# History of the 305th Field Artillery/The Last Phase

XXII
THE LAST PHASE
The clans gathered again at La Chalade, and made ready to hurry back to the line. During the period of rest cveryone had found time to read the papers. It was known that the Germans had asked for peace; that notes had passed back and forth; but at the front no one took the news very seriously. There was too much to be done. The men had become so absorbed by the war that at last they had borrowed something of the French attitude. The thing appeared elernal.
The question of transportation caused worry and wonderment. The regiment had received replacements of men, but none of horses. How was it going to be possible to move guns and ammunition with the few animals left? The answer came a little later in an unexpected form.
On October 27th the echelon was established at Chatel-Cheherry, and Regimental Headquarters and First Battalion Headquarters settled themselves in a house at Corpay. The First Battalion guns were a kilometer to the north.
The Second Battalion guns were in the same valley as the First, but to the left, near the town of Marc. Major Easterday and Captain Starbuck made a careful reconnaissance of the front. Firing opened on November 1st.
Again the advance was large, and on November 2nd the regiment moved forward to the vicinity of Verpel.
First Class Private Abel S. Virkler, of Battery C was ​ hit by a fragment on November 2nd and killed while at work at his battery position.
At midnight of that day the transportation problem was solved in a radical fashion. The orders for the move had evidently come from high up. Colonel Doyle summoned Majors Easterday and Wanvig to Champigneulles. There the colonel told the two majors that the regiment would be split. The First Battalion would continue as a combat battalion. The Second would act as its combat train. It would turn over to the First, horses, wire, telephones, and other equipment.
Such a move was inevitable. More than once in heavy weather the horses had been unable lo draw the pieces without the aid of cannoneers. The weather could be counted on now for much rain and the consequent mud.
The battery commanders, in pursuance to this order, met Major Easterday in Verpel, and the dispositions were settled upon. The echelon was established there. Captain Derby, who had recently been promoted with Captain Pike, was placed in charge. Captain Storer was given command of the combat train and instructed to keep always in the train 2000 rounds. Major Wanvig and his staff, of course, were responsible for both the echelon and the train.
Under these new conditions the regiment moved forward towards the Meuse. On November 3rd the firing batteries passed through Buzancy. The town had been fired by the Germans and was in flames. Civilians, who had been under the German yoke for four years, hurried to the rear with what belongings they could save. They were clearly grateful to see the Americans, but such emotion as theirs does not express itself demonstratively.
Drawn by Corporal Tucker, Hq. Co.
Binarville and its surroundings
These officers with a piece each, and a cart full of ammunition, went forward to the infantry, and fired on whatever targets the infantry commander chose. It was dangerous work. Our officers went into position, practically in the open, and fired at German machine gun nests, and received from the infantry a gratifying amount of praise.
On the evening of the 3rd the First Battalion moved forward to Fontenoy. Regimental Headquarters also located its command post in the village. First Class Private William Kuttler, one of the regimental messengers, was killed on the road near Fontenoy that day. He was walking behind an escort wagon and was close to a party of infantry when a shell burst in the bank at the side of the ​ road. Kuttler was the only man of our regiment hit, but seven infantrymen were killed and a number wounded.
On the same day Lieutenant Charles Graham was wounded by a shell fragment and cvacuated. The regiment remained in Fontenoy the 3rd and 4th, then moved into Stone, placing the three firing batteries in position in the valley to the south-west.
The civilian population in Stone welcomed the Americans as saviours. Men and women said the Germans beľore fleeing, had instructed them to take refuge in the church, promising not to shell the town for 24 hours. Scarcely, however, had they gone than the place was drenched with gas shells, and, of course, the civilians had no gas masks.
The next day another forward move was made to Flaba. Rations were scarce. Often the men had given of their issue to the civilians. Here the civilians gave the soldiers black German bread which the hungry men had not experienced before. The result was a sad amount of indigestion and a heightened sympathy for those who had been compelled to live for so long under the Hun food regulations.
There was no firing from these positions, and on November 6th Batteries A, B, and C, moved a half a kilometer to the east of Harraucourt, into range of the leights across the Mcuse. The Second Battalion, acting as combat train, had kept pace with all these changes and had assured the supply of ammunition. Here the regiment remained until the signing of the armistice, five days later.
