History of the 305th Field Artillery/Sourge and First Casualties
IX
SOUGE AND FIRST CASUALTIES
The coolies, we soon realized, would be an irritation, for we wouldn't be allowed to loaf here. We were to be put at once into the way of fulfilling our destiny. We were equipped first of all like the artillery regiment we were. Six batteries of soixante-quinzes were delivered to us in the spacious gun park. Sleek and lithe with an iron grace, they stuck their noses from their painted shields. They looked terribly competent, a little snobbish, too. They seemed to remind us that they weren't three inch guns, and that we had a lot to learn before we would really be fit to handle them.
Timbers and caissons were of an unfamiliar pattern. We gathered about the gray fourgons—a cross between a gypsy van and a prairie schooner. They looked sturdy and faithful, and they turned out so.
Telephones, switchboards, wire, wireless sets, goniometers, scissors—they all came streaming in. Except for horses we were fully equipped within the first few days, and the horses commenced to arrive and breed dissension almost at once.
We didn't have much time to admire all this. We were put to work to learn something about it before we tried it on the Bosche. The course was announced as eight weeks long. After the first day we glanced at each other hopelessly. What had they done with us at Upton for seven months? How could we absorb all this strange, fascinating, and fundamental knowledge in a few days? At first officers and men went to standing gun drill. The officers followed with terrain board work, the men with specialist instruction. The officers spent the rest of the day at general lectures on conduct of fire, orientation, communication, materiel. We were given elaborate range tables. We heard of stripping ranges and transport of fire, and D v zero, and K zero. Heads buzzed.
"If I have to figure all these things before I shoot at the Bosche," someone said, "the war will be over before I get my first shell off.”
The sun grew hot and the sand more clinging, reminding us we were in the south, as we trudged to classes or walked many kilometers with plane tables and instruments for orientation exercises.
During this period of education the regiment more or less ran itself. Officers and men went to different classes. The hours didn't coincide. Often for drill there would be no officer present. Yet the work didn't slump. Discipline maintained its old standard.
We were the first national army division in France, so our instructors had been drawn from the few Regular Army and National Guard Divisions that had preceded us. They had had some little experience in what might be called parlor trench fighting. We grasped at it. It was invaluable to us. We tried to emulate their easy command of the finer points of French artillery specialization. Frequently we got to Bordeaux for a week end relaxation. The neighboring villages of Martignas and St. Jean d'Illac offered a smiling hospitality. For less adventurous spirits there was a collection of booths just outside the gate, where one could sample French cookery and wines. Then during the second week measles appeared, and for a time all passes were stopped.
We had solved the mechanical puzzles of the soixante-quinze, and something of the mysteries of orientation and modern conduct of fire. On May 27th we went to the range to shoot. There were just enough horses at that time to draw one battery out, and the second battalion got them for E battery, which had won the gun drill competition and had been selected to fire with the first shots on the range.
C battery tried trucks. They got the pieces and caissons as far as the macadamized road went. There re- mained, perhaps a mile and a half of sand. The trucks wouldn't touch it. The cannoneers looked at the deep ruts and the heavy pieces.
“We have been honored with this first job to fire," they said to each other.
They put their shoulders to the wheels. They kept talking about that honor. They wondered why they had ever gone into the artillery to be so appreciatively singled out. They managed, however, a little limp themselves, to get the carriages to the position in front of observatory 3, where others had dug emplacements and sunk trail logs. The details located the guns, got the aiming sticks up, and ran wires to the observatory and into the range telephone system.
Captain Roger D. Swaim, of the New England National Guard was the First Battalion's firing instructor, and Capt. Kelly, of the same organization, the Second's. They met us at the observatories at 7:30 Monday morning, and we started.
We had so much ammunition that we forgot to gaze at each shell as if it were a precious pearl being cast before swine.
The projectiles went away in quick salvos, and after the first few we know that while we weren't perfect we could bracket a target and get real effect on Then the instructors criticized, the colonel did the same, and the majors usually had their say. Those who hadn't fired looked at the man conducting smugly. Yet always sooner or later they got, as one phrases it, theirs.
That was the beginning of endless hours in the observatories. We averaged four hours firing and eight hundred rounds a day.
