# History of the 305th Field Artillery/Hustled to the Front

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HUSTLED TO THE FRONT
The regiment went about its business with its former eagerness. We were told that our first rolling barrage was worthy of veteran troops. It certainly made enough noise and black smoke. The next, with the guns of the two light regiments in a long row, was as good. We ad- mired the dust clouds half obscuring the quickly sliding Lubes, and the changing black curtain drawn across the range.
"No one," we told ourselves, "could get through that."
Our instructors admitted that there didn't seem to be any holes.
Such perfection wasn't reached without delays and adventures. The weather had grown stcadily warmer. There had been scarcely any rain. Consequently the range was abnormally dry. When the 306th got its 155 howitzers and opened fire with practice shells these factors produced worse conflagrations than we had had at Upton. They stopped our work. They sent us to warm and uncongenial labor. Towards the climax of a delicate adjustment it was distracting to hear someone say to the instructor:
“Isn't that smoke over there sir? I think it's a fire on the range.
The instructor always looked through the binoculars, and nearly always in a tone of helpless disgust, called to the operator.
Drawn by Corporal Roos, Battery D
"The Battle Roar Would Die Before a Threatening Silence"
The battle roar would die before a threatening silence.
We never learned. We always hoped until the last minute that the flames would burn themselves out. But always the small smoke ball with its red center would grow, and spring into a black fan with a flame fringe, sweeping before the wind which always blew in that place.
Then the colonel, or the brigade commander, if he was there, would call for trucks and men until the greater part of the brigade and the ammunition train was on the range, starting counter fires, or with picks and shovels clearing ground before the flames.
It usually meant an afternoon's hot work at the expense of specialist instruction. That had about run its course anyway. The days had slipped into weeks, and towards the end of June we knew we were as nearly ready as Souge would make us. Our departure waited only on transportation We speculated as to where we would go. Our infantry had trained with the British in Flanders. For a long time we thought we would fight there.
Tours wanted to know which regiment would volunteer to hold itself ready to move at a moment's notice. The 305th offered itself. We entered a new age of packing. We had more equipment, but we also had more experience, and we got ready with little of the neurasthenic hurry of Upton.
Here at the last, our carefully studied organization was shattered. Other artillery brigades were coming to France, and they would have to be instructed. Under orders from the Chief of Artillery the Souge instructors chose from the brigade a certain number of officers wilo, they considered, had shown aptitude. They would either remain behind now, or be called on later to teach artillery.
​ Lieutenant-Colonel Stimson went to G. H. Q., hoping to accomplish the release of the three captains.
Lieutenant Camp was made acting adjutant of the First Battalion, and Lieutenant Fenn of the Sccond. Lieutenant Montgomery took command of Battery B. Captain Fox had some time before been made personnel adjutant, so Lieutenant Kane was the commanding officer of Battery C. With these radical changes made we were ready to go into action.
From day to day we waited for word from Tours that our transportation was ready. The Fourth of July was near. The general commanding the base section wished the brigade, if it had not moved by the holiday, to take pa in a monster parade in Bordeaux. That ceremony kept us on the anxious scat for a number of days. In the morning the parade would be a certainty. After luncheon there wasn't a chance that we would make it. The next morning there was no question. We would make it. It wasn't until July 3d that we knew, and then we were told that we would leave, mounted, immediately after luncheon, camp at a race course outside Bordeaux, march in the next morning, parade, and come all the way back before night. On July 5th the regiment would start entraining.
It looked like a difficult programme. Our drivers had had very little road work. The regiment had never before been mounted as a whole. We were afraid of our horses. Could they do it? Was it wise to make them do it, when they would have to stand immediately afterwards for three days in box cars?
Just before we left, Major Johnson's promotion to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel came through. It cast another shadow, because we knew the powers wouldn't let us have two lieutenant-colonels.
After luncheon the regiment gathered in the gun park. ​ The teams were brought from the stables, protesting at the unusual cxcrcise. The drivers reproved them with harsh voices. A fog of dust arose and settled over the place. Through it you caught glimpses of prancing horses, struggling men, yellow harness. Out of it came a chorus of commands, entreaties, threats. Guidons flashed red, like a gleam of sunlight through the rolling mist. The sunlight grew. The mists rolled away. Wheels, swings, and Icads stood in their places. Behind them the yellow and black carriages rested expectant.
"Prepare to Mount! Mount!"
Drivers sprang to tlicir saddles. The leading battery moved out. The others followed. Leaving camp, the column may have twisted a little, and wheels may have slipped into the sand on cither side of the avenue, but the column kept growing, until from the park it stretched into a string incredibly long and business like and military.
