# History of the 305th Field Artillery/Les Près Farm and Much Shell Fire

XVII
LES PRÈS FARM AND MUCH SHELL FIRE
Early as we were, the roads were crowded from the first. The two other regiments of the brigade had had the same idea of an early start. Quads, bearing ammunition, and ration trucks, bumped along, their drivers sarcastic and anxious. There was a great deal of infantry outsome fantassins, and very many of our own doughboys. A lot of heavy firing made the dusk noisy. The darkness came down nearly impenetrable and ominous. Frequently now the column halted.
There's plenty of chance in war. B's platoon had its captain. A's was in command of a lieutenant. During one of these balts B slipped past A, and a little later got what might have been A's share.
But it was all rather confusing, and conditions got worse on the main road above Mareuil. Shells came perpetually like unseen fingers tearing the black pall of night. One knew that they wouldn't all fall over or short. The halts were continual, and, because of the congestion, you couldn't keep your carriages separated.
E got it first. Shrapnel popped overhead, but nobody bothered much about that. Then a high explosive shell burst on the road in the midst of the platoon, and horses reared and tried to pull free, making queerly human sounds. It was impossible to tell at first how much damage had been done. Officers and non-commissioned officers rode up and down the line, shouting and exhorting, but they might as well have saved their breath. There was ​ no panic among the men. Nor, miraculously, had a man been hit. Two horses had been killed, and their train mates were dangerously active.
"Cut 'em out," came the quick command. "Haul 'em over to the ditch, if you can. But let's go on."
The flashes from bursting shells helped the drivers. The dead animals were cut out and drawn to one side. The platoon moved ahead.
It wasn't all shrapnel and high explosive. As the column approached Chartrcuve Farm gas shells came over in a dangerous concentration. Reluctantly men put on their respirators, shutting out what little light there was. They struggled with frightened horses and got the awkward masks over their muzzles. They went on through a suffocating blackness. The few commands were choked, and had to be mumbled from mouth to mouth, It was under these uncomfortable circumstances that B suffered. The column was blocked again near Chartreuve crossroads. B was just short of the junction, clearly a registered point, consequently a dangerous one. Yet there was nothing to do about it. Some outfit has to be caught at or near crossroads in these blocks. You can ride ahead if you like, and try your hand at straightening out the tangle, but in the majority of cases you come back with nothing accomplished, and you stand still, or sit your horse, and pray for the movement of the units ahead of you. The Hun came down on the crossroads, and some of the shells fell among the waiting cannoncers and drivers of B. Even in the blinding respirators it was easy to see that men and horses were down. The horses screamed, and there came a whimpering cry from some hurt fellow for his mother.
​ "It would be a hell of a war, boys, if nobody got killed,"
“Where's the Captain?"
The Captain's horse stood riderless near the head of the platoon. Lieutenant Montgomery found his orderly, and that anxiety was removed. The Captain had gone ahead on foot to try to break the jam. Lieutenant Montgomery sent a messenger to report what had happened, and with his own hands attended as best he could to the wounded.
There was nothing to be done for Private John W. Whetstone. He had been instantly killed. Private Harry E. Kronfield, it was clear, hadn't long to live. An ambulance, by rare good luck, was struggling through the jam at this point. It picked Kronfield up and hurried him to a first aid station, but he died before morning. This ambulance also took Private Douglas Tredendall, so severely hurt that he was evacuated and never returned to the regiment, and Private Joseph Horowitz. His injury was particularly unfortunate as he was the medical orderly with the platoon. His task of mercy was very brief. With one arm blown away he was evacuated and we didn't see him again. First Class Private George A. Thomas was wounded less seriously.
By the time these men had been cared for and the horses cut out the jam broke, and the column pounded on towards Les Près Farm.
D battery had no casualties on the way up. Its first platoon went, as did E's temporarily on to the hill above the farm. There was a lot of gas there and several bursts of heavy shelling. By choosing quieter moments, however, Captain Starbuck got his guns in and his limbers and caissons started for home.