Our first day on the range, it will be recalled, saw the opening of the great German offensive across the Chemin des Dames, through Château Thierry, and nearly to the gates of Paris. After the thrust at Amiens and about Ypres the Bosche had lain quiescent, and his startling initial successes carried a vivid shock to us in the midst of our schooling. We guessed our plans would be altered, for more artillery was needed. A cry went up for every available man. Yet the change when it came was no less of a shock than the great battle. The schedule was published at the end of the week. We would start on the range at 7 o'clock. We would get back in time for a hurried bite of luncheon. From then up til 5 o'clock we would have terrain board and specialist instruction, and gas would have to be worked in now. It went between 5 o'clock and supper. From supper time until nine o'clock we would listen to lectures on ammunition, fuses, and various subjects. Then, if we liked, we could attend to our routine organization work, and study. Then, if there was any time, we could go to sleep.
The emergency was, indeed, grave. We even heard rumors that the government had moved from Paris to Bordeaux a second time, and we went into town that week end apprehensive of too many figures in frock coats and silk hats.
After a few days the news was better, but it didn't affect our schedule. During the afternoon classes, after nights of insufficient rest and mornings of intricate calculations and eye strain on the range, we struggled against sleep. Lieutenant-Colonel Stimson returned to the regiment during this phase. He had visited several fronts and had taken the course at the staff college at Langres.
Lieutenant Mitchell, in spite of his experience, was not named regimental gas officer. That position went to Lieutenant Gilbert Thirkield. Our gas drill consisted in exercises in speed, and walks or runs, wearing the masks. We tried to accustom ourselves to goggles that always clouded, to mouthpieces that left us a trifle choked, to head bands that exerted a painful and increasing pressure.
Into the midst of this earnest endeavor the horses came, and line had to be found to lake care of them and to wrangle over them. They weren't very good horses, but they served lo arouse that passionate gypsy instinct that informs all lovers of animals. There was sharp trading and devious scheming to get the best of each lot.
A new batch would arrive from the remount depot. It couldn't be assigned to one organization without giving the others a fair chance for its best. An order would come around that organization commanders might exchange the choice of their individual mounts for anything that caught their fancy in the new lot. The horse fair would begin.
This fair was usually held in the deep sand by the stables. Officers and men would form a ring about a row of shaggy beasts held by self-conscious orderlies. Critical eyes would run down the line, taking in the badly used thoroughbred, a thing of possibilities; the narrow-chested overbreed; the useful animal of poor but honest ancestry; the pitiful crocks. Arguments would spring up as to the virtues of some particular beast. You invariably weighed the reverse of an expressed opinion. Faces would grow red, and voices hoarse from reiterated convictions.
"I'll swop for this one," a captain says. "All right," from the officer in charge of the fair. “Bring on your best mount.”
The captain strides away. After a time the circle parts to admit him and his prize—a spring-kneed, mangy cob from the hospital. It takes two orderlies to support it. "Whoa!" cries the captain, and pats him gently as if to persuade him not to cut up.
He points to the new horse he has chosen, and instructs his orderly.
"Lead that fellow out. I think I'm getting stung, but I agreed to swop, and I will."
The orderly leaves the invalid, glancing back as if to make sure he hasn't toppled over. The other side of the exchange raises his voice.
"Like the deuce you'll swop. What did you bring that hat-rack here for?"
The captain's expression is of innocent surprise. "To trade with you as the order directed."
The other sneers.
“Thought you'd made a mistake and believed I was running a soap factory, or maybe you want to borrow a detail to dig his grave.
“Very funny! Very funny! That's one of the best horses in the regiment."
The orderly puts in gravely:
"It's a real hardship to see him go, sir. He's just a little sick."
“My interpretation of the order," the objector says, "is that you can trade your best individual mount. If that's it, your battery will walk,"
The captain gestures.
“Orders are orders. You've got to trade."
A very superior officer intervenes.
“Gentlemen!—Or maybe I ought to say gyspsies—We can't do business this way. We'll get an interpretation that will give everyone a square deal. Meantime, put the horses up."
And the red disappears from the faces of the wranglers, and they go away arm in arm, good friends until the next fair day.
Sharp trading was necessary. Not only were many of the horses bad, but they died in large numbers, and replacements weren't simple to get.
Major Johnson was largely instrumental in holding casualties down and in conditioning the survivors. He was also a bulwark between us and the gypsy desires of other organizations. For the horse trade fever swept the entire brigade.
"I thought they might court martial me to-day," he would say after an hour or two at the stables or brigade headquarters with higher ranking officers than himself, "but I've held them off our horses."
The remount men watched the bargaining and smiled. They had their own axe to grind, and they liked to see a favorite animal well placed. They were capable of diplomacy when officers of higher rank than the one chosen threatened to interfere.