Road discipline came to us, as it were, instinctively. There were no stragglers. Drivers mounted and dismounted precisely at every halt. We took a narrow country road, and on a curving hill—as difficult a place as you could choose-met a supply train coming up. We got our carriages into the ditches. We wormed by. Nothing upset. On the jammed roads at the front we found nothing much more puzzling. We commenced right there to take a pride in the regiment mounted. Self-satisfied we listened to the heavy rumbling of the carriages. We glanced back from every turn at the struggling horses, the sleek pieces, the caissons, low and awkward. The whole had an appearance of grotesque beauty.
The Stad Bordelaix was green and trimmed, like a huge formal garden. We camped by the steeple chase course. We parked, and pitched tents, then for the first time faced the problem of watering on the march. We found the familiar lack of facilities, the accustomed waste of time ​ in going long distances with a few horses. But it was experience that we needed, and we saw it was a good thing we should have come.
A few fortunate ones got passes for Bordeaux. The rest, after mess, lay about in fresh-cut hay, and tried to realize it was their last experience in the S.O.S.
The next morning our apprehension vanished. The First Battalion took one road to town the Second another. "We'll rendezvous all right," the commanders said confidently.
They did, moreover, in spite of the apparent confusion in the city. Every clement fell into its own place in the column. The parade started.
Bordeaux gave us a gracious welcome. Masses of citizens threw flowers and confetti from bunting-hung buildings. They liked the looks of the American artillery, equipped with their own soixante-quinzes. They were glad to see the Americans. Turning into the Place de la Comediae the band blared out the "Sambre et Meuse." The closely packed mass of the French burst into cheers, flung hats into the air, madly waved banners.
A tribute had been erected in the Grande Place. Local celebrities stood there, and French and American generals. Opposite was a line of veterans, some with missing limbs, They held flags, decorated with the names of breathless battles. These they dipped, and our bright new colors bobbed back.
​ Regimental Headquarters and organization commanders hurried by automobile back to Souge immediately after the parade to prepare for the movement to the front.
The regiment, in command of Lieutenant Colonel Johnson, returned to the Stad Bordelaix, watered, fed, and messed, and afterwards made the long march back to camp.
We had one lesson that impressed on us the necessity of close liaison even in the smallest column. At a crossroads another regiment cut our line of march, and the Second Battalion followed in its wake. There was a good deal of time and energy lost in finding the three batteries, turning them around, and getting them back in line.
We pulled into Souge at dusk, tired, dirty, and with a lot of grooming and rubbing before us, but on the whole triumphant.
The next day the movement commenced. The Headquarters Company left the rail lead at Bonneau, where less than two months before we had detrained, uninstructed and unequipped.
Nearly everyone, it might be said, thought that we would be billeted behind the lines for several weeks of the road work we so much needed. That took a little of the seriousness from the journey.
Regimental Headquarters and the Supply Company left the afternoon of the sixth, and First Battalion Headquarters and Battery A that same evening. During the next three days the other batteries pulled out, while the 304th and 306th waited their turn.
We said good-by to Captains Reed, Ravenel, and Delanoy without knowing when we would see them again.
​ These artillery trains were all of a pattern. There were the Hommes and Chevaux for animals and men, a combination first and second class coach for officers, and a string of flats for the carriages.
At Bonncau there was a loading platform. In some places we found none, and used instead clumsy move- able ramps. Yet methods varied little. With practice we got some of the skill of circus men. The different tasks proceeded simultaneously. An incoherence seemed to prevail. Then all at once the groups would scatter, and you would see that the job had been done, that the train was either loaded or unloaded.
None of our organizations needed the three hours allowed them for entraining at Bouncan. The carriages were little trouble. Squads ran them from the platform to the flat cars across heavy planks, fitted them into the constricted space allotted, and lashed them there with cleats.
The drivers struggled with the horses. The horses never got to like the Hommes and Chevaux. They rose on their haunches, at times crying out their disapproval. The men tugged at their halters, and persuaded them from the rear. A horse already in the narrow, shadowy car would look out and shake his head. It was often quite difficult to combat such friendly advice.
The stallions were a problem. If you put them together they gossiped about old scandals and ended by fighting jealously. If you placed them with lesser beasts they expressed their contempt with tooth and hoof.
“Get 'em in so tight they can't fight," crystallized the advice of most of the men, and it worked fairly well.
We got to know after a time which horses liked to travel together, and that simplified matters.
Drawn by Corporal Roos and Private Enroth
"The horses never got to like the Hommes and Chevaux"
bass drums. Noiselessness on the part of a horse was a symptom of extreme illness.
