History of the 305th Field Artillery/The Ages of Getting Ready
VI
THE AGES OF GETTING READY
We failed to sail within a fortnight, or within several fortnights. Perhaps it was as well that transportation lacked, for there was much more preparation necessary than we had suspected. Lieutenant Walters left us, and Lieutenant McKenna came into his own. That is, he was assigned to the command of the Supply Company. Before many days his promotion to the rank of captain arrived. From constitutionally reluctant quartermasters he tore supplies with the same cheerful energy he had displayed in the days of recruit fitting. Yet the more we got the more we appeared to need, and lack of artillery harness was from the first like a too high hurdle between us and the docks.
While McKenna hustled we entered two new phases. One might be labeled The Age of Gas, and the other The Age of Equipment Checking of the two in memory the second looms larger.
“A complete check of personal property will be made before retreat."
Day after day that order faced us on the threshold of the afternoon. It meant the laying out on bunks of all issued equipment, according to an intricate pattern. It meant a review of every piece, checked against an official list of equipment C. Some day a Regular Army quarter-master may divulge to us the structural secrets of those lists. For our part, we never quite understood the logic of reversing, sometimes mutilating, the descriptions of familiar and intimate articles of clothing. “Bags, barrack," it began.
Why, in the name of abused commas, wouldn't "Barrack bags” have done as well?
"Breeches, O. D.," "Socks, winter," "Gloves, riding, "Poles, tent,” “Razors, safety," "Tags, indentification."
It ran something like that, and so far we followed, if reservedly. We revolted only at:
"Shirts, under," "Drawers, under."
Perhaps an obsessed clerk, typing the copies, was responsible for that.
This is how one spent one's time in the age of equipment checking:
In the somnolent barracks you arranged your equipment according to the intricate pattern. Everybody had a different idea as to some of the more esoteric details of the pattern, and you compared notes until you didn't know whether you would be passed, arrested for distortion, or praised for acute originality. Then you endeavored to keep awake. If you were an officer, you took your lists, tried to get the cunning pattern through your head yourself, and wished to heaven you could smoke on the job.
A non-commissioned officer slams into the sleepy room, singing out:
“Attention!”
The officer walks in. It probably isn't severity that gives his face that peculiar expression, you decide. It's more likely a stifled yawn.
"Rest!” he croons. "All except this first man."
He checks the articles on the cot.
"Where," he demands, "is your fifth pair of socks?"
The warrior blushes.
"On me pusson, sir."
The officer reflects. This time his frown isn't wholly concealed. The orders were absolute. Everything must be seen before being checked.
The soldier stoops obediently, removing his legging, and probably murmuring in his mind:
"I'm not trying to put anything over on you, and I'd wear them in the army whether it was my habit or not, because your issue shoes aren't exactly plush."
"Where's your other O. D. shirt?"
The officer catches himself.
"I mean, Shirt, O. D."
Again the soldier displays emotion.
"In the laundry, sir."
Once more the officer reflects. It seems expensive, unjustifiable, and meat in the mouth of Paper Work to issue this man, and all the other cleanly men, masses of equipment to be turned back on the arrival of their laundry. On that point there should be something definite. He seeks the captain for a ruling. The responsibility is great. So the captain seeks the battalion adjutant. The battalion adjutant seeks the regimental adjutant. The regimental adjutant seeks the Colonel, and beyond that the chain is vague, but in a few days a ruling comes down that for the present equipment in the laundry may be considered as present and accounted for.
The checking officer, meantime, makes out a painstaking little list for each soldier.
“Private Doe has in laundry—"
The list is long. Those who hear it decide that Doe is effete.
The conversation in the room, from tentative whispers following the officer's "Rest!", has developed into comments, exclamations, and arguments, centering about the flow of well-known raconteurs. The officer hears all this, grows at times a trifle absent-minded, has to make alterations in his neat lists. "I pasted him in the jaw, honest to Gawd I did, and he didn't have no come-back. You saw the bout, Jim. If I hadn't caught my shoulder in the ropes, he'd never have knocked me out. Ain't it the truth, Jim?"
"If you ask me," Jim replies evenly, “I think you had horseshoes hung all over you to last as long as you did."
Or, from a group of three serious-faced young men, two of whom have just returned from the third R.O.T. C.;
"Germany's financial structure is as restless and insecure as a house built on sand."
"That's logic, but logic and the truth are often bad friends."
"Oh, Lord," groans the officer inwardly, making another mistake with his lists.
