History of the 305th Field Artillery/On the Range
IV
ON THE RANGE
We learned things, in spite of that curse of efficiency, Simulation. Cold weather found us well along in standing gun drill. One battery would get the pieces one hour, another the next, and so on. Caissons simulated pieces, and limbers, caisson. But we got the mechanics of laying, loading, and firing, and the specialists learned enough to make panoramic sketches of the dreary Upton landscape and to lay telephone lines in suicidal fashion. Stirring in every mind, moreover, was the desire to hear the crack of a rifle and the rush of its projectile.
Drawn by Private Enroth, Battery D
A quiet game in a mess hall at Upton
That wouldn't be long now, for the target range was progressing. Large signs at neighboring crossroads warned the countryside of danger. When, we asked, were we going to justify such violent displays?
The range outlined to many of us for the first time our mission. It is one thing to call out at drill a range of 5,000. It is quite another to walk from a projected gun position to a target 5,000 yards away.
The range impressed us as enormous. Without reaching its boundaries you could walk across it for hours. Its broad stretches of woodland and brush appeared scarcely scarred by the months of our labor. It hadn't been intended, for that matter, that they should be. The plan bad been to bave the range masquerade as an actual battle terrain. About the target areas, however, many acres had been cleared, and with a few thrills.
The conflagration happened on a sharp December afternoon. Considering the labor, the hunger, the investigations that accompanied and followed it, it would be an affectation of conservatism to speak of the thing as a mere fire.
Brushwood mysteriously caught at the far end, sprang to the woods, and, a spreading column of flames and smoke before a half gale, swept towards our mushroom city. Practically the entire regiment worked the latter part of the afternoon and half the night getting the flames under control and some toiled for an indefinite period trying to fix the blame. That was never done, but for months shadows hung over suspected spots, and Colonel Doyle's lips were often severe.
Yet the accident wasn't without benefit. Those who surveyed the charred areas pronounced the range about cleared for action.
Horses still lacked. The range was some miles from camp. To get our guns there with a shadow of dignity or comfort we would need horses. While we lacked such vital transport, indeed, we could not look upon ourselves as a real Field Artillery regiment.
There had been rumors. There always are about everything, but early in December an amazingly real order came to send details to the remount depot. On December 10th eighty-seven horses were brought up and quartered in our stables.
They didn't appeal to us as at all what we would have chosen for our own stalls. They fell into two classes—cavalry and artillery, that is, individual mounts and draft animals. They were shaggy and unkempt. Some seemed overburdened by the cares of life. Others endeavored to express through vivacious gestures a desire to get at the greener officers and men who hitherto had been mounted only in the tables of organization.
Often, while struggling with the curious replacements we received in France, did we look back wistfully to these our first and best animals.
From this moment Paper Work clutched at Department B officers and stable sergeants.
The horses arrived just in time for our first target practice, which was scheduled for December 12th. Each of four batteries had the pleasure of harnessing, with make-shift harness, a team of the new, untried animals to a piece and drawing it from the park to the range. That day, everyone will recall, was the first bitter one of an uncommonly severe winter. It distilled in those horses a vaunting ambition. It nearly, in consequence, upset one carriage, and it delayed the rest because of cold hands and stiff equipment.
Cannoneers and spare drivers stood in line along Fourth Avenue, between Fifteenth and Seventeenth Streets. The scarlet battery guidons fluttered before a frozen wind. Yet, as the first carriage appeared at the top of the grade, there was a satisfied warmth in all our hearts. At least a share of all the trappings was ours. We could grin and shout "Finis" to that inefficient monster, Simulation.
The carriages rumbled down the slope, swaying from side to side. The drivers didn't look happy. More often than not the near horses were out of hand. Some animals pulled; others ambled, enjoying the prospect. But the carriages did advance. It was these city-bred men, abruptly informed that they were artillery drivers, who controlled untrained stock to that extent.
They got past the difficult turn into Seventeenth Street. Later they swung with more confidence into the Middle Island Road. They drew the guns into position. They trotted off with the limbers in really dashing fashion.
The dismounted men marched out. They were stationed near the guns so that they might see exactly what happens when the lanyard of a three inch rifle is pulled with a shell in the breach.