"Sure. A beautiful horse, sir," the remount man might say to the very high ranking officer. Few better in looks have come out of the depot. You might go farther and fare worse.”
He winks at the junior officer for whom that horse is destined. The senior glances up.
"What do you mean? What's the matter with him?"
"Matter! Who said anything was the matter? Of course, sir, all horses have their little foibles."
“I thought so. Talk up. What's the matter with this one?"
The remount man gazes at him admiringly. "No fooling you, sir! But I don't go back on what I said. A beautiful animal, and he might give you good service if you took chances and had a little luck. I go on the principle that no horse is hopeless, but this one is a genuine bad actor."
Exit high ranking officer.
We had practical uses for our horses now. Some of the gun positions and observatories were five kilometers or so from our quarters. It often took hard riding to snare a bite of luncheon before the first of the afternoon classes. Lieutenants Hoyt, Montague, Gurney, and Church, who had been delayed in America to bring over casuals, joined us early in June. Shortly afterwards Lieutenants Hoyt and Norman Thirkield were sent to balloon school, and Lieutenants Jones, Montague, and Gurney to aviation instruction. Lieutenant Hoyt soon after was ordered by G. H. Q. to the liaison service, and the regiment said good-by to him regretfully.
We had got into lateral and bi-lateral observation by this time. Often the guns were several miles from the officer conducting fire, but communication was always open, and the result of these exercises plainly told us that we were nearly ready for the fun. Before this war it would have been considered an absurdity to try to train an artilleryman even in the old fashioned methods during so brief a period. But here we were good. The regiment felt it. A little later, the TIun felt it, too.
Our first casualties came to us on the range at Souge. It was on June 20—We were registering for an intensive barrage that would mark the close of the course.
The two battalions had established command posts at some distance from each other. Each had put in elaborate schemes of communication, practically independent of the range system. Major Johnson had received permission to locate the pieces of the first battalion according to the technique of actual warfare. He got camouflage nets which, with the natural cover, hid the positions so successfully that an aeroplane photograph, taken for our instruction, was innocent of warlike indications.
The first platoon of Battery B was scarcely more than fifty meters from Major Johnson's command post, Observatory 1. The pieces were echeloned, each under its own camouflage net.
The registration progressed, as registrations do, to a precise and dreary measure. Without warning and with no unusual noise Battery B's number 2 piece was shattered by a premature burst. For a moment a cloud of smoke obscured it. As it drifted away we saw that the camouflage net had disappeared, that the caisson was blackened and smouldering, that the breech of the piece had gone. The crew, from an ordered group, had become a thing, scattered and incomplete. Men stumbled oddly as they ran out of the cloud. There were not enough of them.
"Cease firing!" Major Johnson ordered. "Where's the surgeon?"
The operator passed the word over the telephone. Flames sprang from the shouldering caisson, Shells there were evidently bursting. Major Johnson ordered everyone from the observatory, and, followed by his adjutant, Captain Reed, and Captain Ravenel walked forward and threw sand at the caisson. Unasked, volunteers sprang from the ranks into the danger zone. In a few minutes the fire was extinguished. Those on the outskirts questioned.
"How much damage? Anybody hurt?"
And from the group about the smashed piece came back the quiet answer:
"The gunner and No. 1 killed."
Early and imperfect days on the range at Souge
Everyone had guessed that would be so. Sitting on either side of the breech there had never been much chance for them.
The director of the school came. A board was appointed and the evidence taken. We had learned to fear long fuses, but the damage had been done by a white fused sliell, and No. 2 had looked through the bore, so that the blanket verdict of faulty ammunition went down.
An ambulance dashed up and backed towards the group. Two covered forms were lifted into it, then it clanged a swift way towards camp.
"Brace up!" an officer called with kind brutality. "You'll see plenty of other men killed before you get through with this war Get on the job now. Firing will be resumed."
The men responded, shaking themselves rather as dogs do after an unexpected immersion. That afternoon there was a new piece firing from the destroyed gun's platform. The gunner and No 1 did not flinch. The day's work went on with a noisy rapidity.
“Yet," as someone wisely remarked, “it can't be like seeing men killed in battle."
Privates Jeremiah S. Lynch and Harry J. Posner were buried the next day. Chaplain Sheridan conducted the services, and Mrs. Gariessen, of the Y. M. C.A., who had a short time before lost her own son in action, tried as best she could to take the place of the mothers. Lynch and Posner received full military honors. Men from every organization attended the funeral and saw more distinctly in the bland southern sunlight the vicious and amazing shadow that is war.