# History of the 305th Field Artillery/The Fires Beyond Château-Thierry

XIV
THE FIRES BEYOND CHÂTEAU TIIIERRY
Our movement from the Baccarat positions was not as simple as we had expected. The road for its entire length was perfectly visible to Hun airmen, so it was advisable to march at night. The column was late starting, and it crawled, as such columns do, on traffic laden roads. Our schedule called for a bivouac at Magnières during the day of August 2nd. But it was long after daylight when the regiment arrived, anxiously glancing aloft; and by the time horses and men were settled the hour of departure was at hand.
Again the roads were packed, and progress was snail- like. It was nearly noon of the 3rd before the column, dusty and tired, entered its regrouping area on the Moselle. We hadn't imagined the movement of a single division could be so complicated and tedious.
That march, however, was not without its valuable impressions. For the most part it lay through the district of Lorraine, destroyed by the Germans during their retreat after the battle of the Couronne de Nancy, the eastern phase of the battle of the Marne. The smashed villages were now sketchily inhabited, and the fields were under cultivation again, but about this resurrection still clung an appearance and an odor of death.
​ Regimental headquarters and the Second Battalion were at Bainville. The First Battalion was at Mangonville, two kilometers to the south. The Headquarters and Supply Companies were in and about the charming chateau of Menil Mitry, three kilometers to the east of Bainville.
Significant changes were announced here. Among them was the transfer of General Rees, who had commanded the brigade, to other duties, and the appointment of Colonel Manus McClosky, soon to be made a brigadier general, to replace him. For a few days Colonel Doyle, as senior colonel remaining with the brigade, was in command. There was a feeling in the air that the changes wouldn't stop there.
Captain Dana, of course, was again in temporary command of the First Battalion. Captain Reed reported back from Souge on the first day and took over his duties of battalion adjutant while Lieutenant Klots went back to the Headquarters Company. These two officers set to work with a will to get the battalion ready for the serious work just ahead.
Captain Mitchell was transferred from Battery F to the Field and Staff as adjutant of the Second Battalion. Lieutenant Derby took command of Battery F.
We had expected two days in this regrouping area. They stretched into four, and no one was sorry for the delay. It was pleasant there, and we had a great deal to do. We settled down to straightening out the tangled paper work situation. We made more complete than before the divorce of the three details from the Headquarters Company. Men, animals, and equipment were reported to regimental and battalion headquarters, and were assigned to organizations for travel and rations. The Battery men, released at last from quarantine, reported back.
​ Regimental Headquarters, the remnant of the Headquarters Company, and the Second Battalion proceeded to Charmes on the 6th, where they entrained. The First Battalion and the Supply Company entrained at Finvaux on the 7th.
This movement was unlike the one from Souge. There a brigade had had a week to entrain. Now from a small section an entire division was going out practically in a single day. While there were a number of points of departure the congestion at each was such that a careful schedule had to be made and followed.
Each battery broke park and took the road at a stated moment. It arrived at its entraining point at a given time. It fed and watered according to the clock. We passed large parties of our doughboys manoeuvering in the fields while they waited their turn at the trains. They intcrcsted us. We intrigued them. Their glances followed the long, overladen column from which the sleek snouts of the pieces, escaping from burdens of forage and equipment, peered at them encouragingly.
The Supply Company was off first. Battery A commenced entraining at 2 o'clock and was completely loaded at 3:30. Before the train had pulled out the head of Battery B was on the ramp. Before B had gone C appcared and was ready to load.
At Charmes there was a similar precision of movement. We were surprised to lcarn how much we had profited by our one previous experience. The drivers made short work of refractory animals. The carriages seemed to roll into their places on the flats automatically.
​Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/190 ​Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/191 ​ wasn't exceptional. Going into billets for a battery is always much the same problem, much the same mad struga gle for a solution. And, when it's reached, the solution is always about the same. Yet invariably out of the confusion emerges a sort of order and comfort. Eventually we became more than ever like a great traveling circus whose discipline automatically repairs the mistakes of a poor advance man. And that isn't intended as any reflection on our billeting officers and non-commissioned officers. They, as a rule, had too much to do, and they were restricted to too small an area by the advance agents of the division.
Some towns had a better welcome for infantry than for artillery, but that fact didn't seem always to be appreciated. Besides billets for officers and men, the artillery needed ground suitable for extensive picket lines and gun parks, and no matter how suitable the ground you couldn't establish either near the front without overhead cover.
Organizations, whether they arrived in the afternoon or during the dark hours, ran into much the same conditions in those billets north of Coulommiers. The billeting officers couldn't be all over the district, so the non-commissioned aides, as a rule faced the battery commanders alone.
One always experienced a quick sympathy for these unfortunates. Invariably they glowed with a naive pride. They always produced careful lists, showing the billets available, and the number of men that could be housed in each. A battery commander going into billets, however, is only interested at first in two things.
"The picket line and the gun park!” he cries as be meets his man.
A Train Bivouaced
tired drivers. It is seldom that the places chosen for the picket line and the park please. The ground is swampy, or there isn't enough room, or the tree trunks are too small, or —
The most indifferent commander can find something lacking in the most perfect park or line.
The advance agent, of course, isn't to blame for these short-comings. The town major, as a rule, has given him no choice.
"That's it,” he has said. "Take it or leave it."
But a battery commander doesn't analyze causes when he is displeased by effects. He decides darkly to make the best of things. He considers his disappointed advance man.
"All right," he says. "The thing's impossible. You ought to have done better than this, Smith, but it's getting dark. We'll make it do. Undoubtedly you've arranged to billet the drivers in a group close to the picket line, and the cannoncers by the park. Explain your distribution to the first sergeant."
If the advance agent is a man of parts he salutes, seeks the first scrgcant, curses, and with him arranges some kind of a compromisc. If, on the other hand, he flushes and stammers forward with facts about some of the billets be- ing large and some small, and cverything scattered through the town and the surrounding country, he usually tries the battery commander's paticnce too far. Then he sees himself as others see him.
As soon as the animals are arranged for, and he is certain his men will have some kind of a lodging, the battery commander turns his attention to the kitchen. The site of this, too, has been more often than not an arbitrary selection of the town major's. It is nearly always in a farmyard, redolent and wet with manure, and thronged by an assortment of unclean animals.
It is at this point that the billeting non-commissioned ​Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/196 ​Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/197