather than separate blows, so that these firings were almost continuous and shifted rapidly from one target to another. The principal single attacks were the action in the relief of a battalion of the 308th Infantry on October 7th (the so-called " Lost Battalion"), the taking of St. Juvin (Kreim-hilde Stellung) on October 14th, the attack on Che-vieres on October 15th, the attacks on Grand Pre, and the two attacks of the 78th Division on the Bois des Loges and Champigneulle on October 16th and 17th.
The firing in the relief of the "Lost Battalion" was carefully prepared and well executed, as has been evidenced by the report of an exhaustive investigation conducted immediately after the action made necessary by the ill-founded charges of an officer of high rank that the firing had been wild and had caused casualties to our infantry. In this connection the following extracts from the report of Lieut. Col. James A. Galloghy, acting as Inspector for the First Army Corps, is of interest:
I find that the firing of the 3o6th Field Artillery on the morning of the 7th of October, 1918, was well directed upon the target assigned to it; that it was carefully conducted with due precaution as to safety, and certainty of firing-that this regiment did not cause the death of Lieutenant Fiske. There is direct evidence showing-not only that the shell that killed Lieutenant Fiske was not fired by a gun of the type with which this regiment is armed but also that he was killed by a large shell with two rotating bands, not spaced as those on French 155 ammunition is spaced, with indicated rifling differing markedly from the rifling of any type of French 155 and approaching closing to the rifling of the German 14.9.
The action directed on St. Juvin, which was the main effort of the division in the attack on the Kreimhilde Stellung, opened with a two hour artillery preparation from 6.30 A.M. to 8.30 A.M., on October 14th-the fire advancing after 8.30 A.M. with the movement of the infantry. The attack on Chevieres followed a short artillery preparation from 6.30 A.M. to 7.30 A.M. on October 15th. In this action the First Battalion and Second Battalion were placed under the orders of the commanding generals of the 153d and 154th Infantry Brigades respectively, the Third Battalion being held in reserve-a sharp departure from the principles of artillery that resulted before the completion of the action in the expenditure of ammunition, not justified by the situation in fire, on scattered areas and roads. On the night of October 15th the infantry of the 78th Division relieved that of the 77th Division, but the artillery remained in the lines. On the morning of October 16th the infantry moved on the Bois des Loges, with the First Battalion of this regiment supporting the attack under the orders of the Commanding General 155th Infantry Brigade and the Second Battalion under the orders of the Commanding-General of the 156th Infantry Brigade; the Third Battalion being in reserve.
The capture of the Bois-des-Loges and Champigneulle was again attempted on October 17th. On this occasion the First Battalion was subject to the orders of the Commanding Officer, 304th Field Artillery, and the Second Battalion to those of the Commanding Officer of the 305th Field Artillery-the Third Battalion in reserve. Fire was executed during the night of October 16th-17th on Grand Pre, the Bois-des-Loges, and Champign6ulle and on the morning of October 17th at H hour (6-30 A.M.) was shifted to other targets.
On October 18th the regiment was placed in reserve and drew back to La Harazee, returning to the lines on October 25th. The First and Second Battalions took positions near La Pylone (Cornay) and the Third Battalion near Fleville. But little fire except that for adjustment was executed until November 1st, when the last great blow of the war was launched. Complete and comprehensive orders for this attack included arrangements for rapid movement forward of all batteries in the event of a collapse of the German positions. The infantry attacked on the morning of November 1st after a thirty minute artillery preparation and advanced rapidly, covered by powerful artillery support. All batteries fired in accordance with a carefully ar-ranged firing schedule, consuming 3500 rounds of ammunition on enemy strong points and assembly areas. On the following day the infantry continued to advance so rapidly that the problem of transportation became acute. Exhaustion, sickness, and enemy fire had by this time reduced the strength of the regiment in animals by two thirds, and made it impossible for all batteries to keep up with the advance. For this reason on November 2d the First Battalion was immobilized and its horses turned over to the Third Battalion to enable the latter to move to positions at St. Juvin. On the same day the Second Battalion advanced to Moulin-de-Champigneulle. On the following day the horses of D Battery were turned over to C Battery, and C Battery moved on to Thenorgues, the Third Battalion advancing to Bar. On November 4th the Third Battalion took position one kilometer south of Sommauthe, and on the following day advanced to position near La Besace, C Battery advancing to Sommauthe. The Third Battalion moved to position at Haracourt on November 7th and C Battery to position near Raucourt on November 9th. During the period from November 2d to November 11th, the date of the Armistice, the more important and interesting missions were the raking fire of the First and Second Battalions on machine-gun nests in Moulin-de-Champigneulle and the woods northeast of the Moulin on November 2nd, in support of the infantry, and the fire of the Third Battalion on the road at Stonne on November 4th. The road through Stonne inclines steeply and makes three extremely sharp turns, making difficult the passage of heavy material. Observers reported a huge jam of German vehicles at Stonne late in the afternoon on November 4th, and the Third Battalion was given the task of destroying them. The result of the fire was not known, further observation having been rendered impossible by nightfall, Some counter -battery work was done by the Third Battalion on November 9th.
In conclusion it may be fitting to state that without question the success of the 306th Field Artillery in conducting its operations accurately and rapidly under difficult and trying conditions is due principally to Colonel Frederic H. Smith, whose foresight and unusual ability to organize and coordinate established the regiment on a firm footing that could not fail to carry it through with distinction and honor.
E. E. NELSON,
Captain, 306th F. A.
Operations Officer.
0F all the momentous experiences of a soldier, the keenest and most awe-inspiring is the loss of his comrades, killed in action. In the emotion of that loss we reach a climax in human experience. For if the life of a soldier means danger, we know that they have faced the worst; if it means bravery, we know that they have met the severest test; if it means victory through sacrifice, we know that their sacrifice was supreme even as their victory was glorious.
But it was long before we met the enemy that we were called upon to bear the loss of comrades, when accident and disease claimed the lives of four, two at Camp Upton, and two at Camp de Souge in France. The sadness cast over all Camp Upton on the afternoon of October 28, 1917, by the accident at the railway station was shared by us when the news came that Private Joseph Messina of Battery F had been killed, the first of our men to die in the service. Five months later, on March 22, 1918, Private Edward F. Murphy of Battery E succumbed to pneumonia while on leave at his home in New York City.
A month after our arrival in France another accident saddened us. For on the afternoon of June 3, 1918, Private First Class John J. Wallace of Battery C was struck by a motor truck and died as the result about an hour later in the camp hospital at Souge. Just as we were leaving for the front, Private Benjamin Schmitt of Battery E, who was in bad health when transferred to us at Brest, died of tuberculosis and heart disease at the same hospital on July 11, 1918.
Then we went to the Lorraine sector where we found the enemy menace far less than we had ex-pected. But on July21st we were sternly reminded that there are other hazards of war beside enemy action when an accidental firing of a rifle fatally wounded Private Walter A. Avery of Battery D.
On the second week in August, having crossed the Marne and marched through Chateau-Thierry, we realized that we had been called upon to face the enemy at a point on which the eyes of all the word were turned. Although we felt the thrill of having a part in the turning point of the greatest crisis in human history, yet we were certain that even as Quentin Roosevelt had given his life at a spot nearby, just so surely would some of us be called upon to give up our lives.
Who would be the first? That was the question in our minds when our guns were rolled into position around Chery-Chartreuve amid the shriek and crash of German shells.
But although we were prepared to that extent, yet the solemnity of the news of our first major casualties was deeper than anything we had imagined. On the morning of Sunday, August 18th, the machine gun detail of Battery E was wiped out by a single shell and Sergeant Joseph H. Le Voy, Private First Class Enoch G. Margraf and Private John Nelson had gone, to join the ranks of America's heroes fallen in battle. Then that very afternoon at 4.00 P.M. came the news of the killing of Private Thomas Martin of Battery C on the other end of our sector, the extreme left.
The next point at which the enemy shells damaged our ranks was at the observation post of the First Battalion, on the edge of a wood overlooking the Vesle valley on the left of our sector. It had been a hot corner for most of the forenoon and enemy fliers had been directly overhead, but the observers had stuck to their posts. Then at about the noon hour a shell landed at the foot of the tree from which branches our observers were watching enemy territory. Private Patrick J. Kane of Headquarters Company who had obtained partial shelter at the foot of the tree was struck by shell fragments, and then an officer, Lieutenant Hirschel Tritt of Battery B, was seen to reel from the branch of the tree on which he had been standing and fall across a lower branch. He was caught by others and lowered gently to the ground but never regained consciousness and died a few minutes later. Private Kane was at first able to walk and talk but died soon after reaching the infantry first aid station. Lieutenant Tritt had joined the regiment only a month before and had been assigned to Battery B only the day before but had made many friends and had won the respect of officers and men, especially throughout the First Battalion. He had just received his commission when his career was cut off, but that career could not have been more glorious had it lasted for years.
These two casualties just mentioned occurred on August 19th. The next to go in quick succession was Private Nicola De Felice of Battery C, killed while on duty beside the guns on August 20th.
On August 22d came the loss which was felt most widely throughout the regiment in all batteries and companies when the word was passed from man to man that Lieutenant Samuel J. Reid, Jr., the commander of Battery A, Athletic Officer of the regiment, with the regiment since its organization, had been killed.
The story of his life in college, on the athletic field, in the courts, and as a soldier, is familiar to every member and friend of the 306th Field Artillery. He was captain of his school athletic teams, president of his class at Princeton, captain of the college team and on the All American Baseball Team, a leader in class and college activities, the secretary of the Princeton Club of New York, Assistant United States District Attorney in Brooklyn, a fighter and commander who was like a brother to every man under him. But the climax of his career was, when leading his battery against his country's foe, he gave all. The men of Battery A have done and will continue to do everything humanly possible to show respect for his memory. The epitaph which they placed on his grave near Chartreuve Farm is "A Leader and Inspirer of Men in Life and in Death."
This loss of a battery commander stunned the whole regiment. The effect on the men in Battery A was indescribable for seldom has a leader of any group of men had such a hold on their affection. Yet, although their commander was gone, his spirit was still leading them, for on that very night those guns of Battery A roared back to the enemy with what seemed like a new note of grim defiance.
Yes, he was like an older brother to every man in his outfit. In fact he had left his shelter at his post of command to go to the assistance of one of them who was wounded, and while on that errand was killed. And so it was solemnly fitting that when he died one of those "younger brothers" of his was beside him sharing the same fate, the same grave, the same glory. For the shell that killed his commander also killed Cook Herbert P. Ecks.
On that eventful night, Lieutenant Reid's orderly, Private Rene H. Mongeon, wrote in his little worn pocket diary "Today I lost my best Pal." Thenon the very next morning came one of the most pathetic coincidences of the war when Private Mongeon himself joined his "best Pal" in the great beyond, killed by a shell while leading his horse to water.
Meanwhile Battery F had been heavily shelled and had sent many men to the rear, gassed and wounded. Reports from the field hospital had been indicating that all our wounded men were getting on well, but on August 23d, Mechanic Charles F. Hopp and
Frederick E. Flugge of Battery F who had been struck at almost the same time on the afternoon of August 22d, succumbed to their wounds and died, and were buried at the field hospital near Fere-en-Tardenois.
On the morning of August 24th the regimental Post of Command was ordered to move temporarily from Chartreuve Farm to make way for an infantry Post of Command. The move was to be completed before daylight, and at 3.00 A.M., Private Walczak of Headquarters Company was one of those detailed to bring up the wagon. The road was being shelled at the time near the First Battalion Post of Command and when the wagon failed to appear a searching party found Private Walczak lying dead, he having driven unfalteringly ahead directly into the shelled area.
Battery E had been occupying what was perhaps the most precarious position of any, on the crest of Mont St. Martin with the infantry reserve trenches. It had borne a heavy fire but since the loss of the machine-gun detail on the first Sunday it had been fortunate. On August 25th and 26th, however, four more men of that battery paid the price for the position they had maintained with such determination and fidelity. Two of them, Corporal William H. Gross on August 25th and First Class Private Reilly on August 26th were killed almost instantly at the battery position. The others, First Class Private James P. Bums and Corporal John J. Mc-
Hugh, both wounded on August 26th, died after they had left the first aid station and had been taken to the field hospital. In General Orders NO. 35, Head-quarters 77th Division, November 3, 1918, was the following Posthumous Citation: " Corporal John J. McHugh, No. 1716207, Battery, E 3o6th Field Artillery-while repairing telephone wire under heavy shell fire received wounds which resulted in his death. He showed absolute fearlessness and disregard of danger and exceptional devotion to duty under the most trying conditions."
Battery F had meanwhile moved over to a position on the road just northwest of Chery-Chartreuve and it seemed that its position there would remain undiscovered by the enemy. But on Sunday evening, August 25th, the shells landed thick and fast and at a roll call later that evening Sergeant Raymond A. Berkerneyer did not report. They found his body in a trench by the roadside, the fatal shell having landed three feet away from his shelter.
Amid the ruins of Chery-Chartreuve was a Y. M. C. A. and, although to visit it was to gamble with death, Private James W. Madden on the afternoon of August 28th volunteered to get some supplies for his battery. But he never obtained them, for he was caught just outside of the door of the Y. M. C. A. by a terrific shell burst which caused many other casualties at the same time. It was on that same day that news came of the death of Private Warren L. Hoel of Battery D in the field hospital. He had been wounded on August 26th and had made a game fight for life but in vain. And now every one of the batteries without exception had felt the bitterness of real war.
Then there was a lull; there were evidences that the Huns were preparing to retreat. But just on the eve of our advance across the Vesle the telephone wires near Battery D were destroyed by one of the last bombardments of that area. Out into the storm of flying metal and explosive went Private Jacob Waiser of the repair detail only to return borne by his comrades unconscious, severely wounded, and doomed to meet the end soon after in the field hospital.
The advance toward the Aisne was made soon after this. We felt the satisfaction of victory in the pursuit of a retreating enemy but were reminded that we must count the cost of success when on September 12th Corporal Kaplan of Battery D was badly wounded while on the outskirts of Vauxcere and died in the ambulance, never having regained consciousness.
The wireless messages about the St. Mihiel victory on the 13th cheered us, and when the Italians came to take our places there was universal relief. But there was one more life to go to complete the toll this regiment paid as the price of victory on the Vesle. Long distance enemy guns were tearing up the ruins of Fismes as Battery C came through and Private Samuel S. Brody fell fatally wounded on that night when relief and rest seemed just ahead, over the hill of Dravegny.
The "rest" never came, however, for Foch needed us in the Argonne Forest. The great attack of September 26th cracked the Hindenburg line and we had crossed the Biesme twelve hours after the attack was begun, but the wilderness of the Argonne was a tangled mass of ravines, wire, trenches, underbrush, and thick forest. The exact location of our front lines was unknown, and on September 28th three of our officers who had been reconnoitering were lost. All day Sunday, September 29th was spent in search but there was no trace. Not 'til a month later did we learn that Lieutenant Jean Badin, our French Liaison Officer, had been killed by machine-gun fire and our other two officers taken prisoners in a ravine near Binarville, not far from where the "Lost Battalion" of infantry were cut off a few days later. Lieutenant Badin had been a member of the 117th Heavy Artillery of the French Army before he was assigned to us. He was not only our ally but had become our friend and comrade. His sacrifice while in our ranks has linked us more closely than ever to his nation.
On October 22d when we were having a short breathing spell behind the lines at La Haraz6e came the tragic death of five men of Battery E caused by a "barbed wire exploder." The presence of that explosive near the picket line still lacks an adequate explanation but the mystery of it only aggravated our sorrow. They were Private First Class Dominick A. Detrani, Private James Fleming, Private Levi Lefto, Private First Class Henry Lindblom, and Private First Class Joseph F. McGrath.
The first week in November found us chasing the Germans in their last great rout to Sedan, with our Third Battalion well in the lead. On November 5th final victory seemed near. Danger seemed entirely passed, but it was not. Private James A. Welch of Battery F met almost instant death when a shell struck the Third Battalion Post of Command on that evening. His grave near the Meuse is a monument to the iron will of our regiment to be " game to pay the price" up to the very end and to stop at nothing short of complete victory.
Most of our fallen comrades were buried where they fell on the battlefield or at the nearest field hospital. There was little time or opportunity for proper eulogies or elaborate ceremonies. The simple funeral services sought to remind the hearers that the spirit of a hero does not die, that the work for which they gave their lives must be finished by us who are spared and that their lives although cut off in youth had attained the climax of glory. Several battery and battalion memorial services were held when more of the men could assemble and on January 5th a regimental memorial service was held at which the entire regiment was turned out.
Throughout our campaign the health of our regiment has been splendid, and a tribute to our Medical Detachment and Supply Company. Not a single man did we lose by disease during the months of exposure at the front, in spite of abnormal living conditions and difficulty in bringing up supplies; and we only lost two while in training, a remarkably low record.
The world-wide epidemic of influenza and pneumonia, however, made itself felt in our ranks during the weary months of waiting after the Armistice and eight of our comrades were buried in France although they had lived to see the victory for which they had fought and for which they had crossed the ocean. Second Lieutenant Harvey 0. Weilopp died December 9, 1918, Private Benjamin H. Sloan of Supply Company, January 8, 1919,Private Edward E. Hamilton, Battery B, January 13, 1919, Horseshoer Anthony Heck, Headquarters Company, January 20, 1919, Private John M. McGrady, Battery B, February 12, 1919, Private George L. Belain, Battery B, February 13, 1919, Private Thomas F. O'Rourke, Battery E, February 17, 1919, Corporal William Ruppert, Headquarters Company, November 20, 1918.
Whatever else may be forgotten, the memory of our fallen comrades will always remain. Some of them, of course, were more widely known than others; such as men like Sergeant Le Voy, active in the welfare work of the regiment; Sergeant Berkemeyer, a man of the strongest and most popular moral leadership in his battery; Corporal Kaplan President of the Jewish Federation of the regiment; Corporal McHugh, athlete and true sportsman; Lieutenant Reid, whose fame extends far beyond our ranks.
But whatever their varying rank and duties, telephone men, cannoneers, cooks, officers, drivers, messengers, observers, all, from battery commander to private, who have shared the Great Adventure have equal rank in the true democracy of American Heroism.
Religious Activities of the 306th Field
Artillery
DURING the regiment's period of training in America most of its members were accessible to the services of their home churches or synagogues in or about New York City.
For those who remained in camp over Sunday, morning and evening services were held regularly. Two Catholic masses and two Protestant services were held each Sunday and in addition at least one religious service and one Bible class were held during each week at the Y. M. C. A.
The various watertight compartments of the Leviathan each served as a church building on our Sunday on the ocean and our first Sunday in France at Pontanezen barracks were fittingly observed by large outdoor services.
While in training camp, and in billets in towns, before and after the fighting, there was every opportunity for regular schedules of services. They consisted of Catholic masses, hours for confessions, Jewish services, Protestant communions, Protestant church services, general services, Bible classes and an open Forum for all creeds. This last mentioned enterprise was conducted by the cooperation of the three religious federations of the regiment and presented a series of topics for discussion for general moral and social topics such as " What Do You Mean by Morale?" "What of the Girl You Left Behind?" " Will Your Religion Affect Your Courage Under Fire? " " What is Your Personal Duty as a Soldier -Citizen of Democracy?" " Should the Standard of Right and Wrong be the Same for Soldier as for Civilian? "
These conferences were largely attended and many men participated in the discussions.
Each religious federation had an executive committee composed of a representative from each battery and company. Corporal Kaplan of Battery D (killed in action September 12, 1918) was President of the Jewish Federation; Sergeant Hughes of Headquarters Company, of the Catholic Federation; Sergeant Fisher of Battery B of the Protestant Federation.
While we were at the front there were always a quantity of unexpected factors and emergencies to be taken into account in the arrangement of religious services. Night firing was more conducive to sleep than to church during the daylight hours and likelihood of shelling and enemy air observation prevented any sort of group assembly. In spite of these handicaps a few small simple services were held at the gun positions and some more largely attended ones in the woods at the echelons with the help of the chaplain's organ. The most gratifying thing was that each man, throughout those trying months, showed the spirit of devotion, loyalty, bravery, nerve, unselfishness, sympathy, and courage in the face of death. Wherever that spirit is found, there is real religion.