Sick horses were, in fact, a problem. Unless an animal was practically in rigor mortis we took him along. Sometimes one died en route then we had to telegraph ahead and make arrangements to evacuate him. Sometimes the sick survived the journey and died on the picket line afterwards. Infrequently they got well. It was the best we could do with animals as scarce as they were.
When a battery had finished loading it looked a good ​ deal like a circus train. The heads of horses appeared through the open doors of some box cars. Men sat, dangling their legs, in others. The fourgon always appeared gigantic on its fat, and behind it stretched the sleek inquisitive noses of the pieces and the stubby bulk of caissons and limbers. Usually the water cart and the rolling kitchen were on a flat next to the men's cars. Brown figures were busy about the kitchen, and a promising smoke belched from its chimney.
It was on that first journey that we learned to know and love the clumsy, sooty rolling-kitchen. On the road it was incredibly noisy, and it had a habit of shedding its parts; yet it stood frequently between us and hunger and cold. It was our best friend against evil weather and too much physical labor. On these train journeys it gave us hot food, and it made us independent of the very unsatisfactory coffee stops.
There were certain stations that were announced to us by that name. The train paused at them usually at inconvenient hours, long enough for the men to line up with mess cups which were filled with a black liquid from unappetizing pails. They were supposed to be a convenience, but they seemed to possess also a routine element. An interpreter would rush up to the officers' car sometime before reaching one of these places.
"Coffee stop in an hour. You will want coffee there." Not a question. A command.
The train commander would shake his head, pointing to the black cloud rising from the rolling kitchen. He could grin at the surprise and disapproval of the interpreter.
Corn willy, too, it ought not to be forgotten, loses much of its agony when warmed and disguised with some less dreadful substance such as canned tomatoes or stewed carrots.
Eating from the rolling kitchen introduced a sporting ​ element into our travels. The mess sergeant gambled on having his meal ready for a suitable stop. The train commander hazarded leaving many men behind when he ordered them to descend from their cars and form a line by the kitchen. For you couldn't tell much about the length of halts anywhere except at coffee or watering stops.
The train would pull up, let us say at noon. The mess sergeant would announce himself ready. The train commander would confer with the chef de gare. Sometimes the train commander would know French. More often he wouldn't.
"Ici!” he would say. “Combien de temps?”
The chef de gare would look at him, puzzled. Then a gleam of pleased intelligence would light his face.
"Oui. "Fait beaux temps—tres sec."
The train commander would look at him doubtfully. Did that mean much or little? Sec had a brief sound. One had to make sure. He would point, therefore, to the train, He would then with his hand indicate motion. He would display his wrist watch. He would wheedle:
"Ici! Beaucoup or petit?"
The chef de gare would smile in friendly fashion.
"Oui, Mon Capitaine. Beaucoup des Americans. Les Boches seront malade."
The captain's face would usually express an emotion bordering on tears—an eloquent emotion, which usually interpreted everything for the official. His face would brighten. He would look at his own watch. Realizing the futility of further words, he would carefully indicate two points on the dial.
​ “You know I'm picking up a lot of this lingo," he would boast contentedly.
Then the locomotive whistle would blow.
"That can't be for us!"
But the chef de gare would think otherwise. He would come running, waving his arms.
“En voiture! Vite! Lc train partira."
That's always easy enough to understand.
"Quarante minutes. Vous—dit."
The chef de gare would be through with argument. The engine driver, never having wasted words on the subject, would simply start the train, out of the kindness of his soul holding the pace down at first. The men would tumble back into the cars with their half-finished dinners. The details would come scurrying back with their pails. From all directions soldicrs who had gone in scarch of water would tear hack, tlicir clusters of cantccns tinkling pleasantly.
Usually everybody got aboard. Word would come back to the captain that the men had been checked. Then everyone would comment pleasantly on the customs of the country.
But as a rule we got fed, and it was good, very, very good.
Drawn by Capt. Starbuck F. and S.
"A group of gaunt walls suggested a devastating fire"
Up through Bordeaux, Perigueux, Limoges, Chateauroux, and Auxerre we journeyed towards the front. We expected our definite orders at Is-Sur-Til, but at noon on the 8th when we paused at Nuits Sous-Ravière we received a telegram which changed our route, and promised us orders at Chaumont. We got them there in the evening. We would detrain the next morning at Baccarat.
It rained that night. It was in depressing and gray weather that most of the regiment reached its destination.
Exactly as the entraining of one battery is much the same as another, just so the arrival of each organization at Baccarat differed only in the hour.
Escaping from sleep, we glanced from the cars at a strange France. The change was due to more than the dull sky, the drifting rain, and the deserted appearance of the little station.