And, to cap the climax and spoil an entire sheet:
"Billy told me about it. If the Y. M. C. A. could have seen him then! Nellie had him up to tea Sunday. Least be thought he was drinking tea. Looked like it. You know a Martini and tea are the same color. They put cocktails in his cup instead of tea, and he smacked his lips and drank four cups, and all the time the poor simp thought he was drinking tea."
A deep voice cuts the air, snorting and booming:
"The hell he did!"
The sergeant tries not to grin. The officer swings passionately.
"Attention! Sergeant, if another man speaks put his name down, and I'll take care of him later, At Ease!" He turns back to his checking, aware that what he had wanted to say was:
"Men! This job has got to be done. It hurts me more than it does you."
Sometimes we checked and were checked at night, too. Whose fault was it, this ceaseless repetition that carried us each time only a trifling distance forward? In some measure, it must be admitted, the blame was our own. There were a number of men whom you could check at two o'clock and find, with the exception of allowable deficiencies, up to the mark. At three you might check them again, and learn they had lost within the hour such prominent objects as tent poles and shelter halves. One little bandsman was suspected of an appetite for tent pins, his disappeared so rapidly and regularly. But we weren't to blame for that futile effort after the complete check that could only be made with every soldier in his place and each piece of cquipment in view.
At one time the stable sergeants and the grooming and feeding details would be at the stables. Check or no check, the horses had to be cared for. At another the cooks were scattered on various duties. Naturally the men couldn't be checked at the price of starvation. And every day at headquarters and in the orderly rooms sol- diers of clerical ability bent before the sacred shrine of Paper Work, and couldn't be torn away.
So the Age of Checking was prolonged through March and April, and even up to the day we sailed.
The Age of Gas, while less irksome at that time, was rather more unpleasant. Lieutenant Mitchell had taken a course from a Scotch non-commissioned officer. He was looked upon as an expert now, and we were content to pin our faith to him. But one night we were summoned to hear Mitchell lecture. He sprinkled bright little stories among statistics, depressing, and, we fancied, a trifle exaggerated for our good. We drank in extended figures of casualties caused through carelessness or ignorance; of casualties, on the other hand, scarcely to have been avoided. He had his house at his feet. In a fashion he beat the English lecturers at their own game. He'd found out about some new gases that shiriveled you up all at once or got you with a delayed and terrible kick long after exposure, and instead of a cheerful Christmas time just ahead, there was actually—gas.
He asked us to listen to him again the next night, and when we obeyed we found a table piled with masks. He showed us how to put them on and take them off. We gasped in the strange, uncomfortable, stinking contrivances. We laughed—not uproariously, you understand—at our own appearance, abruptly converted into something monstrous.
Gas non-commissioned officers were appointed. The men spent a definite period at gas drill each day. They held competitions. They ran courses. They looked like types of a new race, born of some dreadful catastrophe.
We were introduced to the gas house—a wooden shack near the machine-gun range. The Scotch sergeant was heard to say:
"We got to ha' a wee bit o' luck this afternoon. We carried out thu-ree corpses this marnin', and they only allow me fower for a full day."
"Laugh," Mitchell prompted in a stage whisper, “or you'll hurt his feelings."
So we laughed, “Ha, ha, ha," at his joke. It was more like a cry for help.
A captain of the Medical Corps explained the procedure, for that was before the powers gave gas to the Engineers.
"I'm going to loose a killing mixture of chlorine," he ended, “so it would be as well to inspect masks carefully." We hoped he was trying to impress us, but the ranks, one noticed, took a long time over the inspection face pieces and canisters.
We were ready finally. The medico then put on his own mask, entered the shack, and sealed it. Through the single window we saw him turn the escape valve of a cylinder tank. He opened the door, stepped out, and removed his mask.
"Come close," he said, "so you can smell the stuff. Then you'll know I'm not putting anything over on you."
When we had obeyed our lungs refused to breathe the sickly air. We donned our masks and filed in. The door clanged shut behind us. We were imprisoned for ten minutes, half expectant of catastrophes. Through our goggles the air had a bluish appearance, but in our lungs it was pure.
We escaped at last, relieved to be able to breathe naturally again and to know that the masks were really good. Afterwards we were treated to a lachrymatory mixture which hurt our eyes. After that we were permitted to march away, cracking grewsome jokes for the benefit of those whose ordeal still waited.
We look gas in the stride of our work of preparation. That continued with slow sureness. Day after day Captain McKenna opened the regimental storehouse on newly-collected treasures, and each organization sent details to bring home its share. Then followed hours of fitting and issuing and cliecking again, until we realized that the regiment was nearly equipped.