Of course there were a great many services at the front of a sadder and more solemn kind, when it became our duty to pay the last simple tribute beside the graves of our fallen comrades. Many 306th Field Artillery men with their chaplain were often called upon to conduct burials and funerals for dead soldiers of other regiments; most frequently for infantrymen near the infantry first aid stations. Memorial services were held later for batteries and battalions, and on January 5th at Dancevoir the entire regiment was formed for a regimental memorial service.
Our regiment owes a great debt of gratitude to the various chaplains of other faiths who assisted the regimental chaplain in religious work. Father Sheridan, of the 305th Field Artillery, has rendered steady and most appreciated service to the Catholic men, particularly in hearing confessions at the gun positions on the battlefield. The French cures of Merviller, Dancevoir, and Noyen were most cordial in their invitations for our soldiers to join in their services. Rabbi Blechman at Camp Upton, and Rabbi Schwartz of Bordeaux gave liberally of their time and energy for the benefit of the Jewish men of the regiment, the latter conducting a most impressive ritual at Camp de Souge just before we left for the front. Chaplains Friedman and Voorsanger of Division Headquarters visited the regiment at regular intervals. The secretaries of the Y. M. C. A., K. of C., and J. W. B. consistently cooperated most sympathetically with all chaplains in religious work programs, and often used great initiative in planning events.
A religious census in Camp Upton showed 35% Catholic, 30% Protestant, and 2570 Jewish men in the regiment. This proportion was nearly the same throughout our history, although we had many replacements after the census was taken.
Some of the outstanding religious events in the history of the regiment have been; the Day of Atonement observance at Camp Upton, September, 19 17; Easter, 1918, at Camp Upton; the "Welcome to France" outdoor service at Pontanezen Barracks; "Mother's Day," May, 1918, at Camp de Souge; Visit of the Grand Rabbi of Bordeaux; Service in commemoration of fourth anniversary of the war, held August 4th, at Loromontzey Woods in Lorraine; Service in Bois-de-Meuniers, September 15th, while en route from the Vesle to the Argonne; Com-memoration of completion of six months' foreign service, November 3, 1918; "Victory Sunday" service at Sommauthe near the Meuse on November 16, 1918; "Fathers' Day" and Thanksgiving Day services at Marcq; Christmas services at Dancevoir.
A Purim service and banquet and Passover service were held at Noyen in March, 1918, and a Christmas observance with a tree and party was held for the children of Dancevoir in December, 1918, with the co6peration of Father Thivet, the cure of the village. Our last six Sundays in France were observed by a series of " Homeward Bound " talks in the Noyen theater, and on April 6th a service in commemoration of the second anniversary of America's declaration of war was held. The decks of the Agamemnon served as pew and pulpit at the last services held on April 27th, just before we sighted America.
Many of the greatest preachers of the United States were heard in France, through the agency of the Y. M. C. A., and whatever the subject a real commonsense idea was put across without offense to men of any creed.
More important, however, than the enumerating of services and listing of events is the pride which every member and friend of the regiment feels in the high standards of intelligence and conduct that have been maintained. Our men gave a broad-minded sympathetic hearing to all religious messages whether or not they agreed with the views expressed. They showed themselves to be high-minded thinking men of the best order of American citizen-ships.
We have been assured that no regiment in the A. E. F. had a better moral record and that few equaled the splendid spirit of high endeavor and disciplined self-control which this organization consistently displayed.
ROGER PAGET, The Son of the Regiment
0N Sunday morning, June 9th, at a memorable assembly at Camp de Souge, four-year-old Roger Paget of Bordeaux was adopted as the protégé of the regiment. His father, Lieutenant Henri Paget of the 8th Cuirassiers a pied, was killed in action on April 29,1917, at a point north of the Marne near where most of our own men were killed in action.
Lieutenant Paget twice received the Croix de Guerre and was named for the medal of the Legion of Honor. We have been proud to have the son of such a brave soldier and a representative of the children of France, become a part of the regiment.
Madame Paget, Roger's mother, and a detail from the American Red Cross were present at the ceremony, which was opened by the regimental band and the singing of America. The chaplain referred to the story of Lieutenant Paget and introduced Roger and his mother. Colonel Miller then accepted Roger in behalf of the regiment while the handsome boy himself stood on the table by his side.
Sergeant Levi then spoke briefly in French translating what had been said and expressing the sentiment of the occasion. The climax of the program was reached when Rudolfi stood by the side of the lad and sang Sweetest Little Feller, Mighty Lak' a Rose and the Marseillaise.
Captain Van Keuren of the Red Cross then congratulated the regiment, after which the band played Sousa's 306th Field Artillery march. Most of the men came to the platform to meet Roger and his mother personally.
Bordeaux, Paris, Boston, New York, Philadelphia papers have written up the event and referred in glowing terms to Roger and his regiment. His picture was also published and sent to hundreds of friends of the regiment who in turn have showered letters and souvenirs on him. The 306th Field Artillery Association at a mass meeting in Brooklyn, unanimously adopted Roger and sent him a bountiful box for Christmas, 19 18.
Many of our men on leave visited the Pagets both in Bordeaux and Lyon to which city they moved in February, 1919. "9 Rue Valdeck-Bousseau, Brotteaux Lyon," is the address. They will, in turn, surely visit New York occasionally.
The Farmers Loan and Trust Company of Bordeaux is handling the fund we have established for Roger's education.
As we left France we of the 306th Field Artillery had no more happy reminiscence than the thought of the boy -who has become a symbol to us of the meaning of our fight for the children of France, our own boys and girls, and the future generations of the whole world. We are proud that we helped to finish the work for which his father gave his life, and that some of our comrades shared his noble sacrifice.
That thought will always bind Roger closely to the 306th Field Artillery.
THE pioneer association of American soldiers' friends and relatives was that formed by the 306th Field Artillery. The recreation committee of non-commissioned officers prepared announcements and invitations in February, 1918, for a mass meeting of those interested.
This meeting was held in the Washington Irving High School on March 12th. The chaplain presided and introduced a program of entertainment by the men of the regiment, which was followed by a talk by the adjutant, Captain E. E. Nelson, who represented the Colonel and outlined the possibilities of an organization. The chaplain then announced the plans for action and invited a general discussion after which all all those present were registered and it was decided that the soldiers committee should be empowered to select a civilian committee.
The outcome was the existence of an organization that rendered to the regiment a service of inestimable value throughout our campaign; a band of enthusiastic people who held mass meetings, raised money, extended messages of sympathy to families of our honored dead, and in every possible way served as a clearing house for information and a rallying point for patriotism and regimental loyalty.
Our Thanksgiving dinner and New Year's dinner were transformed into feasts by two gifts of five hundred dollars and one thousand dollars respectively, received in November and December. Funds were also raised at a Hippodrome performance for a big children's party in New York at Christmas time, 1919.
The sentimental significance of this definite link between the fighters of the regiment and their homes grew greater and greater during our stay in France. The work done by Mr. Hollister V. Schenck, president, Miss Olga Schulhof and Miss Anna Ackerman, secretaries, and the other members of the executive committee was something for which the regiment will always be grateful.
The last undertaking of the Civilians Association was the thorough preparation made for our joyous welcome home, every detail of which was planned in advance. The development of the various battery and company veterans' associations was due in great measure to the battery and company sections of our home association.
In all of America's varied kinds of home service during the great war there was no finer example of what it means to "Keep the Home Fires Burning, " than that rendered by the 306th Field Artillery Association.
THE educational classes held in the 306th Field Artillery came at three different epochs in our history. First there were the Camp Upton classes in French and English, with enrollment of three hundred divided into twenty different classes. The Roberts system of instruction in elementary English was employed and a schedule of daily lessons was given during drill periods to those " whose knowledge of English was so deficient as to hinder them in the performance of military duties." Great progress was made in many individual cases and suitable certificates were granted at the close of the twelve weeks course. The interest in French grew greater as our time for overseas service approached.
The French courses were continued at Camp de Souge when the need for a knowledge of French became more keenly evident. After a period of several months' education in the art of dodging shells, academic work was again resumed with the added purpose of killing time while waiting for a transport. Gradually the entire A. E. F. became transformed into more or less of a great educational institution and our "university" kept pace with the development. At Dancevoir there were three classes with fifty enrolled and at Noyen there were nine classes in English, Arithmetic, French, Shorthand, Business Law, and Finance, with 162 enrolled. The interest in these classes was so great that the schedule was twice changed to allow for more time to be spent on the work.
Sergeant Frank Mantinband of the Depot Brigade at Camp Upton, one of the best friends our regiment ever had, was the originator of our scholastic achievement. The Y. M. C. A. has always acted as administrator and has furnished equipment. Some 306th Field Artillery men who have served as "professors" are Morris, Arthur, Goggin, Barry, Wyman, Prender-gast, Routh, Lippner, Field, Adler, Popper, Hirschkopf, Krause, Sanchez, Hamann, Kay, Spencer, Brennecke, Flynn, Goerlich, Schum. Miss Marion Dean, a " Y " girl, was an instructor who made the English class popular at Noyen and Captain Gordon and Lieutenant Priest lectured on Business Law.
We were proud to have fifteen of our men selected to study in British and French universities from March to July, 1919. This was a much larger number than from any other organization in the Division.
PARAGRAPH 461/2 Army Regulations avers that a committee of non-commissioned officers, one representing each organization in a regiment, may be appointed to serve under the direction of the regimental chaplain, in supervising recreation and amusements. In accordance with that idea such a committee was organized in October, 1917, and was active throughout the regimental career.
Its members were elected by popular vote or appointed by battery councils. The following men have served on it: Battery A-Sergeant Franklin, Corporal Feldman; B-Sergeant Dyson, Corporal Weil; C-Sergeant Dann, Sergeant Sheehan; D--Corporal Reisenbach, Corporal Ives; E-Sergeant Sheridan, Sergeant Le Voy (killed in action August 18, 1918), Sergeant Hewitt; F-Sergeant McElroy, Headquarters Company-Sergeant Willis, Corporal Bartanek, Sergeant Levi, Corporal Hermann; Sup-ply Company-Sergeant Phillips, Corporal Flynn; Medical Detachment-Sergeant Derby, Sergeant Black.
Weekly meetings were held while activities were being organized, and after that meetings were held at frequent intervals whenever need arose. Many open meetings have been held, attended by larger groups of leaders in athletics and entertainments.
At the outset managers were appointed in each organization for each branch of sport or entertainment, so that at times there have been as many as fifteen different managers in one battery and as many as seventy managers throughout the regiment promoting twenty different activities such as boxing, wrestling, baseball, basketball, soccer, track, football, glee club, orchestra, dramatics and vaudeville, regimental newspaper, pool and billiards, chess and checkers, volley ball, etc.
The rugby football managers were first in action for our regiment formed in football time. Only enough clothes could be obtained for a regimental team but we were well represented at Camp Upton in a few contests with other regiments. Lieutenant Bomeisler of Yale fame was our coach. More than a year later, in December 1918, when we were at Dancevoir, France, another call for football men was issued for the 77th Division team. We were proud to have three men on the squad of the divi-sional team which won many games throughout the A. E. F.
Our regimental basketball league, started in January, 1918, was one of the best at Camp Upton. After a long schedule of spirited contests played on the Y. M. C. A. and K. of C. courts, Headquarters Company won the trophy in a thrilling finish by winning the final game on April 1, 1918.
A regimental team, captained by Corporal Romano, played a few games at Upton and also in the Y. M. C. A. gymnasium at Latracey, France. As a rule, however, basketball courts were unknown in France and a schedule of games was out of the question.
A boxing trophy was presented by the officers of the regiment in March, 1918, and won by Battery F. Shortly after, Private Schroeder of Headquarters Company and Sergeant Blake of Battery E represented us in the divisional tournament, Schroeder winning the divisional featherweight championship.
Battery E won the cup at Souge, France in June, 1918, and Headquarters Company won it at Dance-voir, France, in January, 1919. In the Le Mans area, just before our home going, we were represented in several bouts at the 77th Division tournament. Blake of E and Murphy and Gatyds of B won championships of the brigade in their weights. Three out of the six brigade champions were 306th Field Artillery men.
The first track and field meet in which our regiment contested was the Camp Upton meet held under the auspices of the New York Athletic Club on Wednesday, December 5th. We won third place, out of fifteen. Our winners were Wallis of F, Hauschild of B, Manson of D, Dwyer of C. In January, 1918, Panzer and De Brunner of F scored at the Millrose Athletic Association meet in Madison Square Garden. Dwyer, McCarthy, Schmidt and Heiz were point winners in the divisional cross-country run on February 16, 19 18, and on almost every Sunday Dwyer was winning races for the Mohawk Athletic Club.
At Camp de Souge, France, a regimental inter-battery track meet was held won by Battery C, and on Memorial Day and Fourth of July at Bordeaux our regiment had a large share in the victories won by Camp de Souge over all the other camps of that base section of France. Dolan of Battery D won the shotput and Hyder of D, Golden of E and Dwyer of C and Taggart of Supply Company also carried away ribbons and medals.
The exploits of our track athletes had a splendid finish when the artillery won the divisional championship and the 77th Division won the American embarkation center championship late in March, 1919. Dolan, Younger, Romano, Roodenberg, Mc-Carthy and Dwyer were point winners on March 15th at Parce and McCarthy and Dwyer and Younger at Le Mans on March 27th, 28th and 29th.
Our famous "Race Horse Mike" Dwyer finished his military track career by overcoming a tremendous lead and winning the medley relay for our regimental team on March 15th and by winning the premier event, the eight mile run at Le Mans.
The severe winter and late spring of 1918 delayed the baseball season and then when our regimental schedule was arranged, and about to operate, the rumors and false starts for France delayed and confused everything. In the opening game Headquarters Company beat Supply Company 27-8, but the championship never was decided. Battery C had a team of above average quality and won many informal games, notably the one from the Depot Brigade by coming from behind with nine runs in the last two innings. In Souge there was only one ball ground for the use of ten thousand men and therefore a regimental team was the only baseball possibility for us. At Noyen, France, while waiting for the long delayed transport, many inter-battery games were played in which Headquarters Company and Battery F made the best showing. Our regimental team was also active in that area and won ten out of fourteen games played.
The entertainment and vaudeville managers of the regiment were organized in November, 1917. Special programs were presented at the Artillery Y. M. C. A. and almost every battery soon had informal shows at least once a week in the barracks. At the " Brigade Celebration " in the Upton auditorium each battery and company presented two special features and the following regimental song and cheer were introduced:
(Tune: Good-bye Broadway)
We are there with six-inch guns
Sixteen hundred strong,
We will petrify the Huns,
Our howitzers can't shoot wrong.
Hindenburg and three-o-six
Is a cocktail hard to mix,
We'll crash and roar both night and day,-
The shells Of 306 F. A.
(Locomotive yell-starts slow, goes faster and faster to finish)
3-0-6-F-A, 3-0-6-F-A,
3-0-6-F-A, 3-0-6-F-A, 3--0-6-F-A
Wheest-Boom (imitation of shell)
Howitzer-howitzer-howitzer!
The "Hero Land" show at the Grand Central
Palace and the first mass meeting of the 306th Field Artillery Friends and Relatives Association, held in Washington Irving High School auditorium, afforded other opportunities for our singers and entertainers to show their worth. Some of the leading entertainers were Rudolfi, Brower, " Buddy " Childs, Gottlieb, Witmer, Bob Cohen, Coleman, and Schon.
On board the Leviathan the demand for their services was so great that they were kept busy continually, especially for the benefit of the naval officers and the nurses. A battalion show was put on every week at Camp de Souge in addition to three regimental vaudeville shows. Rudolfi's voice seemed fairly to exult in the balmy air of southern France and he and our band were tremendously popular in Bordeaux during May and June, 1918.
The band was always most helpful at regimental entertainments but at the front the chaplain's organ had to serve as the entire orchestra for our occasional informal entertainments. At Loromontzey in Lorraine on August 5th and at La Harazee in the Argonne Forest on October 25th, two big out-of-door shows were put on for the whole regiment.
Our band won fame early in our history when it introduced the 306th Field Artillery March written especially for us by John Philip Sousa, the world's greatest march composer. Lieutenant Friedlander's initiative as band officer was responsible for that honor coming to us. Lieutenant Sousa waived all compensation connected therewith. He said that if his effort would enhance the morale of the regiment and stimulate it to its best efforts, he felt that it would make him happy and would be the only compensation needed. The regiment hopes that its fighting record justifies Sousa's faith in it.
Mr. James E. Kelly, the eminent sculptor, made the cover design for the published sheet music edition of our march. It shows a howitzer battery carrying a guidon in the foreground. The guidon has the regimental " 306 " on it and the whole thing is very effective. Mr. Kelly is perhaps best known to New Yorkers by his bronze bas-relief of Washington at Valley Forge on the Sub-Treasury building on Wall Street.
The music of this march is built around the old artillery song which goes as follows:
Over hill over dale, as we hit the dusty trail
And those caissons go rolling along
Up and down, in and out, counter march and left about
And those caissons go rolling along
For it's hi hi hee, the Field Artilleree,
Shout out your numbers loud and strong (3-0-6) (spoken),
Wherever we go, you will always know
That those caissons go rolling along-keep 'em rolling
That those caissons go rolling along.
Battery Ho!
Another regimental song, to the French tune
Madelon:
Three-O-Six, your howitzers won the war.
Three O-Six, we've followed you thru hell.
Argonne wood reechoes back no more
To the crash of six-inch shell.
Now the Vesle is but a memory,
But your fame has gone across the sea
For you blazed the trail to victory.
You're the pride of the artillery!
When the fighting stopped, athletics and the show business superseded everything else in popular interest. Beginning at the Y. M. C. A. in Mareq in November, 1918, up to the time of our demobilization, our entertainers were busy. It became evident early in December at Dancevoir that to meet the demand for entertainment some sort of organization was necessary and so, before Christmas, the now famous 306th Field Artillery Stock Company was organized. At that time the idea was a new one among the combat divisions of the A. E. F., and the " Liberty Players" were immediately in great demand. Costumes were bought and borrowed from French civilians, scenery was rapidly built and painted. Manager Callahan made a mysterious visit to Paris and brought back most of the Folies Bergeres material and from then on each new performance added to our regiment's glory.
The New York Herald and Stars and Stripes began to publish stories about the show. General Headquarters of the A. E. F. demanded a performance. The Le Mans entertainment bureau announced that it was far ahead of any other show ever given in that area, and the famous Trianon Theater at Tours turned away crowds daily for a week while our players were there.
The line up of From Whizz Bang to Footlights, A Musical Barage in Three Elevations, was as follows: Mitchell, Rosenberg, Spencer, Dyson, Kinney, Jacalow, Gallagher, Crone, Seeger, Wardwell, Moch, Ast, Doherty, Plimpton, McElroy, Cohen, Panzer and Eineman. The production was staged by Sam Mitchell; orchestra under the direction of Angelo Russo; scenery by Salvator Gillis; musical arrangements by Robert Pollock; business manager, Edward Callahan; stage director, John Crone; stage carpenters, Murray Popper and Jack Wise; property man, Stanley Rosecrans; electrician, Aage Christenson. Chaplain Thomas, Captain Gordon, and Lieutenant Brown acted successively as officer-supervisors.
These players have been ready at all times and under the most trying circumstances to produce joy for their comrades. They have always been cheerfully on call for battery and company entertainments, especially on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's day.
The gigantic task of entertaining and cheering up the men of the 306th Field Artillery could not have been accomplished without the never-to-be-forgotten work of the Welfare Societies. We will never realize how much they have done for us because we have taken so much of their help as a matter of course.