Corporal Connie F. Geer was in charge of the second piece caisson. Going back the traffic had thinned out a good deal so that the column moved rapidly. Corporal Geer had been particularly cheery and helpful during the ​ trying moments when the caissons had dumped their ammunition at the position. On the return journey he was at the rear of the column. Hc went back often to make sure there was no straggling. The train must have been half way home when one of his men reported Geer missing. A search of the road was unsuccessful. The shelling was still heavy, and it was necessary to get men, horses, and carriages back to the echelon. There a report was made, and Lieutenant Hoadley set out with a party. They found Corporal Geer's body at the lip of a fresh crater close to the side of the road. His death had probably been instantaneous. He was buried that day in a quiet corner of Nesles Woods.
Even at the echelon the night didn't wear itself away very comfortably. Regimental Headquarters had moved to La Tuillerie Farm that afternoon. At midnight a messenger arrived with a note from Colonel Doyle for the battalion commanders, explaining the arrangements for going in. This impressed some as altering a few of the dispositions. There were excited conferences. One, some of us will recall was held in a fourgon, heavily blanketed with horse covers. Even so, the light of the single candle within escaped wanly here and there. Outraged cries roared through the forest.
"Put out that light, you—fool!"
"If you want to croak go and do it by yourself."
​ The details went up on the morning of the 16th.
The movement of a detail was never a very dignified proceeding. Details went in for efliciency rather than appearance. The surrey was always an absurdity on a shell-toru road. There was never anything less military. But it carried a lot of stuff.
Doughboys used to grin at the group of very military appearing horsemen followed by a couple rambling cobs which drew this vchicle with its fringes flapping from a bent top. Underneatlı were piled switchboards, tele- phones, instruments of precision, and spare wire.
Everybody got to the farm, and pitched in. Officers and men of the battalion details, in spite of the fire, got an idea of where the lines ran, and how they were laid. They also appraised the task that lay ahead. These lines were continually shelled out. Some improvement could be made by relaying here and there, but at best it was going to be nasty work. I'or thc Iluns had so much artillery and ammunition that they didn't hesitate to suipe with 775 or Austrian 88s at a single man at work in the barren fields.
The detail men in such warfare have rather the worst of it. They work, as a rule, in pairs on the lines, or in an exposed observatory, or on the edge of woods, doing the careful work of a surveyor under the most distracting conditions. And it is always simpler to be brave in a crowd.
A Neighbor at Work in Gas Masks
The observatories looked nastier than their reputation, but we had to use the ridge above the farm. The regimental and the two battalion observatories were there, so close together that they were really one. Besides, the ridge was sprinkled with the observatories of other organizations, with division and corps stations; and the infantry had a reserve line near. All this activity added to the discomforts of that exposed place. Lieutenant Thornton Thayer had spent the previous night there and had got the lay of the land. We sent our observors and operators up, and, although an officer of the 16th remained for several hours afterwards, practically took over at noon.
Mess-hour at the Fismes front Drawn by Private Everts, Battery E
Lieutenants MacNair and Graham were already down with the infantry, and we sent eight enlisted men to them to act as runners. It was found advisable at the start to alternate this work between the two battalions, so that after the first day only one officer and one group of men were with the infantry at one time. Such liaison was particularly dangerous in this sector. The infantry received a lot of high explosive, and, because of the low ground near the Vesle, suffered from gas more than the artillery. Yet it was really the only liaison we had, beyond rocket signals. It had been found difficult to maintain a telephone line between infantry and artillery battalion ​ headquarters in spite of the division liaison order which gave to the infantry the task of laying and maintaining such a line. We put a wire through to a forward observa- tory at Mount St. Martin, very close to the front line, but because of the constant inoveinent of battalion head- quarters and the shortage of men, the infantry never hooked up with it. We connected with the infantry net through one of their switchboards, and when they had wire communication with their front line troops we did too. But in such a type of warfare runners furnish the only dependable communication, and our men were on the road day and night.
The sun set hot and red that first night in, and with his going Jerry awakened to a new interest in us. There were no dugouts. Men not on duty crawled into such funk holes as existed or into the stilling cellars at battalion headquarters.
Privates Shackman and Silber had already been sent to the observatory to act as operators. Lieutenant Thayer left the shelter of the cellar and with Corporal Tucker dodged up the hill to relieve the officer and the men of the 16th. At Boston, as the observatory was called, there was, at that time, for protection only two narrow trenches, five or six yards apart, one for the operators, the other for the observers. They were less than six feet deep. They had no overhead cover.
