History of the 305th Field Artillery/Across the Marne to Nesles Woods
XV
ACROSS THE MARNE TO NESLES WOODS
More detailed orders reached us the next day. We would take the road Saturday, the 10th, and march thirty odd kilometers before the next morning to Chezy-sur-Marne. The next night we would cover approximately twenty kilometers to a point to be chosen near Courpoil. The third night we would complete our journey to Nesles Woods, which had recently been cleared of the enemy.
We pored over our maps. The march would be a forced one. It would carry us through the heart of the salient. Chezy was only a few miles from Chateau Thierry. Courpoil probably smoked from the fierce fighting it had witnessed. Nesles Woods lay between Fere-en-Tardenois and Fismes.
We spent Friday getting ready. In our spare moments we wrote letters home.
That afternoon we were summoned to brigade headquarters in Doue to meet the new brigade commander. He intimated the serious nature of our next step. Afterwards Colonel Doyle gave the organization commanders an extended talk about aiming points and the identification of targets.
Since it was understood we couldn’t safely start our march before four o’clock the next afternoon, everyone hoped for a good sleep Friday night. The men needed it, but they didn’t get it. About 9 o’clock regimental headquarters stirred itself and began sending orders to the battalions by bicycle messengers. The first was to the effect that we would be prepared to take the road by eight o'clock the next morning. That meant reveille around four o'clock. Other orders came to send teams and G. S. carts to various points to change and move equipment. It wasn't until 2 o'clock Saturday morning that the excitement subsided. Bicycle Messenger Montgomery came around then with a verbal order that we wouldn't move until the time we had been given originally, four o'clock in the afternoon. We took advantage then of what remained of the mutilated night.
The regiment was to rendezvous at Doue. It would take its place in the brigade column on the national highway beyond. So at four o'clock each organization mounted and pulled out of its comfortable billets. August smiled its best that afternoon. The cheerful countryside seemed reluctant to let us go, Natives watched us with emotionless faces. In their eyes we saw dull souvenirs of four years of departures.
In the old days of pitched battles men walked from their bivouac directly into the obliterating shock of a fight whose duration was a matter of hours. Maybe that was simpler than to move as we did for three nights into a battle apparently without cud, with sights and sound of a new and peculiar brutality crowding each moment closer about us.
We did get tired.
During our wait at the rendezvous we drank hot coffee, and munched cold rations. When we turned into the straight national highway, flanked by huge lime trees, we could see the entire brigade stretching before and behind us. French and American trucks snorted past without end.
The pleasant, warm sun sank lower. By twilight, on the outskirts of a town, we watched youths of the French 1920 class, freshened after their day's training, walking Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/200 Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/201 Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/202 Shoulders drooped again.
"Ha-a-a-lt!"
The command sang down the line like a savage chant. The regiment dismounted. One by one men dropped over against the bank, and drifted into sleep, keeping a listless hand on bridles. The horses, weary too, for the most part stood with drooped heads, not even troubling to nibble the lush grass. Now and then one would wander indifferently from the feebly restraining grasp of his master. An officer would rebuke sleepily, consigning the careless one to walk the rest of that stage. At such a time the world seemed drunk with sleep.
A dim headlight pushed through the mist below—guiding one of the first trains, we guessed, to carry troops along the reopened Château Thierry line.
The dawn strengthened. It grasped the fringes of the mist and lifted it slowly from the valley. A stream, like a ribbon, narrow and decorative, was strung across the fields.
Tired eyes opened to gaze with an expression of discovery at the pleasant little river that twice had been wider than the ocean to Germany.
We resumed our crawling. There was no longer any reason in mounting and dismounting. We would go ahead few paces, then stop again. An anxiety grasped the command to get somewheres beneath green trees before the light should grow much stronger. Then we saw the head of the column moving to the left to be swallowed by
On the march
from the inain road anyway? We'd have to come back by dark again over this risky trail. And our horses were tired. The only excuse that occurred to us was that we were going to a particularly safe and convenient bivouac.
As the east grow ruddy the flashes faded. We saw a fourgon on its side by the road. The horses stood by, gazing at it with rather a pleased air. Tired soldiers made unavailing efforts to get it up.
"No sleep for those guys," wc said pityingly. "They'll have to unpack everything, jack her up, and pack again." "Say, that must be a peach of a bivouac we're going to." It wasn't.
Just ahead two large masses of forest barely detached themselves from the slow dawn. There was an open field between. Some of the batteries were already strung out along the edge of the woods. The rest of the column halted. A group of officers and men stood in the field, talking and gesticulating. One heard:
"Who made the reconnaissance for this blasted thing?"
There had been a reconnaissance the previous day, but something certainly had gone wrong. We asked eager questions. The woods in spite of their size were for the most part choked with underbrush, and the remainder was rough and honey-combed with infantry trenches. There wasn't room for the regiment under cover, and Iun planes might appear at any moment.
"And those woods," you heard, "are full of dead things."
Without calling attention to it we had all noticed the thickening of the nauseating odor of wholesale animal decay,
"It's bad for the men."
“The men have got to get used to it."
"But it's better to see those things in the heat of action." 
"Fourgons Lurched Dangerously"
That, however, wasn't the point. We had to get covered up before the light grew stronger.
The Headquarters Company, and Regimental Headquarters got sketchily concealed in one piece of woods. The larger part of the Second Battalion got in the other. The First parked its pieces on the edge and cut foliage with which it covered everything. Opposite, the Supply Company employed the same makeshift.
The picket lines had to be placed inside.
Those who entered the forest to locate these lines went softly. It was still night in there. You didn't want to stumble over unseen obstacles. You fancied that the woods were still inhabited by an army, which for the moment slept. The trenches made angular scars between the trees-shallow, makeshift defences of the retreating Hun. Their floors were littered with gray blouses, helmets, round Hun caps, Mausers, grenades, belts of cart. ridges. Scattered between them were artillery ammunition dumps, the shells in wicker containers, like wine baskets, or else in elaborate and expensive metal frames. As the light strengthened we saw quantities of rations which had been thrown away, gasolene tanks, pioneer tools. If there wasn't an army in the woods there was the equipment for one. That day if we wanted anything--gasolene, for example, for an automobile or a side-car, we went through no formalities.
"Go in the woods and get it," we said. And the seeker obeyed and got what he wanted. But in there the odor was poisonous. Everyone was warned not to prowl in the underbrush.
As soon as the picket lines were established we went out, clinging to the edge of the woods, and almost at once the first Hun planes came over, but we were pretty well concealed, and they didn't trouble us.
The question of water obtruded itself. By taking the Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/214 Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/215 Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/216 Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/217 Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/218 Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/219 Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/220 Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/221 Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/222 Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/223 Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/224