Opposite stretched a row of depressing stone barracks, oddly scarred as if they had been for a long time neglected. Nearby a group of gaunt walls suggested a devastating fire. A large sign depended from the front of the station.
​ "Shelter for forty men."
There existed about that place an air of stealth and imminence. One responded to a feeling of the proximity of the Bosche. A man set down there unexpectedly would have taken one look and known himself in the war zone.
We asked the officer in charge of the yard if we could have breakfast before unloading. He looked at us as if he suspected our sanity, IIc glanced about with nervous eyes.
"Get this battery out of here," he said in a low tone, "as quickly as you can. Bosche planes come over all the time. You don't want to get caught, do you, with your whole outfit in this yard?"
We went to work without argument. It seldom took a battery, under those circumstances, more than an hour to desert its train,
The horses were hustled down the runways. The carriages were lowered along ready planks. The teams were harnessed and the battery stood ready for the road. We glanced often at the dull sky, our ears alert for the whir of aeroplane engines, or the crash of bombs. The air remained free of menace, but the sense of imminence persisted, and we were glad when a French guide appeared and told Colonel Johnson he was to conduct us to our bivouac. The column started. Colonel Johnson paused to confer with the colonel commanding the French artillery brigade which our brigade was to relieve. For three days later, the colonel said, a coup de main was planned. Colonel Johnson determined then to win permission for some of our artillery to take part in the preliminary bombardment, and he dashed ahead to Neuf Maisons where infantry brigade headquarters had been established.
The column, meantime, left Baccarat. The order was for a fifty meter interval between carriages so that if Bosche bombing planes appeared they would do a minimum of damage. ​There were a number of ruined buildings along the road, souvenirs of bombardments and bombing attacks. We turned into a woods road that breasted a hill, and rested at the top behind a heavy screen of evergreens. The first sounds of actual warfare reached us there. To everyone it seemed that we were too near the front for road training. The men fell silent. Faces were serious.
A good deal of that firing was undoubtedly from infantry grenade and small arms ranges, but we couldn't know that. We didn't even suspect it then. Our minds absorbed the bark of cannon, and the hateful stutter of machine guns as special menaces for us. We visualized ourselves as just behind the front line.
We reached finally a thick forest on the slope of a hill. Scattered among the trees were Adrian barracks and huts constructed of small logs and trees, of a pattern we had all seen in pictures of fighting in the Vosges.
This was the Bois de Grammont on the main road from Bertrichamps to Neuf Maisons. The Headquarters and Supply companies, we learned were in the woods by Bertrichamps. The Second Battalion would bivouac near them. Both these woods were too peaceful for war time. In their shelter even the firing we had heard fell away.
Drawn by Capt. Dana, Battery A The picket line
"A bad place for gas," Colonel Johnson decided.
"We're as close as that?" someone asked. "Rather near for a bivouac."
Colonel Johnson smiled, and whispered:
"Not a bivouac. It's our echelon."
Such a place didn't meet with one's preconceived notion. An ​ echclon, station of extra carriages, animals, men, and sup- plies just behind the lines, surely could not be as peaceful as this-peaceful and attractive even on a gray day.
“The first platoon of Battery A," the colonel said to Captain Dana, "will go into position to-morrow night."
It brought it very close, but those who got that first word received also the impression that the movement would be a temporary one, and that the battery would come out again after the coup de main, and that we would somehow get some road work. The colonel shook his head. The batteries would go into position as soon as possible after their arrival. The French would remain for a while to show us the ropes, but the task of supporting our infantry was now to be our own. How would the men accept such news in its raked uncxpectedness?
The National Army was a good deal of an experiment. It contained every type, race, and temperament. Had its brief training fused these uncongenial elements into a serviceable whole? Each battery commander asked himself this when he made his abrupt announcemeat immediately after his arrival, before his men had had an opportunity to forget the fatigue of their three days' journey. One such scene answers for the whole.
The day was about done. In the chilly shadow of the woods the battery stood in line. Shelter halves were draped from the men's arms. They waited for the order to take interval and pitch tents.
Except for a pleasant rustling of wind in the tree tops the forest was silent when the captain faced his command. “At ease!" he called.
There may have been something unfamiliar in his tone. The dead leaves of the forest carpet rustled with the rest. less movement of many feet. Serious, expectant eyes answered the battery commander's stern regard.
“Men," he began, "I have an announcement to make. I ​ know you have looked forward to a period of road training before going into action. My announcement is that you won't have it. You're going into the line. The first platoon of this battery will go in to-morrow night. The second platoon will follow the night after. That's all. Battery attention! Count off!"
Heels clicked together.
"One, two three, four. One, two, three, four."