A few minutes after the arrival of our party a thick cur- tain of high explosives descended on the ridge. The ugly little volcanoes bracketed Boston while our men crouched in the trenches. The curtain lifted. Perhaps it was just an evening hymn of late, and the rest of the night would pass without music.
Drawn by Corporal Roos, Battery D
"O.K.—O.K."
Lieutenant Thayer and the 16th officer decided to take their men to a flank until the show should end.
"Jump out and run for it after the next shell," they directed.
One burst closer than before. The little party clambered from the trenches. Some were quicker than others. A following shell hit directly on the lip of the smaller trench. The 16th officer fell back, his rain coat drilled full of jagged holes. Private Martin W. Silber slipped in on top of him, and the rest turned back without hesitation to see what could be done. They lifted Silber out. He was dead. The 16th officer had not been injured.
So those that remained dashed to the left and fell in shell holes where they waited for the curtain to lift again. But gas came in for a time with the high explosive, and they put on their respirators and worked from shell hole to shell hole until they were out of range.
In the command posts at the farm everyone knew the ridge and the crossroads were getting it. Our men were in the observatory and our platoons before long would have to pass the crossroads.
A drop on the switchboard fell.
“Silber's dead," the operator commented.
He commenced to test.
“O.K.—O. K."
He paused, He whirred the magneto of his home telephone.
“Red line out, sir."
A moment later he reported two other lines out. That's the way they went at Les Près.
Linesinen left through the noisy darkness with coils of wire and testing telephones over their shoulders.
In the First Battalion cellar the operator called to Major Easterday.
​ The major lifted the hand set.
"Tucker. Which one is he?" he asked, You see he had only been with the regiment a few days then.
“What's the matter with Tucker?" Reed asked.
"First battalion says they've just heard he's been killed."
There were close personal friends of Tucker's among the detail in that cellar. They swore softly as they went about their jobs.
As the major replaced the telephone hand set on the table the blanket which hung as a curtain at the cellar entrance waved. A hand drew it aside and in stepped Corporal Tucker.
Our men didn't believe in ghosts. They grasped his hand and a laugh burst out.
Tucker denied the Second Battalion's story, and made his report. Thayer had sent word by him that he was going to establish a new observatory. We had gone over the ground with a line tooth comb. The change in the location of the observatory would only be a matter of a few yards. A digging detail was ordered up to him with a guide. Lieutenant Klots, with a number of bandsmeni, bearing picks and shovels, arrived about the same time, and started to dig in a regimental observatory. Cor- poral Caen ran up to stand by the telephone in the old observatory until the change could be made to the new ones, And all night the Hun remembered the ridge with high explosive and gas, while stray aeroplanes swooped low there, to let fall a bomb or two.
The curtain in the ccllar swung in again.
"For the Lord's sake keep that curtain down," somebody grumbled. "If an acroplane sees this candle we'll be bombed out in a jiffy."
But it was a battery commander who had balted his ​ platoon at the crossroads. He took off his helmet. The perspiration poured from his hair. What, he asked the major, should he do about his platoon? He didn't want to lose his men or his pieces if he could help it, and the shelling down there was particularly vicious. Vor was there any way around.
"Watch your chance and take them through one at a time," the major said shortly.
The battery commander nodded, replaced his helmet, and backed cautiously out.
"Somebody on the line for the major of the 16th," the switchboard man called.
The 16th officers had sat there for some time, waiting only to hear that the relief was complete before striking out for quieter parts. The 16th major answered the call and looked annoyed. We gathered that an ammunition dump at the C position had been hit and was burning. His officer in command there evidently wanted to know what he should do.
"Go in and put it out," the 16th major said, and lowered the hand set.
Almost at once, it seemed to those in the cellar, the same drop rattled again, and the operator asked for the same officer. The 16th major picked up the hand set with a frown. Then his expresson altered, and when he spoke his voice had changed, too.
"Wolff is dead," he said to Major Easterday, and everyone knew he spoke of the officer in command of the C position whom he had just ordered into the burning dump.