Later we may have fired as many as 8,000 rounds in an evening, while to-day we were to expend only 19. But many soldiers were to hear for the first time the sharp crack of the piece, and the swishing, rocket-like flight of the projectile; were to watch that pleasing white ball of smoke, like a pretty cloud appearing without warning, that is a shrapnel burst.
In order that all this might be appreciated the target was in clear view from the vicinity of the guns, although indirect laying was to be used.
News of the event had spread. Officers of the 304th and 306th came to admire. Several officers of marines walked up the road. Where they had come from no one knew, and there was too much else on hand to bother about finding out.
Lieutenant-Colonel Stimson was to fire the first problem. He walked with Colonel Doyle and a knot of officers to the observatory a few hundred yards ahead. Everything seemed to be ready. Lieutenant Hoyt, in charge of the range party, was said to be down near the target. As soon as he announced that the range was clear——
Crews from each battery were to fire in turn. The battery commander and his cxccutive ran here and therc, giving final words of advice to the gun squads, examining the sights, inspecting for one last time the bores. The telephone officers and their details struggled with the primitive system of communication, There were no switchboards. All lines were party lines. There would have been no wire if a friend of Colonel Stimson's hadn't presented the regiment with sixty miles or so of heavy twisted pair. Yet we were quite proud of that net. We had done our best according to the sacred precepts of Volume III. One shudders trying to conceive what it would have done to us at the front. Anyway it worked most of that afternoon in the winter peace of Long Island. We limited our faith, however. On nearby crests lonely figures etched against a sullen sky the broad strokes of the semaphore code. We had even erected two wireless stations, using Lieutenant Church's home-made set. They didn't work particularly, but they looked exactly as well as if they had. It took an expert to know one way or the other.
The men, standing waist-deep in the underbrush, shaking from the cold, and, probably, a little, too, from the excitement, craned their necks in the direction of the target, 2,000 yards away.
The white flag on the hill continued to flutter, advertising that there was no firing and that the range was safe. We knew, until white was replaced by red, nothing of interest to us would happen. The gray afternoon waned. Cannoneers blew impatiently on their hands. The ranks in the underbrush stamped their feet and waved their arms, setting up a crackling like the advance of a vast army. Little groups ran up and down the road to keep warm. Whispers lost their stealth, became audible, burst into an impatient chorus.
“Why don't they shoot and let us go home?"
Through the mysterious army channels of rumor drifted down a fact.
"Somebody was seen on the range nearly an hour ago, and they haven't been able to find him."
"Where's Hoyt? Why doesn't Hoyt get him off?"
"Hoyt's on the range, seeking the cheerful villain."
The executive strode to a man stretched beneath a shelter tent with the receiver of a service buzzer at his ear.
“Get me the observatory."
(Or didn't we call it B. C. station in those ignorant days?)
After a time the operator passed him the receiver and transmitter.
"It isn't altogether clear, sir."
"Observatory?"
A pause.
“Hello! Hello! Hello! Observatory? Hello! Hello! Hello! (Very low.) My God! (Very high.) Hello Hello! Hello!"
The telephone officer stood by, watching, He made a gesture of disgust.
“Don't say 'Hello!’" he offered. "It's meaningless. It only wastes time. It never gets you anywheres."
If a telephone officer has ever talked to you like that when you held a dead instrument and big things were afoot, you need precisely no analysis of the executive's emotions.
The executive sprang up, casting the offending parts from him. He glanced dangerously at the telephone officer. He, as they say, collected himself.
"I've said 'hello!' all my life," he muttered, "and I'll admit it's never got me less than it has this afternoon.”
“Oh, don't get sore," the telephone officer said breezily.
The executive confided quite in private.
"If you do as well as this at the front the Huns will court martial the first man that hurts you."
“Buzz it," the telephone officer said indifferently.
The executive chained his wrath.
"I'd rather give it to you straight. Want any more?”
"No, no," said the telephone officer pityingly. "I mean your message. The buzzer often goes through when the voice won't." “Oh!"
The executive turned to the operator.
“Tell them it's nearly dark, and what the deuce is the delay?"
A whining buzz came from the shelter tent. It lacked conviction.
"Your man up there got the Saint Vitus dance?" the executive wanted to know.
On the nearest crest one of the lone figures was now etching with eager and excited strokes.
"Says," the private in observation read off, “Colonel—Doyle—wants—to—know—why—wire—communication—has—ceased—function—ing."