The "Artillery Y" was the center of our recreational life at Camp Upton. Jimmy Clark was the most enthusiastic sport promoter our regiment ever had; and what he was to athletics, so were Hainer, Hedrick, Moment, Brinkerhoff, and others to enter-tainment of all sorts. The work of Secretaries Moran and McGrath at the K. of C. building, the hostesses at the Y. M. C. A. Hostess House, and Secretary Hyman of the J. W. B. were also appreciated. On board the Leviathan and at Pontanezen the " Y" furnished a profuse amount of games, books, magazines, writing material, and athletic material in addition to splendid moneychanging facilities.
Camp de Souge was as dreary as a desert until the Lakeside Y. M. C. A. opened up the best equipped recreation building we ever enjoyed. Messrs. Cook and Kendall, Mrs. Gereison and Mrs. Kendall worked day and night in our behalf. The Bordeaux Y. M. C. A. filled our weekend leaves with many typically American pleasures.
In the Baccarat sector of the front Y. M. C. A. huts at five villages served over half our units and when we left for the Vesle sector Mr. Roy Rawlings, a business man from Kansas City, was assigned as Y. M. C. A. secretary for our regiment. He proved himself to be a splendid campaigner and well able to accompany soldiers on active field service. His genial cordiality and interest in our welfare have made him well-known and respected by all. About forty thousand francs' worth of stores per month were sold during his period of service either directly to individuals or through their battalion ration drivers and mess sergeants. Thirty thousand francs' worth of money orders were sent to the United States per month. During our four months at the front about thirty different parties of Y. M. C. A. enter-tainers, singers, speakers, etc., appeared before some portions of the men of our regiment.
All of the above is exclusive of goods sold through the Y. M. C. A. huts at Rondchamp in the Argonne Forest and Chery-Chartreuve on the Vesle. The latter was kept open for business until closed by military order, at least fifteen men having been killed and thirty wounded while patronizing it. The above is also exclusive of stores distributed and service rendered to us by secretaries of other regiments serving nearby, one of these from the 304th Field Artillery being wounded at Bazoches.
About the only bright spots in the mud of Mareq and Dancevoir were the Y. M. C. A. huts which were far too small for us. When we reached Noyen for the " last long wait " we found a well-equipped Y. M. C. A. theater, tent and canteen building, but better than all else two American girls, Miss Marian Dean and Miss Lucile Watters, who made the whole regiment happy by their gracious hospitality. They were joined later by Miss Adele Winston of the J. W. B. who cooperated most heartily and efficiently with the whole " Y " program.
There was a Salvation Army hut at Baccarat where doughnuts and lemonade were sold and preaching services held on alternate nights. A Salvation Army hut at St. Juvin was visited by some of our men from Marcq about the time of the Armistice.
In the Baccarat sector, Secretary Bundschu of the K. of C. made the rounds of the batteries twice with magazines and cigarettes. In the Vesle sector he and "Uncle Joe " Kiernan followed the division with their hot chocolate wagon. On the night of September 15th they met Batteries C, D, E, and F coming out of the lines and served hot chocolate. In the Argonne Forest, at La Harazee, Batteries C and D were again fortunate enough to be located near the same wagon for several days.
The Red Cross man with the division, Captain Popham, sent us cigarettes and chocolates and maga-ines on several occasions. Other good things were supplied by the Red Cross huts at Chery-Chartreuve, Bazoches, and to a few of our men who visited Grand Pre after the Armistice.
The American Library Association sent us over eight hundred volumes from their Paris office while we were in France and at Upton its library was open a month before we left.
We are sure that in the years to come although we will be again accustomed to the luxuries of civil life and the hardships of the war will be only memories, yet we can never cease being grateful to all who tried to bring us enjoyment while we were wearing the olive drab.
THE pioneer association of American soldiers' friends and relatives was that formed by the 306th Field Artillery. The recreation committee of non-commissioned officers prepared announcements and invitations in February, 1918, for a mass meeting of those interested.
This meeting was held in the Washington Irving High School on March 12th. The chaplain presided and introduced a program of entertainment by the men of the regiment, which was followed by a talk by the adjutant, Captain E. E. Nelson, who represented the Colonel and outlined the possibilities of an organization. The chaplain then announced the plans for action and invited a general discussion after which all all those present were registered and it was decided that the soldiers committee should be empowered to select a civilian committee.
The outcome was the existence of an organization that rendered to the regiment a service of inestimable value throughout our campaign; a band of enthusiastic people who held mass meetings, raised money, extended messages of sympathy to families of our honored dead, and in every possible way served as a clearing house for information and a rallying point for patriotism and regimental loyalty.
Our Thanksgiving dinner and New Year's dinner were transformed into feasts by two gifts of five hundred dollars and one thousand dollars respectively, received in November and December. Funds were also raised at a Hippodrome performance for a big children's party in New York at Christmas time, 1919.
The sentimental significance of this definite link between the fighters of the regiment and their homes grew greater and greater during our stay in France. The work done by Mr. Hollister V. Schenck, president, Miss Olga Schulhof and Miss Anna Ackerman, secretaries, and the other members of the executive committee was something for which the regiment will always be grateful.
The last undertaking of the Civilians Association was the thorough preparation made for our joyous welcome home, every detail of which was planned in advance. The development of the various battery and company veterans' associations was due in great measure to the battery and company sections of our home association.
In all of America's varied kinds of home service during the great war there was no finer example of what it means to "Keep the Home Fires Burning, " than that rendered by the 306th Field Artillery Association.
THE educational classes held in the 306th Field Artillery came at three different epochs in our history. First there were the Camp Upton classes in French and English, with enrollment of three hundred divided into twenty different classes. The Roberts system of instruction in elementary English was employed and a schedule of daily lessons was given during drill periods to those " whose knowledge of English was so deficient as to hinder them in the performance of military duties." Great progress was made in many individual cases and suitable certificates were granted at the close of the twelve weeks course. The interest in French grew greater as our time for overseas service approached.
The French courses were continued at Camp de Souge when the need for a knowledge of French became more keenly evident. After a period of several months' education in the art of dodging shells, academic work was again resumed with the added purpose of killing time while waiting for a transport. Gradually the entire A. E. F. became transformed into more or less of a great educational institution and our "university" kept pace with the development. At Dancevoir there were three classes with fifty enrolled and at Noyen there were nine classes in English, Arithmetic, French, Shorthand, Business Law, and Finance, with 162 enrolled. The interest in these classes was so great that the schedule was twice changed to allow for more time to be spent on the work.
Sergeant Frank Mantinband of the Depot Brigade at Camp Upton, one of the best friends our regiment ever had, was the originator of our scholastic achievement. The Y. M. C. A. has always acted as administrator and has furnished equipment. Some 306th Field Artillery men who have served as "professors" are Morris, Arthur, Goggin, Barry, Wyman, Prender-gast, Routh, Lippner, Field, Adler, Popper, Hirschkopf, Krause, Sanchez, Hamann, Kay, Spencer, Brennecke, Flynn, Goerlich, Schum. Miss Marion Dean, a " Y " girl, was an instructor who made the English class popular at Noyen and Captain Gordon and Lieutenant Priest lectured on Business Law.
We were proud to have fifteen of our men selected to study in British and French universities from March to July, 1919. This was a much larger number than from any other organization in the Division.
PARAGRAPH 461/2 Army Regulations avers that a committee of non-commissioned officers, one representing each organization in a regiment, may be appointed to serve under the direction of the regimental chaplain, in supervising recreation and amusements. In accordance with that idea such a committee was organized in October, 1917, and was active throughout the regimental career.
Its members were elected by popular vote or appointed by battery councils. The following men have served on it: Battery A-Sergeant Franklin, Corporal Feldman; B-Sergeant Dyson, Corporal Weil; C-Sergeant Dann, Sergeant Sheehan; D--Corporal Reisenbach, Corporal Ives; E-Sergeant Sheridan, Sergeant Le Voy (killed in action August 18, 1918), Sergeant Hewitt; F-Sergeant McElroy, Headquarters Company-Sergeant Willis, Corporal Bartanek, Sergeant Levi, Corporal Hermann; Sup-ply Company-Sergeant Phillips, Corporal Flynn; Medical Detachment-Sergeant Derby, Sergeant Black.
Weekly meetings were held while activities were being organized, and after that meetings were held at frequent intervals whenever need arose. Many open meetings have been held, attended by larger groups of leaders in athletics and entertainments.
At the outset managers were appointed in each organization for each branch of sport or entertainment, so that at times there have been as many as fifteen different managers in one battery and as many as seventy managers throughout the regiment promoting twenty different activities such as boxing, wrestling, baseball, basketball, soccer, track, football, glee club, orchestra, dramatics and vaudeville, regimental newspaper, pool and billiards, chess and checkers, volley ball, etc.
The rugby football managers were first in action for our regiment formed in football time. Only enough clothes could be obtained for a regimental team but we were well represented at Camp Upton in a few contests with other regiments. Lieutenant Bomeisler of Yale fame was our coach. More than a year later, in December 1918, when we were at Dancevoir, France, another call for football men was issued for the 77th Division team. We were proud to have three men on the squad of the divi-sional team which won many games throughout the A. E. F.
Our regimental basketball league, started in January, 1918, was one of the best at Camp Upton. After a long schedule of spirited contests played on the Y. M. C. A. and K. of C. courts, Headquarters Company won the trophy in a thrilling finish by winning the final game on April 1, 1918.
A regimental team, captained by Corporal Romano, played a few games at Upton and also in the Y. M. C. A. gymnasium at Latracey, France. As a rule, however, basketball courts were unknown in France and a schedule of games was out of the question.
A boxing trophy was presented by the officers of the regiment in March, 1918, and won by Battery F. Shortly after, Private Schroeder of Headquarters Company and Sergeant Blake of Battery E represented us in the divisional tournament, Schroeder winning the divisional featherweight championship.
Battery E won the cup at Souge, France in June, 1918, and Headquarters Company won it at Dance-voir, France, in January, 1919. In the Le Mans area, just before our home going, we were represented in several bouts at the 77th Division tournament. Blake of E and Murphy and Gatyds of B won championships of the brigade in their weights. Three out of the six brigade champions were 306th Field Artillery men.
The first track and field meet in which our regiment contested was the Camp Upton meet held under the auspices of the New York Athletic Club on Wednesday, December 5th. We won third place, out of fifteen. Our winners were Wallis of F, Hauschild of B, Manson of D, Dwyer of C. In January, 1918, Panzer and De Brunner of F scored at the Millrose Athletic Association meet in Madison Square Garden. Dwyer, McCarthy, Schmidt and Heiz were point winners in the divisional cross-country run on February 16, 19 18, and on almost every Sunday Dwyer was winning races for the Mohawk Athletic Club.
At Camp de Souge, France, a regimental inter-battery track meet was held won by Battery C, and on Memorial Day and Fourth of July at Bordeaux our regiment had a large share in the victories won by Camp de Souge over all the other camps of that base section of France. Dolan of Battery D won the shotput and Hyder of D, Golden of E and Dwyer of C and Taggart of Supply Company also carried away ribbons and medals.
The exploits of our track athletes had a splendid finish when the artillery won the divisional championship and the 77th Division won the American embarkation center championship late in March, 1919. Dolan, Younger, Romano, Roodenberg, Mc-Carthy and Dwyer were point winners on March 15th at Parce and McCarthy and Dwyer and Younger at Le Mans on March 27th, 28th and 29th.
Our famous "Race Horse Mike" Dwyer finished his military track career by overcoming a tremendous lead and winning the medley relay for our regimental team on March 15th and by winning the premier event, the eight mile run at Le Mans.
The severe winter and late spring of 1918 delayed the baseball season and then when our regimental schedule was arranged, and about to operate, the rumors and false starts for France delayed and confused everything. In the opening game Headquarters Company beat Supply Company 27-8, but the championship never was decided. Battery C had a team of above average quality and won many informal games, notably the one from the Depot Brigade by coming from behind with nine runs in the last two innings. In Souge there was only one ball ground for the use of ten thousand men and therefore a regimental team was the only baseball possibility for us. At Noyen, France, while waiting for the long delayed transport, many inter-battery games were played in which Headquarters Company and Battery F made the best showing. Our regimental team was also active in that area and won ten out of fourteen games played.
The entertainment and vaudeville managers of the regiment were organized in November, 1917. Special programs were presented at the Artillery Y. M. C. A. and almost every battery soon had informal shows at least once a week in the barracks. At the " Brigade Celebration " in the Upton auditorium each battery and company presented two special features and the following regimental song and cheer were introduced:
(Tune: Good-bye Broadway)
We are there with six-inch guns
Sixteen hundred strong,
We will petrify the Huns,
Our howitzers can't shoot wrong.
Hindenburg and three-o-six
Is a cocktail hard to mix,
We'll crash and roar both night and day,-
The shells Of 306 F. A.
(Locomotive yell-starts slow, goes faster and faster to finish)
3-0-6-F-A, 3-0-6-F-A,
3-0-6-F-A, 3-0-6-F-A, 3--0-6-F-A
Wheest-Boom (imitation of shell)
Howitzer-howitzer-howitzer!
The "Hero Land" show at the Grand Central
Palace and the first mass meeting of the 306th Field Artillery Friends and Relatives Association, held in Washington Irving High School auditorium, afforded other opportunities for our singers and entertainers to show their worth. Some of the leading entertainers were Rudolfi, Brower, " Buddy " Childs, Gottlieb, Witmer, Bob Cohen, Coleman, and Schon.
On board the Leviathan the demand for their services was so great that they were kept busy continually, especially for the benefit of the naval officers and the nurses. A battalion show was put on every week at Camp de Souge in addition to three regimental vaudeville shows. Rudolfi's voice seemed fairly to exult in the balmy air of southern France and he and our band were tremendously popular in Bordeaux during May and June, 1918.
The band was always most helpful at regimental entertainments but at the front the chaplain's organ had to serve as the entire orchestra for our occasional informal entertainments. At Loromontzey in Lorraine on August 5th and at La Harazee in the Argonne Forest on October 25th, two big out-of-door shows were put on for the whole regiment.
Our band won fame early in our history when it introduced the 306th Field Artillery March written especially for us by John Philip Sousa, the world's greatest march composer. Lieutenant Friedlander's initiative as band officer was responsible for that honor coming to us. Lieutenant Sousa waived all compensation connected therewith. He said that if his effort would enhance the morale of the regiment and stimulate it to its best efforts, he felt that it would make him happy and would be the only compensation needed. The regiment hopes that its fighting record justifies Sousa's faith in it.
Mr. James E. Kelly, the eminent sculptor, made the cover design for the published sheet music edition of our march. It shows a howitzer battery carrying a guidon in the foreground. The guidon has the regimental " 306 " on it and the whole thing is very effective. Mr. Kelly is perhaps best known to New Yorkers by his bronze bas-relief of Washington at Valley Forge on the Sub-Treasury building on Wall Street.
The music of this march is built around the old artillery song which goes as follows:
Over hill over dale, as we hit the dusty trail
And those caissons go rolling along
Up and down, in and out, counter march and left about
And those caissons go rolling along
For it's hi hi hee, the Field Artilleree,
Shout out your numbers loud and strong (3-0-6) (spoken),
Wherever we go, you will always know
That those caissons go rolling along-keep 'em rolling
That those caissons go rolling along.
Battery Ho!
Another regimental song, to the French tune
Madelon:
Three-O-Six, your howitzers won the war.
Three O-Six, we've followed you thru hell.
Argonne wood reechoes back no more
To the crash of six-inch shell.
Now the Vesle is but a memory,
But your fame has gone across the sea
For you blazed the trail to victory.
You're the pride of the artillery!
When the fighting stopped, athletics and the show business superseded everything else in popular interest. Beginning at the Y. M. C. A. in Mareq in November, 1918, up to the time of our demobilization, our entertainers were busy. It became evident early in December at Dancevoir that to meet the demand for entertainment some sort of organization was necessary and so, before Christmas, the now famous 306th Field Artillery Stock Company was organized. At that time the idea was a new one among the combat divisions of the A. E. F., and the " Liberty Players" were immediately in great demand. Costumes were bought and borrowed from French civilians, scenery was rapidly built and painted. Manager Callahan made a mysterious visit to Paris and brought back most of the Folies Bergeres material and from then on each new performance added to our regiment's glory.
The New York Herald and Stars and Stripes began to publish stories about the show. General Headquarters of the A. E. F. demanded a performance. The Le Mans entertainment bureau announced that it was far ahead of any other show ever given in that area, and the famous Trianon Theater at Tours turned away crowds daily for a week while our players were there.
The line up of From Whizz Bang to Footlights, A Musical Barage in Three Elevations, was as follows: Mitchell, Rosenberg, Spencer, Dyson, Kinney, Jacalow, Gallagher, Crone, Seeger, Wardwell, Moch, Ast, Doherty, Plimpton, McElroy, Cohen, Panzer and Eineman. The production was staged by Sam Mitchell; orchestra under the direction of Angelo Russo; scenery by Salvator Gillis; musical arrangements by Robert Pollock; business manager, Edward Callahan; stage director, John Crone; stage carpenters, Murray Popper and Jack Wise; property man, Stanley Rosecrans; electrician, Aage Christenson. Chaplain Thomas, Captain Gordon, and Lieutenant Brown acted successively as officer-supervisors.
These players have been ready at all times and under the most trying circumstances to produce joy for their comrades. They have always been cheerfully on call for battery and company entertainments, especially on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's day.
The gigantic task of entertaining and cheering up the men of the 306th Field Artillery could not have been accomplished without the never-to-be-forgotten work of the Welfare Societies. We will never realize how much they have done for us because we have taken so much of their help as a matter of course.
The "Artillery Y" was the center of our recreational life at Camp Upton. Jimmy Clark was the most enthusiastic sport promoter our regiment ever had; and what he was to athletics, so were Hainer, Hedrick, Moment, Brinkerhoff, and others to enter-tainment of all sorts. The work of Secretaries Moran and McGrath at the K. of C. building, the hostesses at the Y. M. C. A. Hostess House, and Secretary Hyman of the J. W. B. were also appreciated. On board the Leviathan and at Pontanezen the " Y" furnished a profuse amount of games, books, magazines, writing material, and athletic material in addition to splendid moneychanging facilities.
Camp de Souge was as dreary as a desert until the Lakeside Y. M. C. A. opened up the best equipped recreation building we ever enjoyed. Messrs. Cook and Kendall, Mrs. Gereison and Mrs. Kendall worked day and night in our behalf. The Bordeaux Y. M. C. A. filled our weekend leaves with many typically American pleasures.
In the Baccarat sector of the front Y. M. C. A. huts at five villages served over half our units and when we left for the Vesle sector Mr. Roy Rawlings, a business man from Kansas City, was assigned as Y. M. C. A. secretary for our regiment. He proved himself to be a splendid campaigner and well able to accompany soldiers on active field service. His genial cordiality and interest in our welfare have made him well-known and respected by all. About forty thousand francs' worth of stores per month were sold during his period of service either directly to individuals or through their battalion ration drivers and mess sergeants. Thirty thousand francs' worth of money orders were sent to the United States per month. During our four months at the front about thirty different parties of Y. M. C. A. enter-tainers, singers, speakers, etc., appeared before some portions of the men of our regiment.
All of the above is exclusive of goods sold through the Y. M. C. A. huts at Rondchamp in the Argonne Forest and Chery-Chartreuve on the Vesle. The latter was kept open for business until closed by military order, at least fifteen men having been killed and thirty wounded while patronizing it. The above is also exclusive of stores distributed and service rendered to us by secretaries of other regiments serving nearby, one of these from the 304th Field Artillery being wounded at Bazoches.
About the only bright spots in the mud of Mareq and Dancevoir were the Y. M. C. A. huts which were far too small for us. When we reached Noyen for the " last long wait " we found a well-equipped Y. M. C. A. theater, tent and canteen building, but better than all else two American girls, Miss Marian Dean and Miss Lucile Watters, who made the whole regiment happy by their gracious hospitality. They were joined later by Miss Adele Winston of the J. W. B. who cooperated most heartily and efficiently with the whole " Y " program.
There was a Salvation Army hut at Baccarat where doughnuts and lemonade were sold and preaching services held on alternate nights. A Salvation Army hut at St. Juvin was visited by some of our men from Marcq about the time of the Armistice.