"Wolff is dead," he repeated, "and Dean, the only other officer I have there, is wounded. You don't take over until the relief is complete. I'll have to get one of the 16th's officers. Who is Robinson?"
​ No one asked for a moment, because it seemed certain that Robinson had been struck, also. The 16th major shook his head when at last the question had been asked.
"No, he's taken command. He seems to know what he is about."
Robinson did. It was for that affair that he and Corporal Johnson were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Wolff and he had been sitting together in a funk hole, and Wolff had just said to him, expecting to leave with the last of his battery in a few moments:
"You know, Robinson, I'm not so sure I'm going to get out of this place alive after all.”
He had laughed a little, and just then the shell had tumbled into the dump, and he had telephoned battalion headquarters and had asked what he should do about it. He, and his assistant Dean, and Robinson had all gone in, carrying dirt which they had thrown on the popping shells.
Robinson had just gone out for more dirt, and Deane was starting when the explosion occurred. There had been shrapnel there. While it was still bursting Robinson had dashed in. Corporal Johnson, without any command, without any request, had followed him, and they had dragged out Wolff's body, and the wounded lieutenant. It was then that Robinson had reported.
The major of the 16th looked very tired. At last he shrugged his shoulders, and called up his colonel.
"Wolff's dead. Dean's hurt. Burning dump. What? One officer of the 305th, but I'm getting an officer over to stay until the relief's complete."
It seemed at times as if that formality would never be accomplished. We got reports from A, and, at last from C. But B hadn't reported its second platoon in yet, or its command post moved to the new position. So we sat and waited.
We had had a number of gas alarms during the evening. ​ Time after time our gas guard bad wound his klaxon, and time after time we had struggled into respirators, and the switchboard operators had lcarned how difficult it was to talk intelligibly through a mask. But we had suspected nothing worse than mustard gas. While we sat impatiently there an officer of the 16th stumbled down the cellar steps and tbrough the curtain. He scemed to be in a hurry, and his face was white. From a corner a quiet voice spoke:
"There's phosgine in this ccllar."
The penetrating, sickly odor, was apparent to everyonc. Masks went on with a rush. The newcomer, however, didn't disturb his. He waved his hand deprecatingly. It trembled a trifle.
"Don't bother. I think I've brought it in on my clothes. Those shells are all over the hillside. Good Lord! I tell you one of them fell at my feet. Don't know why the rotten thing didn't hit me. When are we getting out, Major?"
The major shook his head. Nobody knew. It was B that held us up, and we tried them again. This time there was no answer to our call. We tried them through A and C. They were out of touch with the world.
Over there on the edge of Death Valley the B signal men worked frantically with a coil of twisted pair that had been snarled Half a mile from the new battery position. We established runners from that point to the battery so that the relief could be reported and communication of a sort maintained until daylight when the battalion detail ran a new line in.
At midnight, then, the 16th was through, and it went out of Les Près Farm, leaving us our own masters.
We gazed upon our new kingdom. In the stilling cellars such men as were not on duty tried to sleep. They lay sprawled on the dirt floor, endeavoring in their reat​ lessness to keep out of each other's way. Their respirators were conveniently at hand.
At the positions men crouched in funk holes, sleeping by turn. There lay one moaning softly with a bad touch of shell shock. Now and then a soldier paused and spoke to him sympathetically; for the hardicst realized that this was illness, not cowardicc. You had only to feel his weak and rapid pulse. The surgeon was on his way.
Details struggled with the flat tops, softening angles against the daylight. Nearly motionless the rocket guards gazed in the direction of Boston. Vestling against the lip of the bill was a wan patch, like a dying bit of fox fire. It was a shelter tent, blanketed, and with flaps down where two officers worked over the intricate figures of new barrages.
Even in that unrevealing starlight each man you saw projected an expression of extreme weariness. And already many were ill with the dysentery that got us all sooner or later. And there was no prospect ahead of real sleep as long as we should stay in that place.
There seemed no diminution in the fire even when the stars paled. The details took advantage of the first light and went over the lines while Hun aeroplanes loafed about the ridge and the positions.
Instead of the brisk fresliness of early morning we breathed the warning odor of animal decay.
Drawn by Corporal Roos, Battery D
A Kitchen near a Battery Position