"Test your instrument," the telephone officer called to the man in the tent, "and you," he ordered another, "get out on the line."
A stooped figure threaded the underbrush, letting the wire run through his fingers. In a few minutes he was back, saluting.
"Line was cut, sir, not fifty yards out there."
"Probably one of your cannoneers," the telephone officer complained to the executive. "They must learn that wires are sacred, Court-martial offense—carelessness with wires."
"Speaking of courts martial,” the executive whispered.
"Remember that the Hun that hurts you'll be tried by some bigger Hun."
"Got you the first time," the telephone officer grinned. Behold! The white flag fluttering down! The red flag streaming up!
"Lieutenant Lloyd is back," came over the wire. "The range is clear.”
The chief actors became rigid and expectant.
“Cannoneers posts!" The men sprang to the pieces like a football formation jumping into play. From the shelter tent the operator commenced to shout out the firing data that drifted over the repaired wire from the observatory.
"Aiming point that bare pine tree five mils to the left of the left hand edge of target. Deflection, six-three hundred and fifty. On second piece open ten. Site three hundred. Korrector thirty. Battery right. Two thousand."
The sights and the tubes responded to the febrile motions of our amateurs. The executive repeated the commands one by one. You fancied that through the taut atmosphere came their echoes from the far target. A captain ran along the line, verifying the laying. There was no longer any stirring in the underbrush, nor any movement on the road. A branch snapped. Lt. Norman Thirkield, the recording officer, balanced in a tree, precariously raised his glasses.
The brown cloth of the shelter tent bulged. The voice of the operator ran with awed vibrations across the tight silence.
"Fire when ready!"
The executive raised his hand. He brought it down with a sharp motion, bawling out:
"Fire!"
The section chief of the first piece repeated the gesture and the command. The silence was destroyed. It seemed to fall away before the snapping concussion of the discharge, and the departure, invisible but fairly sensed, of the projectile.
The operator cried:
“On the way!”
The first shot fired by the 305th sailed majestically over Long Island.
In succession the other pieces followed, and far off, in the general direction of the target, one by one, appeared after several seconds the white smoke balls.
The stirrings in the brushwood recommenced. A great sigh went up. It resembled an exclamation of childish wonder.
A relaxation took place. It was as if with that first shot we had altered from an inert, incoherent thing into a body abounding with an ordered and flexible purpose. We sensed it as we swung back through the sharp, early dusk. The rumbling of the carriages behind us expressed it. Ahead the lights of camp twinkled at us with a new appreciation. We had made a crossing.
We said good-by that night for a long period to Lieu- tenant-Colonel Stimson. He had been ordered to report to the port of embarkation at Hoboken for transportation to France. That firing of the first problem was his last duty with the 305th until he rejoined us nearly six months later when we were training in the south of France. After that, until a few days before we sailed, Colonel Doyle was the only field officer with the regiment.
On the thirteenth we took our materiel to the range again and fired ten rounds at the same target, Captain Gammell conducting.
Glancing back from our veteran viewpoint, it may require a difficult focus to see those pitifully few rounds in their just perspective. Each one might have been a priceless jewel released by some patriotic collector. It took the better part of two afternoons to sprinkle their contents on the target, or near it. They were responsible for hours of discussion in preparation, and evenings of the same in retrospect. Every burst became the subject of orations. Each was recorded on special forms, and the War Department in general and the ordnance people in particular were told all about it. Temporarily one of the shell cases was mislaid. The dark eye of suspicion rested on possible souvenir hunters. Those in any way responsible were frowned upon as unique criminals, because that was in the days before the Regular Army got over its ritual attitude towards ammunition. Only when the case had been found did the atmosphere clear.
We had trained for more than three months before firing the precious twenty-nine, and we were to wait more than three months before firing another; but for one must focus--they taught us what a rifle would do if rationally trcated. Each gun squad had had a chance. Incredulity as to sights and scales and instruments of precision had been demolished by the men's own labor. To that measure they had already become artillerymen.
It was of even greater advantage that those nineteen rounds had let us measure the results of our training. We could judge ourselves and each other; could see that, on the whole, we were good. The various details had had practical experience. Operators had actually transmitted over lines laid by their own hands words of the highest importance.
Twenty-nine rounds at twenty-five dollars a round! They did more to make our regiment find itself than millions of dollars spent in other ways.