In the Baccarat sector, Secretary Bundschu of the K. of C. made the rounds of the batteries twice with magazines and cigarettes. In the Vesle sector he and "Uncle Joe " Kiernan followed the division with their hot chocolate wagon. On the night of September 15th they met Batteries C, D, E, and F coming out of the lines and served hot chocolate. In the Argonne Forest, at La Harazee, Batteries C and D were again fortunate enough to be located near the same wagon for several days.
The Red Cross man with the division, Captain Popham, sent us cigarettes and chocolates and maga-ines on several occasions. Other good things were supplied by the Red Cross huts at Chery-Chartreuve, Bazoches, and to a few of our men who visited Grand Pre after the Armistice.
The American Library Association sent us over eight hundred volumes from their Paris office while we were in France and at Upton its library was open a month before we left.
We are sure that in the years to come although we will be again accustomed to the luxuries of civil life and the hardships of the war will be only memories, yet we can never cease being grateful to all who tried to bring us enjoyment while we were wearing the olive drab.
THE Camp Upton weekly, Trench and Camp, was dazed to find a competitor and contemporary bursting in on its field of vision late in November, 19 17. After giving the newcomer the double 00 and up and down, it made the following comment: " The Howitzer has sent its first boom reverberating over the camouflaged area occupied by Upton's artillerymen. It claims the honor, which it undoubtedly deserves, of being the first regimental journal to appear in camp-a well-arranged assortment for news, stories, regimental and personal, poems, roster of officers, and editorial utterances comprises the first issue."
Similar words of commendation soon came from scores of other sources and a large mailing list became a necessity to meet the requests for sample copies from other military organizations, welfare organizations, libraries, etc.
Since that time The Howitzer has steadily improved its range and extended its field of fire. Ammunition has been regularly furnished by an able staff of news correspondents who have worked hard to make the paper worth while. It has been the only regular regimental paper in the division and one of a very few in the A. E. F.
Five sparkling issues saw the light of day at Camp Upton and just as Volume 1, Number 6, was being finished by the printer, we -were hustled on board the Leviathan and sent overseas without having a chance to read it in America.
It followed us across, however, and gave us pleas-ant recollections when we were just beginning to get homesick at Camp de Souge, France.
Meanwhile the editorial staff had issued Volume 1, Number 7, entitled The Howitzer of the Rolling Sea, while we were on board the transport. It was a mimeographed sheet prepared on a machine obtained through the courtesy of the naval executive office of the Leviathan. Although small in size, it contained "Shell Fire" from each battery and was quickly sold out. Extra copies were made at Bordeaux which served as souvenirs to be sent back home.
A French printer in Bordeaux managed to decipher our copy for Volume 1, Number 8, and gave us a fine overseas edition in June, 1918.
Then for the next five months printing facilities were hard to find, but the news correspondents continued to scribble even while the shells were whistling with the result that by the end of October copy was ready for an edition with the heading " Published on the Front Line of the Battlefield, France."
A printer was finally located in Paris who had the issue ready for publication in December. We called it the "Victory, Anniversary, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Number," it being the first anniversary of The Howitzer's birth at Camp Upton, as well as of other important world-renowned events.
This eight-page edition was an elaborate one, containing a partial list of the complements in all three sectors. Our "Roll of Honor" was accompanied by Fisk's effective sketch of "The Lone Sentinel." The " Shell Fire" section was more complete than ever before.
The next task for Editor-in-Chief Lozier and the editorial staff was the preparation of the "Welcome Home " edition, copy for which was mailed to the States in advance of our home-going, and aided materially in the celebration of our welcome. Volume 2, Number 2, came out just before that, while we were on board the homeward bound good ship Agamemnon.
So long as our regimental spirit exists, which we believe will be till the end of our lives, just so long will there be the need of The Howitzer to appear at least once in a while to inform us of each other's welfare, location, business, changes, etc. The Howitzer will meet that need.
The 155 Schneider Howitzer, 1917
The 155 millimeter Schneider Howitzer is a short -barreled gun, which may be used for direct fire, but is especially designed for indirect, high-angled-plunging fire. On account of its high trajectory, it can be used to drop shell into deep ravines and well -defiladed positions, which a rifle with a flat trajectory could not reach. Because of the same advantages, the Howitzer itself can be hidden in deep valleys and behind steep slopes. By varying the powder charges the projectile may be caused to strike at varying angles at any given range. The maximum range of 11. 2 kilometers is obtained with a " 00 " charge, a 4 'shot fuse," and a " semi-steel shell."
The gun carriage and its limber (a limber serves the same purpose that a front axle and wheels serve on a wagon) are drawn by eight horses. The gun usually goes forward at a walk, except with the best roads, or in great emergencies, when a trot is sometimes taken up, but only for a short distance. Hurrying the guns out of a shelled road-area is an example. The gun and caisson are supposed to cross any country suitable for other field artillery. A maximum rate of fire of four to five rounds per minute may be attained, but the heating of the gun, and the difficulty of preparing and transporting the ammunition by the -regular gun-crew of eight men, render such a rate impossible for more than a few minutes. The normal rate for rapid fire is two shots per minute. The gun is fired resting on its wheels. The recoil and the recuperator mechanism consist of an arrangement of cylinders containing nitrogen or air, water, and glycerine. When the gun is fired this mixture is squeezed from one set of cylinders into another, providing a cushion to take up the shock of fire. Were this not scientifically calculated, the gun would wreck itself with the first shot. The gun may be elevated from 0 to 42 degrees, and may be swung in a horizontal plane three degrees to-the right and left of center,
In firing, the propelling charge and the projectile are inserted into the breech of the gun separately. The powder comes in bags, each containing the maximum charge, the reduced charges being made by opening the bag and removing a specified number of marked packets of explosive. Thus, from "BG5" a green bag, charges 00, 0, and 1 are made. From " BSP," a white bag, charges 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are obtained. 00 is the strongest charge, and 5 is the weakest.
In loading, the fused shell, greased to facilitate passage through the bore, is rammed into the breech. The powder bag, properly prepared, is placed into the breech-recess at the base of the shell. The breech is closed, and the primer is set into a device called the "primer-leaf." When the piece is fired, the primer ignites the powder charge, which expels the projectile. Into the nose of the projectile, a fuse has been screwed. When the shell strikes its target, the concussion releases a catch in the fuse which fires the powder in the projectile, causing it to burst into fragments, some large enough to batter down walls, some as small as rifle bullets.
The fuses are made for various purposes. Some allow the shell to penetrate its target several feet before exploding; others cause it to explode instantaneously on contact. The former are effective for the work of demolition-the blowing up of dugouts and fortifications; while the latter are used against open and wooded positions, where shell fragments are counted upon to damage personnel. In conjunction with a long, or instantaneous, fuse, a cast -iron shell, cheaper to make than a steel shell, is used; while where the object is demolition, a steel shell is used with the delayed fuse.
To most people, the firing of a gun consists of pointing it in the general direction of the enemy, and letting loose. But the demand for accuracy, and the grave consequences following lack of it, have elevated artillery-firing to a science that embodies nearly all the natural phenomena.
Wind will blow the shell out of its course. So then, the wind for the particular time that the shell is fired must be taken into consideration, and a calculation of its effect must be set down in terms of range and deflection. Shells travel at various speeds through various air pressures, with consequent effect on the range. The temperature of the air, the temperature of the powder used, the weight of that particular lot of shell to be fired, the variation of the lot of powder from the normal, inaccuracies due to the constant wear of the gun, the effect of all these must be calculated before the first shot is fired. Fortunately, a set of tables perfected for use with the howitzer simplifies all the operations to the work of a few minutes.
The gun is directed on the target by a process called "laving." This is done with specially designed instruments. In working with a map, the gun is usually first laid in a known direction, and from there is directed upon its target by a system of angular calculations. While the gun itself is placed out of view of the target, in order not to betray its position, an " Observation Post" from which the target is visible is established as close as practicable to the target. The position of the observation post may be in a front-line, support, or reserve-line trench, or on any promontory that affords good observation of enemy territory. From this vantage-point, the effect of fire is noted, and corrections are made.
The howitzer is most often used as part of the make-up of divisional artillery. It not only participates in the barrages fired by the 75's and in harassing roads and areas, but it demolishes designated strong-points which stand in the way of the infantry's progress. These points are often too well-fortified to yield to the firing Of 75's. In stationary warfare, the average position of the 155 howitzer is about three miles behind the front-line, but in the open warfare of the latter war days, howitzers were used much closer and sometimes immediately behind the infantry.
THE HOWITZER
Data
Length of Barrel, inside 2.332 meters
Width-Distance between Wheels 1.520 meters
Diameter of Wheels 1 -330 meters
Width of Iron Tires 150 millimeters
Total Length between Pole-end
and Rear-end of Carriage 10.05 meters
Minimum Turning Room 11. 238 meters
Weight of Gun, Ready to Fire 3300 kilograms
Weight of Gun, Carriage, and
Limber 3715 kilograms
Weight of a Wheel 134 kilograms
Weight of Limber 415 kilograms
Weight of Caisson, empty 800 kilograms
Weight of Caisson-limber, empty 700 kilograms
Weight of Caisson, loaded with
Long Steel Shell 1815 kilograms
Weight of Caisson-Limber,
loaded with Long Steel Shell 1265 kilograms
Average Weight of Projectile 43 kilograms
Note: One Meter is equal to 39-37 inches
One Kilogram is equal to 2.2 pounds.
P. C., 306th F. A.,
21 August, 1918. 20 hr. OPERATIONS ORDER.
No. 5
I. The enemy occupy the Tannerie at 204.2-286.8 and the crossing of road and railroad at 293.8-286.9. Our infantry extend along the Reims road to within 300 yards east of the Tannerie. They are in the woods 400 yards west of the above mentioned road-railroad crossing. During daylight of today, fire will be very accurately adjusted by the 1st Bn. as close to the Tannerie and the road-railroad crossing as the present location of the infantry will permit. Previous to nine o'clock to-night the infantry will be withdrawn so that none will be within 500 yards of the two objectives. At nine o'clock fire will begin on the Tannerie and the road-railroad crossing and will continue until ten o'clock at which time fire will cease. Rate of fire from nine to ten P.m.-four shots per minute on the Tannerie and four shots per minute on the road-railroad crossing: total, 480 H. E. shells.
By order of Lieutenant-Colonel Smith.
E. E. NELSON,
Captain, 306th F. A., A. E. F. Operations Officer.
Operations order No- 5 was not received in writing until the firing of the mission was well under way, but it was conveyed verbally at 5:00 P-M-
The delivery of an accurate fire on a distant target can only be insured by good observation or registration and the Tannerie was not visible from the 0. P. of the 1st Battalion. A quick glance at the visible and invisible areas on the map showed this. So, either an 0. P. from which the Tannerie was visible had to be found, or adjustment made on some visible reference point and the fire then transferred by accurate map measurement to the actual target.
The most desirable course was a registration on the Tannerie itself. But an 0. P. had to be found that could see the target, and at the same time communicate with the battery commander during an adjustment. This was attempted, but a half hour was spent with no result. Communication could not be obtained to any 0. P. that could see the Tannerie. (The ground falls down steeply over the river, and such an 0. P. had to be well forward.) Further time could not be spent on this except as a side issue. The method of a shift from a registration point must be used. We decided to use our own O.P., and adjust on the quarry southeast of Bazoches.
The artillery 0. P's. in this sector were on a ridge about four thousand meters from the Vesle. From this ridge the ground sloped down to the Mareuil -Chery-Chartreuve Road about 1500 meters distant from where the battalion P. C. and telephone central were situated. The line from the 0. P. came down this slope, and to adjust the batteries this line must be kept open. This slope sheltered many batteries and the Boche knew it. Their shells were bursting on it day and night, and not only punished the batteries, but continually cut the lines of wire to the 0. P. When the shelling was heavy a detail working continually were unable to maintain reliable communication. At five o'clock in the afternoon of August 21st, the shelling was heavy and the line to the 0. P. was out.
The battalion commander and the battery commanders met and planned. Accurate fire had to be obtained, therefore an adjustment must take place. There were many O.P.'s on the ridge, and if our wire were not repaired in time we would use the wire and possibly the 0. P. of another organization. The battery commanders were to go to the 0. P., previously preparing their batteries to fire on the quarry selected as the visible registration point, and the battalion detail would obtain communication.
At about 6:00 the battery commanders started for the 0. P. through the shell fire, and the battalion detail sent out all available men as reinforcements on the 0. P. line. The day previous Lieutenant Tritt and Private Kane of the detail were killed while at work on this 0. P., and two men wounded, and now the shelling was dangerously heavy but the men worked well in spite of it. Reports of progress came in but telephone communication could not be established.
Meanwhile, every other wire to the ridge was looked up and tried. The Third Battalion of our regiment had a line. It was out, but communication was expected at any moment. The Second Battalion line was tried and talked over; their 0. P. being less than one hundred yards from ours. But while giving direction to call the battery commanders to this 0. P. the line went out. Another wire was through the infantry system to the dressing station where Lieutenant Tritt had died about three hundred meters from our 0. P. Communication was had here but this line went out also before word could be sent out to the battery commanders. It seemed as if unseen spies were cutting us off in all directions.
Meanwhile time was flying, the fire was to start at nine, and as yet nothing had been accomplished. No one who has not experienced it can realize the time that can be used in vain strivings over the telephone.
From time to time the battalion detail repaired breaks in our line only to find more farther on, or new ones behind them. Reports of progress came from the telephone details of the other organizations, but no communication resulted. Visual signals were considered but not tried. A few days after this, determined efforts developed our signal detail so that we could adjust by visual signals, but now this could not be relied upon and the trained signalers were out on the wire. They couldn't be called off.
Seven o'clock came and no more progress. Something radical had to be done. The regimental commander was consulted and a course of action decided upon not ideal, but the only possible solution. An officer was to go up to the 0. P. and notify the battery commanders that at eight o'clock B Battery was to fire six shots. At 8.10A Battery would fire six shots. They would observe as best they could and return with all speed to modify the data for the mission by the results of their observations. Of course none of the shots might be observable, and if not, there was no way of firing again unless communication happened to be established.
Lieutenant Bryan was chosen to carry this message up to the 0. P.; his watch was synchronized with ours and at 7.15 he started up through the shelling. The batteries prepared their data, laid their guns, and waited. The officers in the battalion position looked at their watches and waited. The work on the wires continued, but the shelling was increasing. No wires could live under such fire; and now gas shells mixed in with the high explosive. The doubt about whether the shots would be observable was over-shadowed by the fear that the officer might not get through with the message.
Eight o'clock came, B fired and the six shells whistled overhead. Eight ten, and A followed.
The guns were cleaned, and laid for the Tannerie, and we waited. The enemy shelling had not ceased.
At 8.40 B Battery telephoned that the battery commander had arrived and had had good observation on five shots. At 8.50 A Battery reported all six shots observed. The necessary changes in data based on the observations were quickly made, and promptly at 9.00 the party opened. Two hundred and forty shells were fired on the Tannerie and an equal amount on the crossroad. At ten o'clock we ceased fire and shortly after midnight we heard that the infantry had gained their objective.
The next day the infantry reported that the fire was very accurate, and the Tannerie totally obliterated, not even a wall left, and airplane photographs showed this to be the case. The center of impact was squarely on the target.
It wasn't until after the firing that the narrow margin by which we won was found out by those in the rear. Lieutenant Bryan who had carried the message up the hill had had great difficulty in getting through. The shelling was most severe, the men in the battery positions on the slope had all taken cover, then the gas came, the alarm was given, and masks were put on. Lieutenant Bryan put on his mask and took cover-but only for a moment. His mission was clearly to get through, so he continued, but with mask on. The exertion of the climb and running rendered the mask unbearable if he were to continue, so he removed the mask and ran through without it, arriving at three minutes to eight with choked lungs and swimming eyes.
During the firing, the Hun sent over a plane and dropped flares over our battery positions, and early next morning their planes were active. The batteries were camouflaged and apparently the Boche could not locate them for an adjustment. At about half-past ten in the morning they opened up in a terrific zone fire on the battalion area, of which however A Battery received the most. The gun- crews took to the shallow shelters in the woods, but in spite of the broad zone covered, the shelling was so heavy that many bursts occurred around the shelters, one of which killed Lieutenant S. J. Reid, Jr., the battery commander.
A message from the division commander, congratulating the battalion on the accurate and effective fire of the night before, arrived just as Lieutenant Reid was laid in his grave in the little woods by his battery where he had fallen. But his work was carried on to the end of the war by Lieutenant Bryan who had carried the message to the 0. P. and succeeded him in command of the battery. And the Huns paid.
FAIRMAN R. DICK,
Major, 306th F. A.
NOTE: Towards the afternoon of September 28th, when Lieutenants Hamilton, von Saltza, and Badin failed to return from reconnaissance in the Argonne Forest an anxiety as to their whereabouts, naturally, was manifested at the regimental post of command. Telephone messages to the battalions and to other units, failed to elicit any information. Searching parties were sent out from several points. Some of these penetrated through the forest as far as the front-line positions. Officers answering the descriptions of the three lieutenants had been seen, but no definite information concerning them could be obtained anywhere. Thereafter, their fate was a mystery. Rumor had it that all three had been shot and killed, and state-ments drifted into headquarters that an infantry unit had buried them. It was not until some time after the cessation of hostilities, that the regiment learned the truth.
AT nine o'clock, on the morning of September 28, 1918, Lieutenant Philip von Saltza, Regimental Gas and Engineer Officer, Lieutenant Jean Badin, a French artillery officer attached to the regiment, and myself, Regimental Reconnaissance Officer, left the regimental post of command near Le Rondchamp to go forward on a reconnaissance for possible P. C.'s, battery positions, and routes through the forest. Arriving at La Harazee, we followed a rough road up the left side of a ravine running northeast. We left the road after it reached the plateau, and followed a telephone line to an old German trench system, then occupied by a small number of our infantry. They told us that it was a reserve position, that the lines had been carried forward four or five kilometers the previous night, but that snipers still lurked in the vicinity.
We followed this trench system for perhaps a kilometer until it intersected a narrow-gauge railway in a deep cut. This brought us to an opening in a wood where several shots fired at us struck the ground uncomfortably close. We took cover in the railway cut for a few minutes, but hearing nothing further, emerged again. Drawing no fire, we continued forward until we struck a path to the left leading up to what we thought was a high point in the woods. Hoping to find a place for an observation post, we followed the path and reached the crest, but found the woods too thick for observation. We rested there a short while and studied our maps. Lieutenant Badin walked off, and in about ten minutes, returned, reporting that he had found a deserted German headquarters. This we decided to visit.
It was a group of semi-dugouts, neatly built on a slope to the north. In the largest, which we entered cautiously, were numbers of maps, mounted and in rolls, showing machine-gun or artillery positions with their fields of fire. While Lieutenant von Saltza and I gathered these up, we began to feel suspicious of our surroundings, for it seemed strange that such things should have been left when there was no indication of damage from a barrage in the vicinity. In the meantime, Lieutenant Badin had walked a short distance down the slope to the north until he was lost to view in the heavy underbrush. As we stood outside one of the dugouts, awaiting his return, a number of shots was fired suddenly from a point very near by. This volley was followed by shouting. Instinctively we took cover in the dugout entrance, and almost immediately, Germans appeared from all sides. Hoping that we had not been seen, and that, by waiting, we might escape, we withdrew into the dugout and destroyed all the maps and papers of importance we had with us.
It was only a matter of a few minutes before we could see, through the two glass windows and the door, that the entrance to the dugout was covered by a large party armed with rifles, grenades, and pistols. They called to us to come out. We, seeing that resistance against such superior forces was useless, reluctantly obeyed, and were relieved of our pistols, belts, field glasses, and map cases, under the direction of two young officers, after which the men were ordered not to touch us. None of the party spoke English, but they managed to ask us a few questions in halting French as to what we were doing there. When we asked about Badin they told us that he had been killed.