On the day the pieces moved into the final positions the regiment had its last casualty in action. Second Lieutenant Leon H. Hattemer, who had come to the 305th on the Vesle, was killed by a machine gun bullet, while in liaison with the infantry. The nearness of the end made
Drawn by Corporal Roos and Private Enroth
Refugees going out the artillery going in
Lieutenants Burden and Bullen, and Private Gormley were mentioned in division orders for their work during the Argonne fighting.
A few new officers were assigned during this last offensive. Second Lieutenant Augus R. Allmond had come on October 10th. Three other officers were with the regiment for a few weeks but were transferred away again to other branches of the service. On November 10th, the day before the armistice, Major Edwin A. Zundel was assigned to the command of the First Battalion to replace Major Easterday, whose promotion to a Lieutenant-colonelcy had just come through. Colonel Easterday had commanded the battalion from Nesles Woods to the Meuse Heights, that is during its most active combat experience. For his aggressiveness, and his daring in reconnaissance he was cited afterwards in division orders. He was a familiar figure near the front lines on foot, on his horse, or dashing about in a motorcycle. Once he and his driver wandered past the pickets and into a village filled with German soldiers, preparing to depart. Easterday told the driver to turn around, and before the Huns had ​ recovered from their astonishment, he was rushing back to his command. By virtue of his new rank he went to Regimental Headquarters as second in command.
With Major Zundel came Second Lieutenants Solomon Abelow and Horace Heyday. The next day the war was over.
The fact of the armistice had been announced during the morning, but the regiment was skeptical, and went about its business. When the firing stopped the men at- tended to their routine duties and grinned wisely when- ever anyone tried to tell them the show was at an end. The silence at last made an impression, and, as a band appeared, victoriously playing at the head of a reginient of Moroccans, the majority conceded that there might be something in the rumor.
There were, however, cases of chronic doubt. Sergeant Joseph, of the band, for example, had been left some distance in the rear to guard a reel cart. He picked up what he could to cat from neighboring units, but on the whole, was a hungry sentry. On November 14th a doughboy passed him in his isolated retreat, came up, and burst into a laugh.
"Hay, Buddy! What you wearing your gas mask in the alert for?"
“Orders," from the sergeant.
A guffaw from the visitor.
"The war's been over three days."
“I've heard that before," replied the sergeant drily. Somehow this fellow managed to persuade him.
​The 305th was billeted in Verpel for a time, and the period of leaves commenced. After one or two stops by the way the regiment detrained at Latrecy and marched to Arc-en-Barrois, a charming and hospitable village in the Haute Marne, where it remained in the midst of rumors of departure until February 9th.
Here an elaborate schedule of training went into effect, based on ancient methods of firing, so that some had a good time talking wisely and extensively about aiming points, designation of targets, and P minus T. Also scandals of ammunition and equipment were laid bare at leisure. And everybody was brought into close personal touch with the High Cost of Living.
Drawn by Private Enroth, Battery D The Church at Arc-en-Barrois
But there was a difference. Officers and men followed out the appointed schedules, but their spirits were at home. There was no desperate and necessary future to which this training led. It had the air of killing time and keeping men occupied. And many soldiers wanted to learn things that would be useful to them on their return to America and work. The days slipped away beneath heavy skies, and a downpour nearly perpetual. Athletics got a start with soccer football on New Year's Day.
Photograph Taken by Band Leader Fisher, Hq. Co.
The Officers of the Regiment at Arc-en-Barrois
had gone in December, and there was an uncomfortable feeling that the dread disease was always with us. The latter part of January men commenced to report sick by the scorc.
One day thirty would be evacuated. Another we would say good-by to forty. The evacuations worked up to fifty or more, and we knew each day that some of the men that climbcd, feverish and ill, into the ambulance, would not comc back.
In this emergericy, Major Miller worked day and night. Sporadic cases of typhoid complicated his labor. His suc- ccss, however, permitted the regiment to leave for the cmbarkation center on February 9th.
The bitter cold, the snow covering the ground, the pros- pect of cattle cars, didn't effect the joy the men took in this move towards home.
The train was composed of ancient cars. It crawled. A journey that one might take in a regular train in eight or nine hours consumed for us, cramped, cold, and uncom- fortable, about sixty hours. We recalled the days before the armistice when we had been of more value to people generally; when we had been rushed long distances into action at express rate specd.