Then began our long march under guard to the rear. Enroute we met a weary German captain who asked us in good English what we Americans were doing in this war against the Germans, who had never done us any harm-a question which we soon found to interest the Germans more than any other. We replied that we were in it for good and sufficient reasons we did not think it necessary to discuss at that time. Just before we left him he told me that he thought I looked like a " reverend" but I assured him I was not. We were led to a German headquarters in a deep ravine where we were held a short time while an additional guard saddled his horse. Further back at an artillery headquarters, a number of officers came out from their mess and spoke to us in English, asking a few questions as to our identity, and examining the papers taken from Lieutenant Badin's body. They seemed to be pretty good sports, and as fellow-artillerymen guyed us for being taken prisoners. I told him that we had come part way at least to Germany on an excellent German ship, the Vaterland.
Our march continued through Langon and across the Aisne to La Bois-de-Lord-Ferme which was being used as a brigade headquarters. The road was being heavily shelled by 155's. At the ferme, we were asked a number of questions, mostly of little importance, by some young officers who spoke English. One said he had lived in Spokane, Washington, and when I told him I had been there, he asked if I remembered the name of the restaurant next to the Hotel Davenport, where he used to take his girl on Saturday nights! After a stop of perhaps half an hour, the march was resumed, taking us through Grand Ham and up the Aire valley to Grand Pre. On the way, we crossed the Aire a second time, and then came the closest call from our own 155 shells. They were falling just off the road in a field where a wagon train was parked and we gleefully watched the frantic efforts of the German drivers to get out. As we were about to cross a bridge, a shell dropped in the water ten feet from us. Our guard cautioned us to " Macht schnell! " and needless to say, we did! Shortly before entering Grand Pre a fat little German walked along with us and inquired in good English:
"Where are you gentlemen from?"
We told him.
"I am from San Francisco," he replied.
To my question, " Why in hell didn't you stay there? " his only answer was:
" I wish I had! "
We reached Grand Pre at dusk and while awaiting an automobile to take us to corps headquarters, we had the only good meal the Germans ever gave us during our two months' visit. It consisted of Hamburger steak, noodles, Swiss-cheese, bread, and tea.
At the division we were not questioned. An automobile took us a short distance to the little town of Briquenay, where we were taken before two officers, apparently Prussians, who appeared to be in a highly nervous condition. We were ordered to empty our pockets, and were relieved of all our letters and papers, but were allowed to keep our money. We were questioned on a number of subjects. When asked the location of our front line, we replied that if we had known we certainly would not now have been in our present predicament. Our answers were evidently by no means satisfactory, for we were soon taken out and thrust into a cell with a motley crowd of soldiers, including American negroes. The few bunks were already occupied, and there was nothing for it but to lie on the dirt floor with no covering except my raincoat.
At about eight o'clock the next morning we were marched to Vouziers, a distance of fifteen kilometers, before a mounted guard, and locked up in a room in an old house surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence. The room had but two other human occupants, an American infantry lieutenant and a French aviator, but the " inhuman " occupants which infested the bunks were numerous. In the late afternoon, we were given the only food since the previous night. It consisted of black bread and " Ersatz " coffee, a coffee substitute which we were told was made of acorns, and which tasted like -well, I can't describe it!
During the four days we were held in Vouziers, a few more American and French officers were added to our household. Our daily menu was: breakfast-" Ersatz" coffee; dinner-a thin soup of potato peelings or cabbage; supper-coffee and bread.
The town was being bombarded by long-range guns, and was also bombed several times a day by large groups of Allied planes of which I counted seventy one afternoon. Many German wounded passed by in ambulances and on foot, and an almost continuous stream of wagons filled with furniture, forage, rabbits, and anything else that struck the German fancy, rumbled by. Our "house" was in charge of a disagreeable lieutenant who interviewed us several times. On one occasion he complained that the Allies were using "black men" against the Germans. I rather peeved him by replying, "How about your allies the Turks? They have done things no man would do! "
On October 2d, all prisoners, including over a hundred French soldiers and a few Americans, were assembled in the yard of the old French barracks and marched sixteen kilometers to Le Chesne. There we were housed for six days in a good sized building with a central courtyard. The officers, then nine in number, were put into one small room furnished with bunks and several varieties of insects. The room was not locked and we were permitted to be in the yard as much as we wished until dark. Although we had the same scanty menu as at Vouziers, we succeeded in buying an occasional pitcher of beer and some German cigarettes-very small, very poor, and very expensive.
On October 8th, we hiked twenty-five kilometers further to Amagne-Lucquy, where we entrained the next night. We traveled until five the following afternoon in a third-class coach without glass in the windows and without food. But on our arrival at Metz, we were given coffee, bread, and raw sausage. We entrained again at nine o'clock. While waiting in the station, the city was bombed twice by Allied airplanes. At Strassburg the next morning, we were allowed to buy a breakfast of sausage, sandwiches, and tea.
We arrived at Karlsruhe that afternoon. It was the first German city we had seen, and we were favorably impressed with its neatness. The old hotel, which was our home, looked most promising from the outside, but proved one of the worst places we had struck. We were crowded eight in a room behind a locked door-a small transom window the only ventilation. We were permitted to leave the room only to go across the hall to the wash room -and we had no reading matter. A British officer warned us that the place was equipped with dictaphones, but I doubt if the Germans obtained any information other than Allied samples of profanity. We were held here for six days and then moved to the Allied Officers' Camp in the central square of the city, a comfortable and well-equipped camp with plenty of American canned goods furnished by the Red Cross at Berne, Switzerland.
On October 18th, the American officers were assembled and marched to the station to entrain for the American Officers' Camp at Villingen in Southern Baden, which was to be our "home" for the remainder of our stay in Germany. We reached Villingen in the afternoon after a fairly comfortable journey through beautiful mountainous country. The Villingen Camp on the outskirts of the town, was well planned and not uncomfortable. An enclosure about three hundred by five hundred feet was surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence and a ditch with trip-wires. The low one-storied barracks, mess-buildings and offices were built around the four sides, the center occupied by an amusement hall and a number of smaller buildings, among them a library, a music-room and a canteen. There was also a volleyball court and an old tennis court built by the Russian officers who had previously occupied the camp.
The commander of the camp, a fat old lieutenant colonel, was not a half-bad fellow. The day following our arrival, he examined us through his inter-preter. The only question that seemed really to interest him was whether or not we knew his friend, the manager of the Hamburg-American Line in New York. It is interesting to note that the examining officer was invariably supplied with a printed pamphlet giving the complete organization of American divisions with the names of commanders, etc., as they had existed in the States. Changes since arrival in France were not so well-known. Information of our tanks, the " new Edison gas," and the air service was always sought, but above all our questioners seemed to desire to know our reasons for entering the war.
The hundred or so American officers in the camp had their lives pretty well organized. They had appointed committees to take care of the library, athletic entertainment, and Red Cross affairs, The last was by far the most essential, for through it, the food and clothing received from the American Red Cross was distributed. The food question was most important. In the officers' prison camps in Germany the ration furnished was supposed to be, and I believe was, the full civilian ration. Although that may seem large, as far as nourishment went it really amounted to almost nothing-" Ersatz" coffee for breakfast; a thin soup and a vegetable dish for dinner; the same for supper, 250 grams of black bread each day, and a piece of meat about two inches square once a week.
With the food furnished us by the American Government through the Red Cross we had practically all we needed. This was shipped in bulk in a sealed freight car from Berne to Villingen with a bill of lading. It was received by our committee and checked under German supervision. I believe we got all that was sent to us, which was not always the case with individual parcels that were sent to detached groups. Our committee issued one week's ration at a time to our small mess-groups of four or five. We did our own cooking in our barracks, which we had equipped at our own expense with small cook-stoves. These proceedings were usually watched with hungry eyes by our emaciated guards, for our supplies consisted of attractive combinations of American army canned goods, bully-beef, hash, salmon (God bless the goldfish!), beans, a little jam, butter, milk, coffee, tea, sugar, and hard bread. Once in a while a few " Sweet Caps " would come through, -and believe me, I shall never scorn them again. When there was a good supply of this food we lost interest in the German ration except in their potatoes, which were the best thing they had.
Our daily routine at Villingen was one that would make any loafer happy,-no reveille or retreat,-only a roll-call at nine, another after supper, and lights out at ten. Unless you were K. P. or cook, you did nothing but wonder how long the war would last. Some of our time we spent reading the books the Y. M. C. A. had furnished, playing volleyball, and cards, or walking around the enclosure like caged animals. There were even walks outside, for which you signed an agreement not to escape. The country, in the Black Forest region, was beautiful, and it was indeed pleasure to have no guards, a lone German officer, or a non-com. being our only escort.
Once a week we were permitted to have a " movie, " for which we had to pay. The pictures obviously were of German make, especially the comedies. They were as funny as a funeral. There was considerable talent among our fellow-officers, musical and otherwise, which helped these little entertainments. The Russian officers had left some weird instruments, and with a hired piano, a drum, and a few other essentials, we organized a pretty fair jazz-band.
Several of the officers who read German subscribed to some of the papers, so we received the news quite promptly. By the time we had reached the camp, it was evident that the lid was off the press, for the Allied communiques were published in full. In the editorials there were rumblings of the revolution which later occurred. The camp, like every other place in the world where there are soldiers, seethed with rumors, Some officers who understood a little German would overhear part of a conversation among the guards or the cooks, and would promptly spread it with a few additions. We heard of the Kaiser's abdication the ninth of November, and of the terms of the armistice the tenth. They looked very stiff, and for some time rumor had it they would not be accepted, but on the morning of the eleventh, we learned the truth. Happy we were, but I doubt if we were any more so than our guards. They did nothing but grin.
A few days later, representatives of the Soldiers' and Workingmen's Council arrived-fired the German lieutenant colonel who commanded the camp, and told our senior officer that we should no longer consider ourselves prisoners, but rather "guests" of the new German government. We were permitted to leave camp alone, and to go anywhere we chose within a radius of five kilometers from nine in the morning until six in the evening. This freedom was a welcome change.
We took long walks through the forests and the picturesque town. We discovered several cafes where wine could be bought, and for a time German officers and soldiers had difficulty in finding seats. The soldiers often sat at the same tables with us, but the officers, while not so amiable, were at least courteous. The attitude of the civilians varied. But we were never insulted. The children, like those in any part of the world, were much interested in us because we were foreigners, and the younger grown-ups were openly friendly. The sour looks came from the older people, naturally perhaps, as they had lost most. The lack of proper nourishment showed plainly in the children's faces, almost always thin and colorless.
Our semi-freedom continued until November 26th, when we were moved in a first-class train to the German-Swiss border, at Lake Constance. We were disappointed to learn that we should have to wait there until the 29th, the day after Thanksgiving, for the Swiss military train, which was to carry us across Switzerland to France. November 29th was one of the most memorable days in our lives. In the early morning we were marched to the station along-side a long train of second-class carriages with a guard of Swiss soldiers and officers, a fine-looking lot in smart uniforms. We were held an hour, awaiting a train bearing about four hundred British and French officers. Near nine o'clock we got under way and a few minutes later a wild shout went up as we crossed the line into the Swiss part of the town.
Allied flags, which had been kept carefully hidden appeared in the windows of most of the cars, while similar flags were waved at us by the Swiss, who appeared to have heard of our coming. From then on, until midnight, when we crossed the French border at Bellegrade, we felt like popular presidential candidates. Everywhere we stopped we were cheered and showered with food, chocolate, cigarettes, flags, and flowers. At Berne, the American Red Cross and the Y. M. C. A. were there strong with a bunch of real American "peaches" to cheer us. I don't know why we didn't all die from indigestion. While the Swiss were cordial everywhere, they outdid themselves in Geneva, where the whole town went wild. The borders of the railroad were illuminated with red fire for several miles, and the station and the big square outside were packed with people. Here we serenaded the crowd, ending up with the Star Spangled Banner sung in a way I have never heard before. When we had done, the audience went wild. It would have done credit to any American football crowd for enthusiasm.
A half hour later we were again in France, just two months and two days from that unhappy day in the Argonne, when our prospects looked so black. We may all have our own opinions on the relative merits of France and America, but home never seemed better than France did to us that early morning.
EDWARD P. HAMILTON,
First Lieutenant, 306th F. A.
Drawings by PHILIP VON SALTZA,
First Lieutenant, 306th F. A.
REMEMBER how we learned all about war at Upton? The scout squinted out over the terrain and picking up a cloud of dust knew the enemy was coming. Carefully noting whether the cloud hung heavy or low, was thick or broken, he could tell the arm of the service; and by the use of the watch and a little mental arithmetic he was enabled to dash up to the general, render the proper salute and report: " Sir, two brigades of infantry, a brigade of artillery, sixteen mounted scouts and a lame medical sergeant are advancing along the main Gettysburg highway."
Well, Sergeant Hill talked so much about the science of intelligence that of course a German spy found out all about it and consequently, in order to fool them completely, we always marched at night. In that way the only possible opportunity they had of learning anything at all, was when we were coming into camp and pitching our tents in the morning. But that doesn't count.
So that last form of German frightfulness, the Night March, is now explained for the first time, and since the war is over, we may lift the story of our secret rambles through France out of the midnight mystery which cloaks it.
Our first experience was the advance from Baccarat. When night had come the brigade stole up toward the river. First as always, to pass the bridge were the "Lights." They should not have been burdened with equipment but you couldn't see the guns for the merchandise tied to them. Then came our own outfit. The G. S. carts in many cases had upper stories built upon them and overflowing from these were all manner of implements and supplies-like St. Nicholas's pack in the Christmas pictures. The fourgons were still more wonderful. The big bulge in the rear hung precariously upon the fourgon step, held suspended by ropes, or wire. Pails swung pendant and clanking between the wheels. At times a wagon passed with a bunch of lanterns bobbing from the bamboo radio poles. Pitchforks, rakes, saddles, tin hats, packs, rifles, jangled and banged from every available point of attachment. Behind one wagon trailed a telephone reel-cart to which was strapped a bass drum.
Colonel Smith marveled at the ingenuity of our packing. In his opinion it would have been splendid for a gypsy caravan or a convention of peddlers, but he was commanding a regiment of heavy field artillery. The " heavy, " he explained, referred to the calibre of the guns and had nothing to do with the weight-carrying capacity. So the next morning saw a revision downward. Men discarded five of the six sweaters they were carrying-books and miscellaneous keepsakes were left behind. Even though drilled in the almighty laws of accountability we began to learn the mighty rule of "Lost in Action."
We had experienced that first night, the bitter struggle with broken poles. We had more to learn, for an inconsiderate order was to make us march two nights in succession! If we had known then what was in store for us later! We started out on time, pulled to the first rise, and waited. This waiting was becoming too frequent to be pleasant. Why were we always pulled up to watch about eighty batteries of our brother regiments creak into the road ahead of us? But as it was only about ten kilometers to go, we calmed ourselves into better patience. Halts had been prescribed at given intervals. As a matter of fact we moved whenever they gave us a chance- a system that is bad enough in rapid transit, but on a night march doesn't even offer the satisfaction of getting off the car to see what is blocking the line. At last we cleared the column and began to roll merrily and regularly on. But so did the kilometers. Uphill, down dale, chilled by the passage through the icy gray mists of valleys, and sweating in the steam our animals generated in the stiff, slow struggle upgrade, we continued. Some one had evidently mixed up the calendar and thrown two nights into one. We learned how elastic a kilometer is.
Finally the familiar form of Captain Taylor gesticulated the turn-off into a wet wood road and with final heaving, carriages were pushed up the incline and each battery dragged up the particular wooded trail assigned to it. That is, those did that didn't find some one else already occupying their section. But it made no difference then-some men dismounted, the rest fell off, the marchers dropped. Some superhuman individuals put up a picket line but no horse needed hitching. Every one slept as he was and where he was-one man astride the gun, his head dropped half-way through the opening in the shield. The first night march taught us what it was to be tired. It was the first time mess call ever passed unheeded.
The next period of marching had an entirely different appearance. After Loromontzey, everyone had the firm conviction that just around the corner lay -war. The approach to it in the mystery of darkness was an unforgettable progress; each night advanced the scene one step. Each night added a new sensation of the varied sights and smells and sounds of combat.
At first the village heralded its approach with the warm, strong reek of stables. Occasionally a spear of light told that there was life within the black shape of the houses we passed. But the dim and silent hamlets had a somberness not entirely due to darkness; a grim prophecy that seemed epitomized in the gaunt, black crucifix with the shadowy form nailed upon it that occasionally loomed up above us in the night.
These villages were intact. But each succeeding night wrought a gradual change. From Chateau- Thierry on, our passage in the night was through villages deader than the empty countryside. In the dim light the shattered walls, the broken, tumbled mass of stones, told that we were in the wake of war. Each town was wired, turned crazy in its destruction. The wild twist of shell-struck iron fences, the ghastly look of the church, the gaping walls of which revealed the fearful disarray of rubbish and debris within gave the conviction that the peaceful countryside had gone mad, daft with the rage of battle. Soon even the terrible destruction ceased to be impressive. Buildings were almost beyond recognition as dwelling places. We began to pass over open areas where troops had fought. The unmistakable stench of the battlefield at night raised visions even more awful than the frank revelations of day. Yes, those first impressions are unforgettable, and in our later wisdom do not think that we were not sobered gravely thoughtful in our first grim passage to the front. The signs of desolation that we saw were only heightened when we came to where the first gun flashes lit the sky, and the distant, steady rumble indicated that the devastation we had witnessed was going on ahead of us and that soon we would share in it.
Our early road marches had found us cursing at the interminable delay that was occasioned by the passage of either of our brother organizations in the brigade. We would appear at the appointed time and then wait for them to clear. Later we came upon batteries and detachments sliding in from other roads. One never felt sure that he might not find the head of his column vanish and in its place some fragment of the 305th or 304th. The feeling of disgust was mutual, I know that our regiment still echoes to the mighty curses poured upon it by the others, but our own execrations must still tingle in their ears. For though roads may be wide apart at starting, their intersection is bound to cause contact. Then it's the loudest, most authoritative voice, which wins the right of way. " What outfit is this? " " What y' doing here? Wha' d' ya' mean cutting in? " " Hold up that column! " Usually one would swear that the whole battery had passed with the exception of a rolling kitchen and a water cart, and win the road long enough to hurry ten carriages forward and keep the line intact.
Perhaps it was the constant fear of pressure from behind that made every one struggle to keep up the lagging elements of the command. I recollect a lieutenant's barking out to an indistinct figure who was str1uggling to lead two mules and only succeeding in drifting back through the column:
" Why in blazes don't you lead those mules." The mild answer from the darkness was:
" Lootenant, you have no idea how obstinate a mule can be."
At any rate the officer learned, for when he tried to assist, the current of the advance swept by him and he soon had drifted through a whole battalion receiving uncomplimentary remarks all down the line until brought up by the deep and mighty voice of Major Moon. " Out of the way-lead those animals out of the way! "
Perhaps the world will never know the silent misery of those poor individuals who were commanded to lead the sick and halt animals and given positive instructions to keep up with the column. Pushed off the road-they dropped back farther and farther until alone and unassisted they coaxed and pulled a miserable skate slowly and painfully through a strange and lonely country. And after a night of these labors they would bring the animal into camp late in the afternoon only to have him drop dead at the picket line!
But it was work-and hard work-for everybody with the possible exception of the cooks and the blacksmiths, and they surely had their innings on reaching camp. They alone could rest undisturbed by the interfering officer who rode up and down the column. Lieutenant Stokes, when with Supply Company, was acting in that capacity, at the hills, bawling out to all the extra men to get off and walk. One six-mule prairie schooner was in particular difficulty because of its mammoth load. Finally the lieutenant himself, wearied at his exertions, turned his horse over to his orderly and climbed aboard the wagon. As he describes it: " I made my bed of a bicycle, a mail sack and a couple of tin hats and went to sleep, one leg hanging over the edge of the wagon. But my slumbers were rudely disturbed by someone tugging at my leg and the stern voice of a determined non-com calling, 'Hey you damned lazy, long-legged son-of-a-gun, get the hell down out of there!"'
Probably the most epic night marching was the famous nine-day hike from the Vesle to the Argonne. We started burdened by the ammunition that was ordered to be carried, and were in difficulties from the start. But all the horrors of a night move were concentrated when the regiment reached the bridge before Fismes. There were French and Italians both streaming the other way, an increasingly thickening gas concentration and above all, the steady whistle of Jerry's shells searching for the struggling mass of humanity in the valley. A pair of mules hitched to a G. S. cart bolted, banged against a fourgon hub and rebounded into the ditch only to fetch up in a hopeless tangle on the barbed wire in an orchard. Our carriages waited interminable hours, it seemed, while the relieving troops bumped by, blind in their gas masks. Wheels sank in the mud, hubs locked, drivers swore and still the M. P.'s held us. And all the while those searching shells raked the valley but mercifully spared that hopeless tangle and confusion at the bridge. At last we cleared and slowly worked through the town. Then came the long hill. To be stuck there where every little while a Boche shell burst-that thought seemed to stimulate even the horses to greater exertion. The cannoneers strained at the wheels, drivers cut loose wounded animals, men heaved shells from the stalled and laggard wagons. Every ounce of energy, every atom of will worked to get by, get clear, get over that place. And then when the hill was cleared and we began to breathe normally again, came the uneven brrr-brrm, brrr-brrm of Boche planes and the whizz and crashing explosion of the falling" ash cans." Oh, that was a night march with but a single pleasant recollection-the hot chocolate that the K. of C. had to stimulate the weary men to finish out the long journey to Coulonges Wood!
We struggled over more hills in those nine days than there are in the Rockies. The whole countryside must have echoed to the mournful wail-" Cannoneers at the wheels-Ready-Heave! " At times each wagon had to be coaxed patiently over the crest. Men struggled in the continuous downpour of rain, splashed through the mud and panted pushing on the slippery spokes. All along the column, officers and non-coms bawled to drivers: " Gather your horses, now, use your heels-Ready-Heave!" and nothing happened. Then up would come the dis-mounted men. (Those rifles were such useful weapons in our war, particularly when one tugged at a wheel and his gun barrel banged him in the jaw or kicked him in the knees when he slipped and fell!) The horses danced and plunged in place without moving an inch. At last the carriage moved and it seemed as if one were pushing animals and all uphill. This was the continuous performance. Sometimes it didn't rain-the scenery changed, but for all the rest it was the same thing over and over with increasing weariness.
For a few days when out of the danger zone, we moved in the light. This gave rise to extra ordinances for the care of our beloved animals, damn 'em. An officer had to be at the head of the column and at the foot, no one should be on the wagon, but the brake-man. When the long drawn out "Halt!" sounded down the line followed by: "Prepare to dismount, -dismount! "-a driver had to climb down from his stubborn colossus and feed him handfuls of grass plucked from the roadside. Might just as well give an elephant a currant from a bun as those voracious beasts a handful of grass! Then drivers were to hike for five minutes each hour. Usually the time selected for this walking was just before we struck a long hill and they had to run, breathless, alongside to keep up. One time when this order had come to dismount, a particularly wearied driver called out: "All men off wagons, horses aboard, drivers in the shafts, forward march!" We did do everything but carry the horses that trip. But whatever the heart-less, hopeless difficulties, the pelting, drenching rain, the broken shafts, the stubborn, worn-out horses, the mud and the hills, we got there, we made the grade, we won.
Our later period wasn't so difficult. We were veteran hikers then-and we had salvaged more junk. The troubles then were some of those impossible things such as when a horse slipped off the road, and when he was cut loose from the harness, disappeared from sight only to be discovered thirty feet below astride the ridge pole of a German shack. But until the Armistice, the night march was the nightmare of our service. There was always t e jam and confusion of the road-the interminable waits, and the fatigue. And yet, now the war is over, who would wish to wipe out his vision of those dusky columns on the march? We shall forget much of hardship and of pain but will forever remember that moving picture of the road at night. It's like a parade of ghosts; the hunched-up figures of the riders swaying to the monotonous bob-bobbing of the horses' heads, the strange shapes of wagons passing on in endless sequence, all men anonymous, one like the rest, except where among the tiny, red glows of cigarettes that dot the column, an inhaled puff faintly illumines for an instant a stern and strangely solemn face. It is a silent picture, for the most part, moving mechanically to the steady rumble of carts, the clanking of harness chains and the skludge-skludge of heavy hoofs. And at the end of each column are the trudging cannoneers. Silent too, their rifles slung over shoulder, marching irregularly along. Out of the darkness a far-away voice calls in a long sing-song " Ha-a-lt! " It is picked up like a chant and passed from carriage to carriage. The wagons slowly stop and the silent figures, with individual movements develop into men. But the little band on foot tumbles off the road and flops wearily into the ditch or sprawls alongside in the field. There is a flurry of conversation when the drivers have mounted up again, the line swings into motion but it soon turns into the speechless mechanical plod, plod onward interminably. That's the night march at its best. No one will ever be able to describe truth-fully the heart-breaking efforts to overcome the multitudinous accidents, struggles of a march. But somewhere in the legends of the Greeks is the mournful tale of Sisyphus damned by the gods to push a heavy wheel uphill through all eternity. Perhaps some 306th men will come across the sculptured likeness of that everlasting S. 0. L. and if he does it's two to one he'll say: " Heave, you son-of-a-gun, heave, you've got nothing on us in the job we've just left."
WILLIAM A. VOLLMER,
First Lieutenant, 306th F. A.
ACCORDING to army orders, Y. M. C. A. prospecti, etc., a leave or furlough is a certain number of days' respite from military duties which is usually spent at some delightful resort especially chosen because of its adaptability to vacation enjoyments.
From my personal experience, it is one of those pleasures to which the average enlisted man looks forward with the keenest anticipation, but which in most instances is a very long time in materializing. Further, after several postponements, all for excellent reasons no doubt, the last one being the need of our division to help finish Jerry for all time, I came to the conclusion that a leave is merely a will-o'-the-wisp which even the most fortunate can never hope to attain. But, when you finally do get your opportunity, all previous disappointments are forgotten and it is almost necessary to pinch yourself in order to make sure that you are awake.
In the first place, a furlough invariably commences in the sma' wee hours of the mornin', and our case was no exception. The ten boys from Battery E who had been selected as the first to explore the mysteries of a genuine leave, were conveyed by motor truck, at the unearthly hour Of 4 A.M., to a railway station some twenty-five kilometers from our billeting village, where we became a part of a jolly, laughing detachment of eleven hundred enlisted men, all of the 77th Division. About 10 A.M. the men were lined up and each was given without stipulation, thirty-eight francs to squander as his fancy might dictate. But in addition to this, the government pays absolutely every expense, such as railway fare, hotel bills, etc. This detail being complete we were kept waiting around the forlorn little station in a nasty rain which continued to fall throughout the day, and it was not until late in the evening that our train departed.
Upon ascertaining that second and third-class coaches had been provided for our comfort, the men assured one another that things were surely being done up brown. However, when it came time for our outfit to get aboard, the cars were filled to capacity, and the only alternative was that of travelling de luxe in " V hommes-8 chevaux " cars, called side-door Pullmans by the boys in khaki, but better known in plain English as freight cars, Nothing daunted, and further being accustomed to this mode of travel, the boys in our car secured two bales of straw, whence no one asked nor cared, and after spreading this on the bottom of the car we had the finest kind of bed, and slept much better than our companions who were compelled to sit up all night. At times, you see, there are even advantages in being "out of luck."
The next morning upon arising, we found the sky as clear as an unruffled lake, and that our course lay through the most beautiful stretch of country imaginable. Of course, though much interested in the scenery, the most pleasant part of the trip was the fact that the Supply Company had provided us with " beaucoup " eats. The commonest sight that day was the picture of an olive drab figure, lying complacently on a heap of straw, gazing at the fleeting landscape, and munching a huge slice of bread and jam.
Up to this time we had been given no definite information as to our destination, but as the day wore on, the country became even more mountainous and picturesque. Here an old mill clung to the hillside, its clumsy water-wheel whirling rhythmically as a swift mountain current swept by; there a most beautiful falls dashed madly over the rocks, and fell with a rumble into the valley below.
Finally our train pulled into Aix-les-Bains, one of France's most famous watering and health resorts and the very heart of the "Savoy Leave Area." It was indeed a most pleasant surprise to find that this place had been picked for our leave. Aix-les-Bains is located in the southeastern part of France on the banks of beautiful Lac-du-Bourget, and nestles in a valley almost completely surrounded by snow-capped mountains. These are the famous French Alps and are adjacent to the Swiss Alps of world renown. This city is mainly level, but wherever one looks he sees innumerable hotels and chateaux perched on every conceivable hill and knoll. The place is modern and up-to-date, and shows plainly the influence which the American and English tourists, who frequented it in pre-war times, had upon it and its environs.
At the station a young lieutenant spoke to us, telling us that we were there to enjoy a complete rest, free from all restrictions. We were at liberty to go and come as we pleased, arise and go to bed whenever our fancy dictated-in a word there would be absolutely no check on us provided that each man acted in an orderly manner. Then, in small groups we were sent to the best hotels in the place, and at 12.01 A.M., December 15th, the actual furlough began to continue until 11.59 P.m. of December 22nd. All leaves are exclusive of the time consumed in travel.
Two or three men were accommodated in each room, according to its size, and when I first beheld my quarters, I blinked more than once and had to reassure myself repeatedly that it wasn't all a dream. When a man is accustomed to any kind of hole or shelter for his sleeping place, can you imagine what effect the following scene had on his senses?-a brilliantly electric-lighted chamber, daintily papered, a velvet rug, two of the most comfortable looking beds imaginable, a couple of large lazy armchairs, a washstand with two pitchers of sparkling water, and handsome silk draperies adorning the French windows opening on the square. To say that we were incredulous is to put it mildly. That night I really hated to disarrange the snow-white sheets, and habit almost prompted me to unroll my pack and curl up on the floor. One of the greatest pleasures any of us has ever enjoyed was that first night's sleep. It was luxury raised to the nth power,-and at that I suppose most of us expected to awake the following morning to the bugle's song of " You can't get 'em up, you can't get 'em. up, can't get 'em up in the morning," for as you must know every soldier's dream is of a land of no reveille and no retreat.
Mess ceased to be dubbed "chow," and meals were called respectively breakfast, luncheon, and dinner, same being served in the main dining-room replete with white linen, china, and silverware. The food was excellent and plentiful, and to have your needs catered to by a petite blonde waitress in black gown and dainty white apron, certainly didn't diminish one's enjoyment of the meals. The lisping query in broken English, " More meat, Monsieur?" always met with a spontaneous, " S'il vous plait ! " And to make it more interesting seconds, thirds, and even fourths were always forthcoming. Should one make a request of any French person, the answer invariably is "Tout de suite, Tout de suite," and during our stay we heard this expression so often from waitresses, venders, etc., that we all got the habit ourselves.
The Y. M. C. A. is the institution which cooperates most with the government in leave areas, and which deserves the greatest credit for giving the men on leave an enjoyable time. At Aix-les-Bains they occupy the Casino or "Grand Cercle D'Aix," a building which in pre-war times was one of the most famous gambling establishments in the world. In fact this city was second only to Monte Carlo, so it can easily be imagined what a magnificent place the building actually is. The main structure and grounds occupy nearly two city blocks and eleven years (1899-1910) were needed to build them. The interior is made up of innumerable vast halls, pretentious ballrooms, banquet halls, corridors, and libraries, all welded into a harmonious whole by means of huge arches supported on massive marble pillars. The ceilings are masterpieces of world- renowned artists, some being in the form of life- sized paintings, others being lofty domes of the most delicate and intricate mosaic work. Myriad electric chandeliers lend a dazzling radiance to the already brilliant interior. The general atmosphere and environments are rather those of some millionaire's club than of a place where Uncle Sam's boys may enjoy a corking good time at any hour of the day, and until long past 12 o'clock at night. In fact there is something doing at the " Y " every minute. In one of the wings of the building is a beautiful theater where two performances of excellent vaudeville are given each day. Then one can always run into a couple of movies, a concert, or a lecture, enjoy a game of tennis, or try his dexterity at billiards.
But the crowning events of the week are the tri-weekly dances. The reader will no doubt wonder where the young ladies come from, but as the secretarial and canteen staff of the Y. M. C. A. is partly composed of a group of most charming young ladies, representing many nations, this detail is amply provided for. There are Americans, English, Scotch, French and Italian girls in the group at Aix, and when they burst into the ballroom bedecked in their gayest finery, you can take it from me, it was a sight worth seeing. Of course one must take into consideration the fact that the female species is almost an unknown object in a soldier's life-hence the above ravings.
Naturally another question will arise, "How can so many men get the chance to dance when there are not near enough girls to go around? " This problem was more or less satisfactorily solved in the following manner: each man was given either a red, a white, or a blue tag which he fastened to his shoulder strap. A whistle would then be blown when the music began, and a flag of one of the three mentioned colors raised by the person in charge. At intervals the flag would be changed, and a jolly scramble for the best-looking girl ensued. But if one paid strict attention to that part of the second general order for sentinels which goes "keeping constantly on the alert," he was pretty sure to get his share of the fun.
But in addition to the above forms of entertainment, the surrounding country offers a great many natural attractions. There is the beautiful trip by a little rickety engine pulled by cable on a cog road to the summit of Mount R6vard, where one may observe the surrounding country spread out as in a picture book, and in the background old Mount Blanc raising its proud head to the sky as if gloating over the fact that it is the highest mountain peakin Europe. There are also countless trips which may be taken on foot or by bicycle to the "Cat's Tooth," the ancient Abboye d'Hautecombe which was built in the twelfth century and which is not only filled with wonderful paintings and statues but is at the present time one of the only monasteries in France still inhabited by and kept up for the monks. There is in the city proper, the former palace of the Duke of Aix and Savoie, now used as a town hall, and adjoining this building is a very interesting museum housed in the original " Temple of Diana. " The outer walls are the actual stone walls erected by the Romans about 125 Bc., but the interior was remodeled some-time between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.
But undoubtedly the hot alum and sulphur springs flowing directly from the mountains have been most instrumental in making this city one of the foremost resorts in Europe. Consequently the bath establishment is a most pretentious building, and at certain hours the American soldier is permitted to bathe free of charge. It was our custom to take a dip every morning in a splendid, white marble pool filled with the most soothing hot alum water. Although no fee was charged, by tipping the attendant a franc or so, one could even occupy a huge white marble bathroom and enjoy his bath in true Romanesque splendor. An army bath usually taken in an icy stream, or in a tent the atmosphere of which is even icier, though the water may be warm, certainly suffers most ignominiously by comparison.
For the man who enjoys his glass of beer or even stronger drinks, there are innumerable cafes, and I must confess that if you were to go in search of one of your companions, more often than not you would find him in one of these thirst-quenching parlors. For those of us with more temperate tastes there was a fine little English tea-room where one might obtain large plates of ice-cream. Yes! real ice-cream scarce as that article is in France. The inexhaustible Y. M. C. A. canteens served at all hours large slices of read, butter and jam, cakes, fruit, hot chocolate, coffee, etc.
It is a striking tribute to the American soldier that, although the four thousand or more enlisted men who were in Aix-les-Bains when I was, were given every liberty, never once did I see a man drunk on the street, or acting in a loud, ungentlemanly manner.
Every good time must end and although it was our good fortune to have our leave run two days overtime, due no doubt to a delay in procuring transportation, the inevitable day of departure finally arrived. We reached camp just in time for Christmas dinner, and there ended the most enjoyable two weeks any of my companions or myself have ever had in the army.
ALVIN P. ZWETOW,
Pvt. 1cl., 306th F. A.
S0 this is Paris! That's what they all say when they step out of the stuffy coaches at the Gare-de-L'Est for the first time and make a dash for the A. P. M.'s mess line. The second time they find it unnecessary to quote from any modern Shakespeare, and the wicked worldly-wise even skip the mess line to find a pressing engagement with the French restaurant de Gare, which has a door opening directly out "on the taxis," or where the taxis ought to be. 0 tempora, 0 mores, how fast they learn!
The first increment to arrive in Paris had been hanging to brass straps all night, by the elbows, and sleeping debout the way we used to do on the famous long hike, but when they arrived they found that a mistake had been made in the tactical situation, and that the sun was " shining with all his might, "so they repaired in high spirits to the nearest bar for break-fast-and the Battle of Paris was on! It was meant to be only a minor engagement in preparation for le grand offensive at Nice, but there was a rapid change in the situation and a general attack soon developed from the heights of Montmartre to the Latin quarter, the fire being particularly heavy on the boulevards and in the late lamented bar at the Crillon. The regiment's Tactical Officer par excellence reconnoitered an excellent P. C. which abounded in Sole Meuni6re and other delicacies which one takes with his cocktails, champagne, liqueurs, etc. The Tactical Officer had had enough of brass straps and sleeping debout, and preferred a bon secteur without further marching. So he stayed and got a job on the Peace Commission tout de suite.
But his farewell party was a dinger! "0 yes 'tis," said the Chief Trout. The Tactical Officer is a connoisseur of beauty as well as of Sole Meuniere and expensive wines. Well, to make a long story short the evening's entertainment ended in a quiet session of the Great American Game-and I don't refer to African golf, Dan-in the most recherche surroundings. There were two Louis XVI. pianos in the beautiful, high ceiled studio, a fine carved oak side-board containing tout le necessaire, and a very amorous looking Marie Antoinette four-poster. Best of all, the engagement was staged directly over the room in which the commanding general was sleeping peacefully and unsuspectingly. They do say he missed a couple of bottles of Black & White the next day, however.
This was just one of the many actions that went to make up the great General Offensive of Paris. Of course it gets you coming and going when your leave leads to Nice, but it gets more of your money going than coming. You know why!-if you went to Nice. Some people went to Paris to buy supplies for the regiment-athletic or otherwise, it didn't matter much. Some made the most of their good fortune in being Princeton men. Others just worked it. How do they do it? Some stay there when they get there and arrange flowers on the tables in the boudoirs of peace delegates, or bring up their petits dejeuners to them. Some are even willing to get home at eleven o'clock every night and thus get free and indefinite board at a comfortable hospital. Only one developed what might be known by the Herr Doktor Major J. as a "sympathetic ear." Hewins!
Let's award him the Wampum-we cannot give him the Croix-de-Guerre.
No reconnaissance of the terrain is half begun without accurately locating that remarkable machine-gun nest known as Louis's bar. But why confine it to machine guns? It was a whole ordnance department where Louis and his buxom wife issued every known form of high explosive and projectile. We all wondered why people went to the Opera Cornique, but when we had been introduced to Louis by a famous and delightful lieutenant colonel of the 78th Division, the reason was clear. It was just to get up a thirst for the Between-the-Acts at Louis's. Of course some didn't need to go to the Opera. Louis had a remarkable little client who rides three horses at the circus and smokes seventy-five cigarettes a day. Always carry plenty of Camels.
Certain dignitaries were noticed by our invading forces en passant-for example H. R. M. George Rex, for whom one of our few fresh air patrols sang that beautiful little ditty regarding the King of England, the one that raises some doubts about his family history. It was on a bright, sunny day on the
Champs Elysees and all the quiet French people were much edified by the hymn singing. That was because they hadn't seen the choir trying to crawl down the muzzles of some 150's in the Place-de-la- Concorde to test their recoil mechanism.
Well, it's all a sweet dream now. We're back in the trenches at Dancevoir. And yet they call it open warfare! Why compared to Paris, this is a state of siege, and the warfare of Paris is wide open as long as you see the M. P.'s first.
Let us close this epic with a few simple verses:
What d'ya mean you stayed too long in Paris, What d'ya mean you stayed an extra day? That little card told you what to do. You know the one I mean, the little square of blue.
What d'ya mean you stayed too long in Paris, What d'ya mean she wouldn't let you go? Three months flat, you get for that,
So tuck that underneath your overseas cap. What d'ya mean you stayed too long in Paris? What d'ya mean that you missed your train.
" Y. M. C. A."