And that trip will be eternally colored in our minds by Lieutenant Arthur Robinson's death. Alter accepting all the chances of the front with a cheerful and inspiring indifference which had won for him the Distinguished Service Cross, Robinson was accidentally killed on the night of February 10th at the little station of Chatillon- sur-Cher. Ile had stepped from our train which was standing on a siding. The fastest train on the road--an American special--torc by at a terrific rate of speed strik- ing the open door of a compartment. Robinson was struck by this door. He was buricd with full military honors in the American cemetery at Angers.
It was not like a death in action. Everyone, officers ​ and men, had liked and admired Robinson. His death cast a persistent shadow over the regiment.
During the evening of February 11th the 305th entered Malicorne, a pottery town on the beautiful Sarthe River. The people were rather different from those at Arc, but after a time they learned to like the Americans. There we stayed until the 17th of April, drilling, getting reviewed and inspected, and chasing the elusive coolie, so that we should be rushed through Brest. The weather was sufficiently warm to permit us to develop a baseball team that closed an extended divisional season undefeated.
When we reached Pontanezin on the 18th we realized that we were, indeed, veterans, that we had really been pioneers in the A. E. F. For Pontanezin had grown out of all recognition since our visit of the year before. Then it had been nearly as the French had turned it over—a group of old barracks and a few tents. Now it covered many acres. The original camp was lost in the midst of countless huts and tents. Whatever horrors the place may have contained we failed to experience. We were there only two days, and the weather was clear and warm. On Sunday, April 20th, we marched into Brest, survived the mad confusion of loading baggage and men from pier to tender, and from tender to ship, and by nightfall were packed on the transport Agamemnon, the old German liner Kaiser Wilhelm the Second.
We sailed at noon of the 21st out of the harbor of Brest, "a good deal wiser," as one man put it, "than when we had landed.”
Drawn by Private Enroth, Battery D.
Malicorne from the Sarthe
The story of that day of homecoming is in everyone's heart-a trifle vague still, perhaps, because it was difficult to realize that we were, after more than a year, again in New York Harbor; that, where twelve months before we had slipped out, hidden between decks, we were now steaming noisily in, surrounded by cutters and ferryboats, decorated with banners and filled with shouting friends.
Everything, indeed, was reversed. But on the pier there were still men and women who gave us things to eat and smoke. We piled on to the same ferryboats, and went around the welcoming town to Long Island City.
That night we reached Camp Mills, and the next morning, after a final delousing, half the regiment went home for forty-eight hours, the other fifty per-cent. following two days later.
Even then you had a feeling that you were through. You could count already the hours that separated you from a return to a normal life, a final rupture from the service to which everyone had given himself whole-heartedly, but with which nearly everybody wanted to be done now that the emergency was over.
The parade alone held us. We went to New York Monday morning for that, left our equipment in the 9th Regiment armory, spent Monday and Tuesday night home, and on Tuesday morning marched up Fifth Avenue from Washington Square to 110th Street, where we saw the last of our Division and Brigade commanders.
The return to Upton the next day was the commencement of the final phase. There, where the regiment had been born, it was to end its career. Upton had altered little, yet it seemed oddly different. That was because it was ourselves we had changed.
At Upton the machinery of demobilization seemed to be out of repair by day and to grind only during the dark hours. After three nearly sleepless nights the last for​ malities had been complied with, and organizations gathered in a pouring rain for their final pay and their railroad tickets home. Men glanced proudly at the red chevrons on their left arms signifying discharge. They walked, in formation for the last time, to the familiar railroad station where organization commanders and officers gave them their discharges and shook hands as they passed through the gates-civilians after one of the best jobs soldiers ever did. And with tliis breaking up of the 305th Field Artillery died a good deal that was fine, a good deal that you couldn't see vanish without regret. Yet, although it may seem paradoxical, few would care to watch its completest resurrection, because that would mean also the rebirth of the conditions on which it was built.
No more that great communal chorus "When do we eat?”
No more the revolt in one's heart at the best cursed music in the world, First Call!
No niore tcaring one's hair at Paper Work!
No more elaborate language or strong arm competitions with the Red Hats!
Even the first sergeant got a sympathetic thought that last morning.
His piercing whistle at reveille had a special significance.
And so did his loud, uncompromising, and final:
“Outside!"
THE END
APPENDIX