There seems to be an inherent fear in man, of anything connected with high explosives. Even an empty shell-case is not always trusted as foolproof by the folks back home. A typical example is that of the old lady who is afraid of a revolver, and won't touch it, even with the chambers empty.
One of the men at Regimental Headquarters sent home to his sister a German 77 shell-case as a souvenir, Into the shell-case, he placed several cubes of British taffy, sent him by a friend in London. He thought he would like to have his sister sample the taffy, but neglected to write her of the fact. He was surprised, about two months later, to receive a letter from his mother:
MY DEAR ARTHUR:
We have received your souvenir and we thank you very much for it. Sister Ethel insisted that the substance inside the shell case is taffy, and wants to eat it, but I have forbidden her to do so, for what if it should explode inside her! I have carefully buried the package in the back yard until I hear further from you.
Your loving Mother.
New Use for a Potato Masher"
Wise in the way of the 0. D. Pill, the medical department found in the exigencies of war, a new use for the German "potato masher." This hand grenade derives its name from its peculiar shape. It has a cylindrical head, with a wooden handle.
At the Vesle, a medical man, whose horse refused to go, seized one of these deadly contrivances from the side of the road, and to the consternation of his comrades, began to beat the " cheval " over the rump with it. There was a wild scramble for cover as he threw the thing down, having finished with it. But it didn't go off. Battery A's first gun passed over the " potato masher " half an hour later and exploded it. Although graver consequences than the general excitement and gas alarms that resulted might have ensued, no one was injured.
Fly Cops
On the Vesle sector, our impotence in the air was a constant source of irritation to all. We hadn't enough planes to patrol the entire sector, and when our flyers were in one part of it, Jerry always cut up capers in the other part. One day after a hostile airplane had destroyed an observation balloon, three or four of our planes came hotfooting it to the scene of the catastrophe. Chief Mechanic McAleer, of Battery D, watching them, remarked drily:
" Here they come, like the cops after a fight, taking the names!".
Help Wanted
When the regiment entered its course of training at Camp de Souge, officers and men were at once immersed in the intricacies of French firing data. Everything was done with endless streams of tables printed on endless reams of pink, green and yellow paper. If one did not carry a pencil for one's chief weapon, one stood in grave danger of losing the war. It was there that a bright wit gave birth to the sentence:
" I thought I was going to be an artilleryman, but now I can see I'm going to be a bookkeeper for a
cannon!"
Discipline First
Captain Stantial, of supply company, stood chatting with a brother officer in supply company's orderly room, one December afternoon. The regiment was then billeted in the village of Dancevoir. An orderly entered, stood at attention, waiting for the conversation to end. When about five minutes had elapsed, the orderly became noticeably fidgety.
"Well," said Captain Stantial finally, "what is it?"
"Sir," said the excited orderly, saluting, "they sent me over here for an axe. Regimental Headquarters is on fire!"
"And There I Am!"
In just what barracks it happened is not certain, but Lieutenant D. R. Hyde says it occurred during the early Camp Upton days. The "ten minutes to dress and make reveille, with K. P. if you don't" schedule was then in effect. It was brought to the lieutenant's attention that a casual was in the habit of going to bed with all his clothes on-" sleeping in full equipment C," as a facetious supply sergeant put it. Called to task for not undressing, the rookie explained:
" Vell you see, Lieutenant, it's dis vay. If I takes off my clothings, I can't put 'em on qvick enough in the mornin', but vid dis scheme, you see how easy it is yourself, Lieutenant,-I jumps out of bed,-and there I am!"
The "Gassing" of Battery A
The prevalence of false gas alarms during the early days at the Vesle, and the imminence of genuine ones, set all the men so on edge against the deadly vapors, that the least disturbance of any nature usually ended up with a gas alarm for good measure. The situation was not without its humor.
It was a dark night in Nesle Wood, with only the lone gas guard awake, pacing up and down-up and down. Suddenly he took a deep sniff,-then rang the gas alarm with might and main. Gas masks were fumbled on in sleepy haste, and five minutes later, removed in disgust. There had not even been an explosion. But the lone gas guard had walked over a dead cat!
Following that, Battery A's guns were being brought up to Chery-Chartreuve, rumbling along with the drivers half-asleep. A lead driver sang out to a fellow in his rear:
" Are you all right, Shirk?
" Ya-as! " replied Shirk, in his New England drawl,
Ya-a-s, I a-am! "
A half-dozing driver further down the line pricked up his ears, then shouted:
" Ga-a-s-s I "
The alarming cry was repeated from man to man, and again, out came masks. And poor Shirk had only meant to say " Yes! "
Sergeant Hark and Private Bert Spencer of Battery C had an unusual experience with " gas " one night during the usual heavy shelling at Chery. They were sitting on the stump of a tree. Someone shouted:
" Ga-a-s-s!
Hark and Spencer thought they heard a peculiar hissing, buzzing and humming sound, like a gas shell coming over. Suddenly Hark jumped up from the stump and cried:
" Ouch! I'm wounded!
They had been sitting on a hornet's nest!
All is not Pills that Swallows
Being rather severely troubled with rheumatism, Private Joseph Gonzalez, Lieutenant Colonel Peek's orderly, begot himself to the infirmary one day to procure some sort of alleviation. He stated his
troubles to the Regimental Surgeon, Major Jarrell, who handed him a couple of pills, with the remark:
"Here, take these."
The Major then interrupted the diagnosis to give some instructions to a medical orderly. He turned again to Gonzalez when he had finished, and continued:
" Dissolve those pills I gave you in a pint of water each, and rub your legs well with the solution. "
Gonzalez turned pale with dismay pictured on his countenance.
"But, Sir, I have already swallowed them!" was his reply.
"Battery S"
This is the story of a supply company that aspired to be a battery. It achieved its ambition-to the extent of one shot. So great was the regimental enthusiasm in the advance from the Vesle to the Aisne, that supply company could not resist the temptation of playing a grim joke on Jerry by turning one of his own io5mm. howitzers against him. The howitzer was a salvaged one.
Under direction of Captain Stantial and Lieutenant Delamater, Supply Company's picked gun crew hauled the captured howitzer to a position near Vauxcere and emplaced it. Other enthusiastic supply men scoured about for powder and ammunition that had been left in dumps by the fleeing Germans, and succeeded in amassing a goodly pile.
All was set. The bread-and-jam-delivery gun-crew struck attitudes, and Numbers One to Ten inclusive were ready to give the long lanyard a good big yank.
" F-i-r-e! " shouted Captain Stantial.
" Wo-o-o-sh! " the German shell whizzed on its way to the Aisne.
" Cr-a-s-s-h-h! " the howitzer barrel flew off its carriage, and the carriage itself kicked back and ran over a cannoneer's foot.
Battery S, after firing a total of One Round, was fini. "
It Worked Both Ways
One can often combine two widely different jobs to work well together, in the army as well as else-where. At Camp Upton, Lieutenant Friedlander was Regimental Gas Officer, and also Regimental Insurance Officer. It was his custom to deliver two lectures to the batteries and companies of the regiment-one on gas, and the other on insurance. After he had delivered both, it was said of him that he was wont to conclude:
"And so, Gentlemen, should you not be quick enough in the application of the gas mask, of which
I have told you in a former lecture, you should certainly become the beneficiaries of the insurance, of which I have also told you!"
He Remembered
Wherever the American soldier goes, though it be even to brave danger and death, his irrepressible sense of humor goes with him. This humor crops out at grim moments, sometimes.
It was one of the habits of Captain, then Lieutenant Clark J. Lawrence, of Battery E, during horse instruction, to shout at the awkward horsemen, "Bend Over!" This was in correction of a stiff, erect attitude while riding. Lieutenant Lawrence used this admonition so many times that he became
known, secretly, as " B endover John. "
At the Vesle, with the constant singing and bursting of shells all about, camp idiosyncrasies had almost been forgotten, when a shell burst unusually close to Battery E's position. Lieutenant Lawrence, solicitous for the welfare of his men, called out, saying:
"Where did that shell strike?"
The answer came, clear and distinct, from a neigh-boring dugout:
"Bend over, and see!"
His Feet Were not Mates
It was at Camp Upton, during the training days. Private Joe Carroll, of Headquarters Company, was changing from hikers to dress shoes in order to be presentable at Retreat. Suddenly the whistle blew for that formation, and Joe went helter-skelter out of the barracks with a hiker on one foot and a dress shoe on the other.
First Lieutenant N. R. Coleman was Officer of the Day. That worthy Southerner had won fame from the manner in which he always gave the command: " P-e-r-a-a-d-e R-e-s-t! " drawling it in a manner most comical. Also, one never knew whether he was cracking a joke, or allowing one to be put over on him. As he came slowly down the long front rank, the lieutenant noticed the lone hiker among the polished dress shoes. He paused before Joe Carroll. Then he took off his strong-lensed glasses, looked again, wiped the lenses, and concentrated his gaze upon the phenomenon. Clearly something was wrong. Had somebody lost a leg in the scuffle? But Lieutenant Coleman wished to convince him-self. Turning to Carroll, whose countenance was changing from color to color like an electric sign, he inquired:
"Private Carroll,-Ah say-Are both those feet you-ah's? "
Joe Sanchez, mounted battalion agent with the first battalion, had a favorite Maltese mule whom he dubbed " Soissons " because he was so hard to handle about the flanks. One dark and stormy night at the Vesle, Soissons grew tired of following the same old trail from regimental headquarters to the battalion, so he took the bit between his teeth, and decided to join the infantry. Joe was in the saddle, and didn't care much about joining the doughboys, but Soissons had his weather eye on a little Ford ambulance, and was following it at a gallop toward the front lines, never stopping until a dressing station was reached. Here a medical man yelled at Joe:
"Hey! what are you doing 'way up here with a horse? "
" It's not a horse, it's a blinketty-blink mule!" remonstrated Joe, "If it was a horse, it would have sense enough not to be here!"
Joe and the medical man tried their best to ease the animal into an "about-face" 'mid a stream of machine-gun bullets, but to no avail. The mule wouldn't budge until the ambulance returned loaded, when he followed it back as he had come. Arrived almost at battalion headquarters, Soissons got his nigh hind hoof caught in the stirrup. This was the last straw for Joe. He dismounted in disgust.
" Soissons, " he said sorrowfully, " if you're gonna get on, I'm gonna get off! I'm gonna get off and walk! "
And walk he did, with Soissons following him into the stable at a hobble.
Blow Bugles Blow
The parade in Bordeaux was a trying time for many-not least for the buglers and Major Moon. The major was a great deal put out to find that although the third battalion bugler knew his calls well enough, he could not separate the preparatory commands from the commands of execution.
In vain he tried to explain to the embarrassed musician who only became more confused. After some minutes the major turned in his saddle quite without any intention of giving a command, but the bugler eager to anticipate his slightest wish blew "Halt." And so tremendously did he blow it that he bit off the mouthpiece of the bugle.
The column, by this time accustomed to receiving orders by bugle, refused to move without one. Only after many irate repetitions of the command by Major Moon did it decide to "forward march." Meanwhile our overzealous bugler instead of finding another bugler to take his place rode from one battery to another and called out all the buglers. Major Moon spent his noon hour gently but firmly and precisely assuring the entire corps of buglers that he did not require their services.
The Whole Mess Line
The first night at La Haraz6e was a wild one, but even at the front it had been proved that it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. The good came the second night to Private Alberts of Battery C.
Mess was ready to be served when the shells began to fall. Thinking that the program of the preceding night was about to be repeated, everybody, including all the cooks and kitchen police, fled to cover.
There was one exception-Private Alberts. He had been on the end of the line and saw his great opportunity. Mess pan in hand, he dashed from one steaming receptacle to another, taking huge helpings of everything in sight. This he bore back to safety in triumph and explained:
" Did you think I was going to lose the first chance I ever had to get a square meal in the army?"
The Resurrection of the Dead
More than once it has been proved that the A. E. F. artillery horse is a creature of discernment and understanding. Did not one choose to commit suicide in the Marne when he realized the grim future he faced, and have not others (not always draft horses) escaped army service by ways that are dark and in at least one case, by tricks that are vain.
Coming out of the echelon near Baccarat there were many halts caused by anything from an enemy plane flying low to a loosened saddle-girth. Captain Allen was informed during one of these halts that one of the battery horses had died on the road. Yes, he certainly looked dead-and did not respond to any treatment. The stable sergeant pronounced him ready for burial and the work of removing the harness began. Much pushing and pulling ensued now by the head and now by the tail, until finally the animal, deciding it was better to endure army than submit to further indignities, scrambled to his feet and wandered to the roadside to munch grass. Evidently the army wasn't such a bad place after all.
THE following biographical sketches gives a brief outline of the military life of every man connected with the 306th Field Artillery during the period from April 24, 1918, the day we left the States, to November 11, 1918, the day the Armistice went into effect. First the name is given with the rank held on November 11, 1918. Following is the date of entry into the army, and the place, if other than Camp Upton. The date of joining the 306th Field Artillery and the battery or company to which assigned is then given. All promotions, wounds (place and date), citations and special duties are mentioned, the birthplace is recorded, college and degree, former military experiences, civilian occupation and home address. Because of the great number of sketches, it has been found necessary to use a number of abbreviations. In order that everything may be understood, a list of these abbreviations follows:
Appointed Aptd. Commanding Officer C. 0. Lieutenant Lt. Regiment Regt.
April Apr. Colonel Col. Lieutenant Colonel Lt. Col. Regimental Regtl.
Assigned Assgd. Cook Ck. Major Maj. Sadler Sad.
August Aug. Corporal Corp. March Mch. September Sep.
Avenue Ave. December Dec. Mechanic Mec. Sergeant Sgt.
Battalion Bn. Discharged Disch. Mess Sergeant Mess Sgt. Sergeant Major Sgt. Maj.
Battery Btry. February Feb. National Guard N. G. Squadron Sq.
Brooklyn B'klyn. Field Artillery F. A. New York N. Y. Stable Sergeant Stab. Sgt
Bugler Bglr. First Sergeant Ist Sgt. New York City N. Y. C. Supply Company Sup. Co.
Camp de Souge C. S. Graduate Grad. November Nov. Supply Sergeant Sup. Sgt,
Camp Upton C. U. Headquarters Hq. October Oct. Transferred Transfd.
Captain Capt. Headquarters Co. Hq. Co. Private Pvt. United States U. S.
Cavalry Cav. Horseshoer Hs. Private first class Pvt. 1cl. University Univ.
Chief Mechanic Ch. Mec. January Jan. Reduced Rd. Wagoner Wag.
AABY, GILMAN, Pvt., ent'd army Feb. 24, '18, Camp Dodge, Ia., joined 306 F. A. Apr. 16, '18, assgd. btry. D. Farmer, Twin Valley, Minn.
ABRAMS, SAMUEL, Pvt., ent'd army Dec. 8, '17, assgd. btry F, Dec. 9, '17, transf d. btry. E, Dec. 10, '17, transf d. Hq. Co., Apr. to, '18, wounded Nov. 5, '18, La Besace. Born N. Y. C., Salesman, 782 Home St., Bronx, N.Y.
ABRAMSON, CHARLES, Pvt., ent'd army Mch. 28, '18 Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. Apr. 18, '18, assgd. btry. D, Farmer.
ABT, PHILIP, Pvt., ent'd army Apr. 5, '18, assgd. btry. C., Apr.19,'18. Left in Sick Bay, S. S. Leviathan, May 2, '18.
ACKERINO, ANTHONY A., Pvt., ent'd army Dec. 8, '17, assgd. btry. A, Dec. 9, '17. Gassed Aug. 22, '18 Chery-Chartreuve. Born B'klyn, N. Y., Tree-trimmer, 133 E. 5 St., B'klyn, N. Y.
ADAMIC, CHARLES C., Pvt., ent'd army Dec. 8, '17, assgd. btry. A, Dec. 9. '17, apt'd Pvt. 1cl., Jan. 15, '19. Born N. Y. C., Lithographer, 133 Lincoln PI., B'klyn, N.Y.
ADAMS, JOHN JR., 1st Sgt., ent'd army Sep. 29, '17, assgd. Hq. Co., aptd. Corp. Nov. 1, '17, aptd. Color Sgt. Apr. 1, '18, Aptd. 1st. Sgt. Sep. 26, '18. Born N. Y. C., Water-tender, 1624 55 St., B'klyn, N. Y.
ADLER, SAMUEL Bn. Sgt. Maj., ent'd army Sep. 10, '17, assgd. Hq. Co., aptd. Reg. Sgt. Maj., Nov. 1, '17 on D. S. at 0. T. S. Camp Upton, Rd. Bn. Sgt. Maj. Apr. 1,'18, transfd. Saumur Art. Schl. May 29, '18.
ADRIAN, JULIUS W., Pvt. ent'd army Apr. 5, '18, assgd. btry. C, Apr. 1g, '18. Missing since Oct. 29, '18. Electrician.
ALBERTS, JACOB, Pvt., 1cl., ent'd army Nov. 16, '17, assgd. btry. C, Nov. 17,'17, apt'd Pvt. 1cl., July 11,'18. BomPinsk, Russia, Beef-handler, 157 Starr St., B'klyn, N. Y.
ALESKEWIC, ADAM Pvt., ent'd army Mch. 28, '18, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 306 F. A. Apr. 18, '18, assgd. btry. D, Born Vilna, Russia, Laborer, 290 Broad St., Bridgewater, Mass.
ALLAIN, RALPH R., Pvt., ent'd army Feb. 25, '18, CampDodge, Ia., assgd. 39 Eng., Camp Upton, Mch. 21, 18, joined 306 F. A. Apr. 16, '18, assgd. Hq. Co., Born St. Ann, Ill., Railroad clerk, it No. 53 Ave-W, Duluth, Minn.
ALLARD, , Brigadier, French Army interpreter, joined
306F.A.July6,'88. Dropped July it, '18.
ALLED, EXILPHA M., Pvt., ent'd army Feb. 26, '18, CampDevens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. C, Mch. 18, '18. Born Staebert, Quebec, Canada, Jewelry-smith, 59 Park St.. Attleboro, Mass.
ALLEN, ALFRED, Musc. 3cl., ent'd army Sep. 10, '17, assgd. Sup. Co., apt'd. Corp., Nov. 1,'17, Rd. Pvt. NOV. 2 1,'17, transfd. Hq. Co., Jan. 1, '18, apt'd Musc. 3cl., Jan. 2, '18, Rd. Pvt., July 1,'18, apt'd Musc.3cl., Oct. 24, '18. Born Bayside, N.Y., Farmer, Little Neck Rd., Gt. Neck, N.Y.
ALLEN, HARRY R., Capt., commissioned Capt. Plattsburg,N. Y., Aug. 15, '17, joined 3o6 F. A. Aug. 31, '17, assgd. btry.E, on D. S. Schl. Fire, Ft. Sill, Okla., Jan. 3-Mch. 9,'18 C. 0. btry. E, Baccarat and Vesle Campaigns on D. S. as Instructor Schl. Instruction F. A. Camp de Souge, Sep. 2 5, '18. Dropped from rolls of Regt. Nov. 23, '18, re-assgd. btry. E, Dec. 14, '18
1 yr. N. Y. N. G., Architect 121 Y2 W. Hudson St., Elmira, N. Y.
ALUCONIS, Dominic, Pvt., ent'd army Mch. 28, '18, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. Hq. Co. Apr. 18, '18, transfd. btry. B, June 10, '18. Born Russia, Shoe-worker, 99 River St., Haverhill, Mass.
AMMONS, WILLIAM R., Pvt., ent'd army Dec. 8, '17, assgd. btry. D, Dec. 9,'17, apt'd Pvt. I cl. May 20, '18, Rd. Pvt. Aug. 24, '18 transfd. Central Records Office, Sep- 4, '18.
Amo, WALTER S., Pvt., ent'd army Feb. 22, 118, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. C, Mch. 18, '18. Born Clayton, N. Y., Mason, 16 Theresa St., Clayton, N. Y.
AMUNDSON, SIGFRET, Pvt., ent'd army Feb. 24, '18, Camp Dodge, Ia., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. A. Apr. 19, '18. Born Vining, Minn,, Farmer, Ericsburg, Minn.
ANDERSON, ANDREW, Pvt., 1cl., ent'd army Nov. 17, '17, assgd. btry. C. Nov. 19, '17, apt'd Pvt. 1cl. Feb. 4, '18. Born Whitehaven, Eng., Auto-driver, 7009 Ridge B'lvd, B'klyn, N. Y.
ANDERSON, GRANVILLE T., 2d Lt., commissioned at Plattsburg, N. Y., Aug. 15, '17, assgd. 3o6 F. A., Sep. 4, '17, attach'd Sup. Co. Sep. 17, '17, assgd. Hq. Co., Feb. 11, '18, transfd. Casual Ofers. Camp, Aug. 3, '18, Student, 154 E. 62 St., N. Y. C.
ANDERSON, JULIUS, Pvt., ent'd army Mch. 28, '18, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 306 F. A. assgd. btry. B., Apr. 18, '18. Born Tjwiko, Sweden, Stone-cutter, 14 Hutchin St., W-Con-cord, N. H.
ANDERSON, LEONARD A., Pvt. ent'd army Feb. 24, '18, Camp Dodge. Ia., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. B, Apr. 16, '18. Born Maple Bay, Minn., Farmer, Waterville, Ia.
APENES, CHRISTIAN M., Pvt., ent'd army Mch. 28, '18, Camp Devens, joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. A, Apr. Ap, '18. Born Horton, Norway, Boiler-makers-helper, Day St., Dorchester, Mass.
ARDIFF, WILLIAM J., 2d Lt., ent'd army Sep. 2 1, '17, assgd. btry. A, Sep. 23, '17, apt'd Sgt. Nov, 1, '17, apt'd 1st Sgt. Nov. 2, '17, Rd. Sgt. Jan. 4, '18 on D. S. at 0. T. S. Camp Upton, commissioned 2d It. Aug. 1, '18, transfd. 13 F. A. Aug. 3, '18, N. Y. C. Pol. Dept. Mil. Camp Ft. Wadsworth, N. Y. Born N. Y. C., Policeman, 224 W. 141 W. 141 St-, N. Y. C.
ARENDS, JANS S., Pvt., ent'd army Feb. 25, '18, Camp Dodge, joined,3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. A, Apr. 18,'18. Born Washington, Ia., Farmer, Applington, La.
ARLOW, MAX., Wag., ent'd army Sep. 29, '17, assgd. Sup. Co., apt'd Wag. Apr. 1,'18, transfd. F. A. Motor Schl. Oct. 16, '18.
ARMSTRONG, WILLIAM C., 2d Lt., commissioned at Platts-burg, N. Y., Aug. 15,'17, joined 3o6 F. A. Nov. 12, '17, assgd. btry. D, transfd. Hq. Co., May 29,'18 on D. S. at Gas Defense Schl. Aug. 1, '18-Aug. 15, '18. Dropped from Regt. and ordered to Base Section 5 for transportation to U. S., Aug. 25, '18 2 yrs. Sq. A. N. Y. 6 mos. Federal Service Mexican Border, Camp McAllen, Texas, 32 E. 61 St., N. Y.
ARONNI, MICHELE, Pvt. ent'd army Feb. 26, '18, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. A, Apr. 17, '18. Gassed Aug. 22, '18 Chery-Chartreuve. Born Italy, Coal-miner, Aurora, Minn.
ARRA, JACK, Pvt., ent'd army Feb. 25, '18, assgd. btry. D, Mch-4,'18. Born N.Y.C., Tailor, 219E. 107St.v N.Y.C.
ARTFRBERRY, LEVI E., Pvt., ent'd army Feb. 24, '18, Camp Dodge, Ia., joined 306 F. A. assgd. btry. C, Apr. 16, '18. Born Roshell, Ill., Barber, Moquopta, Ia.
ARTHUR, EDWIN, 1st Sgt., ent'd army Jan. 5, '18, attached 0. T. S. Camp Upton, assgd. Hq. Co., Mch. 28, '18, apt'd Sgt. Apr. 21,'18 on D. S. at Saumur Art. Schl. May 16, '18. Dropped from rolls.
ASCH, IRVING, Pvt., ent'd army Apr. 4, '18, assgd. Hq. Co., Apr. 20,'18 transfd. btry. E, June 10,'18. Born Rutno, Poland Russia, Clerk, 101 W. 88 St., N. Y. C.
AST, HERMAN, Pvt., 1 cl., ent'd army Oct. 12, '17, assgd. btry. D, Oct. 15, '17, apt'd Pvt. 1cl. Jan. 1, '18. Born N. Y. C., Stock-clerk, 1526 Washington Ave., N. Y. C.
ATHEY, CLANTON R., 1st. Lt., M. R. C., commissioned at Ft. Oglethorpe, Ga., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. to Med. Detach. Sep. 4, '17, transfd. 308 Inf., Oct., 31, '18. Born Alabama, Physician, Raimer, Ala.
AUERT, EDWARD J., Pvt., ent'd army Feb. 22, '18, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. C, Mch. 18, '18. Born Whitesboro, N. Y., Clerk, 69 Westmoreland St., Whites-boro, N. Y.
AUGER, Louis A., Pvt., ent'd army Feb. 26, '18, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. C, Mch. 18, '18.
AVERY, WALTER A., Pvt., ent'd army Mch. 28, '18, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. D, Apr. 18, '18. Died through accident July 21, '18, Baccarat.
AXTHELM, ALBERT, A., Pvt., ent'd army Oct. 10, '17, assgd. btry. A, transfd. Hq. Co., June io, '18. Born N.Y.C., Clerk, 443 E. 79 St., N. Y. C.
BABICH NICK, Pvt., ent'd army Oct. 7, '17, Camp Lewis, Washington, joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. A, May 17, '18, apt'd Pvt. 1cl. Jan. 15, 18. Born Kulen Vakuf, Austria, Miner, 421 Chestnut St., Anaconda, Mont.
BACH, HENRY A., Corp., ent'd army Oct. 10, '17, assgd. Sup. CO., Oct. 11, '17, apt'd Corp., Jan. 17,'x8, transfd. Ord. Detach. Jan. 17, '18, attach'd Sup. Co., Feb. 26, '18. Born B'klyn, N. Y., Machinist, 65 Jewell St., B'klyn, N. Y.
BACH, ISAAC, Pvt., 1cl., ent'd army Dec. 8, '17, assgd. btry. D, Dec. 9,'17, apt'd Pvt. 1cl., Jan1, '18, wounded Sep. 15,'18 sent to Base Hosp. Dropped from rolls. Dyer. N, Y. C.
BADIN, JEAN, 2d Lieut., 117 Artillery French Army, assgd. 306 F.A.Sep.24,'18. Killed inaction Sep. 28, '18, Binarville.
BECKER, C. FREDERIC, Sgt., ent'd army Sep. 21, '17, assgd. btry. A, Sep. 23, '17, apt'd. Corp. Nov. 1, '17, apt'd Sgt. Nov. 21,'17, apt'd 1st Sgt., Jan. 4, '18 D. S., 0. T. S. Saumur Aug. 30, '18, re-assgd. btry. A, Dec. 17, '18. Born B'klyn, N. Y., Business Mgr., 420 E. 8 St. B'klyn, N.Y.
BAHR, CARL, Pvt. ent'd army June 15, '13, joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. Sup. Co., Nov. 23, '17, apt'd Regtl. Sup. Sgt. NOV. 23, ' 17 Rd. Pvt. June 14, '18 transfd.
BAILEY, FRANKLIN E., Pvt. ent'd army Mch. 28, '18, Camp Devens, Mass, joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. B, Apr. 18, '18. Born Marshfield, Mass., Bell-boy, 99 Temple St., No. Abington, Mass.
BAILEY, OTIS, S., Pvt., ent'd army Mch. 28, '18, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. D, Apr. 16, '18. Born Somerville, Mass., Paper-cutter, 61 Galen St., Watertown, Mass.
BAITINGER, GEORGE F., Wag., ent'd army Dec. 9, '17 assgd. btry. B, Dec. 10, '17, aptd. Wag. Apr. I, '18. Born N. Y. C. Mech. Chauffeur, 681 Cleveland St., B'klyn, N. Y.
BALPH, CHARLES F., 2d Lieut., commissioned Ft. Sheridan, Nov. 27, '17, joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. A, Sep. 2, '18. Born Pittsburg, Pa., grad. Unv. Pittsburg, B. S. C. E. 3 yrs. 18 Inf. N. G., Pa., Civil Engr. 134 So. Fairmont St., Pittsburg, Pa.
BANK, CHARLES, Pvt. 1cl., ent'd army Dec. 8, '17, assgd. btry. E, Dec. 9, '17, apt'd Pvt. 1cl. May 16, '18. Born B'klyn, N. Y., Laborer, 178 Noll St., B'klyn, N.Y.
BANTA, JOHN S., Pvt., ent'd army Sep. 10, '17 assgd. Hq. Co., Sep. 14, '17 apt'd Corp. Nov. 1, '17 Rd. Pvt. Aug. 24,'18, transf. btry. F. Born Hoboken, N. J., Surveyor, 728 W. 181 St., N. Y. C.
BARINKOWSKI, ROBERT E., 2d Lieut., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. Hq. Co., Nov. 11, '18, transfd. Saumur Art. Schl. Nov. 16, '18.
BARKER, SHIRLEY T., 1st Lieut., commissioned 2nd Lieut., Ft. Sheridan, Ill., Aug. 15, '17, joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. Hq. Co., NOV. 20, '17 transfd. btry. A, May 29, '18 apt'd Ist Lieut., Sep. 5, '18. Born Hastings, Mich., grad. Olivet College, A.B., Credit man, Battle Creek, Mich.
BARNES, JOHN J., Corp. ent'd army Oct. 10, '17 assgd. btry. A, Oct. 12, '17, apt'd Pvt. I cl. Apr. 12, '18, apt'd Corp. Aug. 2 7, '18, gassed Aug. 22, '18 Chery-Chartreuve. Born N. Y. C., Clerk, 336 E. 66 St., N. Y. C.
BARON, ANDREW 0. Pvt., ent'd army Feb. 23, '18, CampDodge, Ia., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. A, Apr. 17, '18. Born W. Duluth, Minn., Mech., 23o No. 2 Ave. Duluth, Minn.
BARONE, VINCENZO, Pvt., ent'd army Feb. 25, '18, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. E, Apr. 18, '18. Born Naples, Italy, Farmer, 246 Dublin St., Palmer, Mass.
BARRETT, EDMUND, Pvt., ent'd army Mch. 29, '18, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. C, Mch. 18, '18. Born Queenstown, Ireland, Clerk, 234 Methune St., Lawrence, Mass.
BARRETT, MICHAEL, Pvt., ent'd army Mch. 29, '18, Camp. Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. B, Apr. 18, '18, Born County Clare, Ireland, Freight-handler, 40 Cedar St. Mattapan, Mass.
BARRY, F. LEROY, Bn. Sgt. Maj. ent'd army Sep. 10, '17,assgd. Hq. Co., apt'd Corp. Nov. 1, '17, apt'd Sgt. Jan. 2, '18, apt'd Bn. Sgt. Maj. 2nd Bn. July 10,'18 on D. S. Saumur Art. Schl. Sep. 29, '18-Dec. 21, '18. Born Yoedin, Pa., grad. Unv. Syracuse, Student, 4o E. 4o St., N. Y. C.
BARTUNEK, JOHN, JR., Corp. ent'd army Sep. 10, '17 assgd. Hq. Co., Sep. 11, '17 apt'd Corp. Nov. 1, '17. Born Long Island City, N. Y., Chauffeur, 255 Radde St., Long Island City., N. Y.
BASHAW, WALLACE P., Pvt., ent'd army Mch. 29, '18, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. B, Apr. 18, '18. Born Newburyport, Mass., Florist, 6 Low St., Newburyport, Mass.
BASSETTI, RALPH, Pvt., ent'd army Apr. 3, '18, assgd. btry. A, Apr. 19, '18. Born Raccopalurnta, Italy, Tailor, 441 E. 12 St., N. Y. C.
BAUER, WILLIAM, Pvt., 1cl. ent'd army Dec. 8, '17 assgd.btry, C, Dec. 9, '17, apt'd Pvt. ICI. May 21, '18. Born B'klyn, N.Y., Painter, 289 Wallabout St., BUM N. Y.
DAUM, FRED Musc. 3d cl. ent'd army Oct. 12, '17 assgd. Hq. CO., Oct. 15, '17 apt'd Musc. 3cl. Jan. 2, '18, Apt'd Corp Nov. 15, '18. Born N. Y. C., Musician, 1456 Webster Ave., Bronx, N. Y.
BAUMANN, HENRY, Pvt., 1cl. ent'd army Dec. 8, '17 assgd.btry. E, Dec. 9, '17 apt'd Pvt. icl. Aug. 1, '18. Born B'klyn, N. Y., Packer, 204 Woodbine St., B'klyn, N. Y.
BAYER, ANTON F., Pvt., ent'd army Aug. 27, '17 Ft. Slocum, joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. Med. Detach. Sep. 10,'17. BornNewark, N. J., Clerk, Newark, N. J.
BEAN, Louis S., Corp., ent'd army Dec. 8, '17 assgd. btry D, transfd. Hq. Co., Apr. 18, 'j8, apt'd Corp. July 1, '18. Born Kovna, Russia, Salesman, 381 SO. 3 St., B'klyn, N. Y.
BEARD, JOHN W., Pvt., ent'd army May 27, '18, Jefferson
Barracks, St. Louis, Mo., joined 3o6 F. A. Oct. 30, '18 assgd. btry. E. Born Dietrich, Ill., Farmer, Altamont, 111.
BEARD, REx ist Lieut., M. R. C., attached 3o6 F. A. July I, '18, assgd. Med. Detach. transfd. Camp de Souge Hospital, July 6, '18.
BEATTIE, JOSEPH H., Pvt., ent'd army Mch. 22, '18, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. B, Apr. 18, '18. Born Hopkinton, Mass., Rubber-worker, Wood St., Hopkinton, Mass.
BECCHINNO, JOHN M., Wag., ent'd army Dec. 8, '17 assgd. Hq. Co., Dec. 9, '17 apt'd Wag. Apr. 11, '18. Born B'klyn, N. Y., Chauffeur, 553 Schenck Ave., B'klyn, N. Y.
BECKER, ARTHUR, Farrier, joined 3o6 F. A. Oct. 1, '18 assgd. Veterinary Detach.
BECKER, RALPH E., Pvt., joined 3o6 F. A. Aug. ig, '18 assgd. to Veterinary Detach.
BECKER, WILLIAM A., Sgt., ent'd army Sep. 10, '17 assgd.lis Hq. Co., apt'd Corp., Jan. 2, '18, apt'd Sgt. Nov. 7, '18. Born N. Y. C-, Cook, 307 W. 144 St., N. Y.C.
BECKERMAN, JOHN, 1st Sgt., ent'd army Sep. 21, '17 assgd. 1 '17 apt'd Sgt. Feb. 5, '18.
Born Warsaw, Poland, Russia, Insurance, 352 W. 118 St., N. Y. C.
BEEMAN, ADELBERT M., Pvt., ent'd army Feb. 22, '18,Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. C, Mcb. 18, '18. Born Rome, N. Y., Farmer, Whitesboro, N.Y.
BEEMAN, ROBERT C., Pvt, icl., ent'd army Aug. 8,17, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. 13, Apr. 18, '18, apt'd Pvt. icl., Sep. 1, '18 apt'd Wag. Apr. ii, 'ig. Born Binghamton, N. Y., Laborer, 112 Main St., Buffalo, N. Y.
BEGLEY, EDWARD F., Pvt. ent'd army Feb. 26, '18, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. B, Apr. 28, '8. Born Lawrence, Mass., Waiter, 69 So. B'way, Lawrence, Mass.
BELAiN, GEORGE L., Pvt., ent'd army Mch. 28, '18, Camp Devens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. B, Apr. 18, '18. Died of disease, Feb. 13,'xg. Born Gay Head, Mass., Farmer, Gay Head, Mass.
BELDRING, SoPHus, Pvt., ent'd army Apr. 4, '18 assgd. btry. B,Apr.18,'i8. Born Suby, Denmark, Chauffeur, 2122 5 Ave., N. Y. C.
BENANTI, ANTONIO, Corp., ent'd army Sep. 10, '17 assgd. btry. E, Sep. 15, '17 apt'd Pvt. icl. Jan. 1, '18, apt'd Corp. Mch. 1, '18. Born Palermo, Italy, Tailor, 295 Elizabeth St., N. Y. C.
BENCOSA, THOMAS, Pvt., ent'd army Dec. 5, '17 assgd. btry. A, May 17, '18. Born Strongoli, Italy, Laborer, 149 Skillman btry. C, apt'd Corp. Dec. 26 St., B'klyn, N. Y.
BFNFORADO, MARK J., Pvt. ent'd armyApr. 5,'18 assgd. btry. A, May 17, '18 transfd. Inf. unassigned and sent to Brest, Oct. 14, '18 to be returned to U. S. Born Turkey, Storekeeper, zo6 W. 113 St., N. Y. C.
BEPPLER, HERMAN, J., Corp., ent'd army Dec. 8, '17 assgd. btry. E, Dec. 9, '17 apt'd Pvt. icl. Jan. 1, '18 apt'd Corp. Mch. 1, '18. Born B'kln N. Y., Stenographer, 1254 Greene Ave., B'klyn, N. Y.
BERCOVICH, JAKE Musc., 3d cl., ent'd army Feb. 25, '18 assgd. Hq. Co., apt'd Musc. 3cl-, Apr. I, '18 transfd. Genl. Hq. Band Nov. 2 1, '18.
BERGAN, ROBERT N., Sgt., ent'd army Oct. I I, '17, assgd. btry. C, apt'd Pvt. icl. Jan. 14, '18, apt'd Corp. Feb. 5, '18, apt'd Sgt. Aug. 5, 18. Born Westchester, N. Y., Stockkeeper, 2313 Gleason Ave., N. Y. C.
BERGER, ANTHONY, Pvt., 1cl., ent'd army Dec. 8, '17 assgd. btry. C, Dec. 9, '17 apt'd Pvt. 1cl., Aug. 4, '18. Born B'klyn, N. Y., Linotype-operator, 542 Greene Ave., B'klyn, N. Y.
BERGSTROM, SIMON T., Pvt., ent'd army Feb. 26, '18, Camp Dodge, Ia., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. A, Apr. 17, '18. Born Wernland, Sweden, Laborer, Two Harbors, Minn.
BERKEMEYFR, RAYMOND A., Sgt., ent'd army Oct. 11, '17 assgd. btry. F. Oct. 12, '17, Apt'd Corp., Jan. 10, '18, apt'd. Sgt. May 15, '18. Killed in action Aug. 25, '18 Chery-Chartreuve.
BERXENFELD, MAx L., Pvt., icl., ent'd army Sep. 10, '17assgd. Med. Detach. apt'd Pvt. icl., July 8,'j8. DornN.Y.C., Mechanical Dentist, I I E. I 15 St., N. Y.C.
BERKOWITZ, HARRY I., Pvt., icl., ent'd army Dec. 8, '17.assgd. btry. B, Dec. 9, '17, apt'd Pvt. xcl., Apr. 1, '18. Born N. Y. C., Lithographer, r66 Lorimer St., B'klyn, N.Y.
BERMAN, HARRIS H., Pvt., ent'd army Sep. 10, '17 assgd. Med. Detach. Born N. Y. C., I yr. Military training Cornell Unv., Optometrist, 381 Grand St., N. Y.C.
BERMAN, HARRY, Pvt., ent'd army Mch. 29, '18, CampDevens, Mass., joined 3o6 F. A. assgd. btry. D, Apr. 19, '18, Laborer.
BERMAN, HYMAN, Pvt., ent'd army Apr. 16, '18 assgd. btry.
The following names and pages have been scanned in from the book.