Each officer and man was given twenty-four hours at home to attend to his personal affairs. That brought it so much nearer. On March 18th a review and a dance of the Brigade was held in the 69th Regiment armory. It offered us from Saturday until Tuesday morning at home.
"And this time it's surely so long, Mary," one heard going up on the train.
There was, indeed, an atmosphere of climax about that affair. For March the weather was warm. Lexington Avenue and the side streets, as we came up, were nearly blocked by restless spectators. They lacked the air of a crowd at a parade. Their brief cheers touched formality. They were restrained. They vibrated with a quality a little choked. Suddenly one realized that the men and women, unrecognizable in the night, were those that loved us.
Automatically one recalled stories of the departures of regiments from New York for the Civil War. Always such pictures were set in sunshine, with a ring of quaint costumes and a brave show of flags and music. We had looked forward to something of the sort.
There was music, all the more brassily insolent because its source was unseen; and, lost in the shadows, we knew our flags shook in the tepid air. The rest was wholly contrast. The columns, swinging up through the dark, pushed back the restless shapes. The door of the armory opened, and the shapes slipped through. They had to traverse a broad band of light; and, as we looked, I think it came to all of us quite abruptly, that it was simpler to be of the offering than among those who tended the altar.
On our return to Upton we entered the age of packing—a most complicated and laborious epoch. Every day and until far in the night the mess halls resounded to a new activity. Battery carpenters hammered on packing cases. Painting details striped them with maroon and white, the division colors. Packing details filled them with instruments, and ordnance, quartermaster, signal, and engineer properly—and paper work. From duplicate lists clerks checked everything in. Typewriters clattered on the tables. In one corner two men bent over, tap-tap-tapping numbers and names on identification disks like a new race of Nibelungs. In another an exchange had been established, and brisk bargaining over odd sizes of equipment imposed on the general pandemonium a shrill note of wheedling or invective. Such harness as we had was draped from uprights; and, depending from the ceiling bcams, were rows of blue barrack bags, still wet and splashed with white and red from the division markings. There followed black days of unpacking and repacking to meet some new trick order, while the checks continued. One Saturday a check of the harness disclosed the fact that two sets were missing from the regiment. The men were the more fortunate that time. The columns of pass holders marched down Fourth Avenue as usual, But an edict came from the Colonel that no officer, whatever his remoteness from harness, should leave Upton until the missing sets, or a reasonable explanation, had been found.
By night the amateur detectives—and everyone had joined the quest-saw their last theories crumble. Every inch of the area, they swore, had been searched. No one had escaped a bitter third degree. The harness, to all appearances, had dissolved. We were released, but the shadow of the mystery long hung over us; and through the shadow, after a time, gossip stole. You may accept it or reject it, but it might be well to picture a couple of officers and a few men gathered in an orderly room. There's no point trying to identify that. Studying their faces, you might decide they gaze with horror on the result of some red and impulsive work their hands have just accomplished. That, or that the souvenir of some murderous indiscretion, has unexpectedly risen from the past to challenge their content. For their faces are not without horror—a helpless, desperate horror, and one does gasp:
"Great Cæsar's ghost!"
But there's really no ghost, or any crimson relic-nothing exceptional all in the plain little room except one perfectly good set of artillery harness.
An officer flings his hands above his head in a gesture of despair. “Surveyed! Finished with! Bunches of paper work on its grave! Where in the name of kind heaven did you find it?"
"In the stables, sir, covered up by accident in a manger.
The desperate hands go higher. They now express also supplication.
"It can't be found! My God! It can't be found!"
"You're right," one agrees, “because according to Army Regulations it has ceased to exist. To try to bring it to life again might take years of investigations, valuations, boards, I guess it would stop the war.'
"Probably," says another, "it would put G. P., meaning general prisoner, on the backs of most of us."
"Drather find nitro-glycerine."
A murmur crystalizes the thoughts of all.
"If it were done away with quietly, dispassionately, without cruelty?"
You can't depend on this idle gossip, for the set was never heard of, at least publicly. One of the conspirators was seen in friendly converse with an officer of the Supply Company. Perhaps a stratagem was found. Maybe there's something in the story after all.
Days of doubt descended. For some time, each week end at home had been treasured as our last, but we didn't move.
"An order has come from General Pershing," McKenna informed us, "that no artillery units are to sail without their full equipment of harness."
But a word might alter that. If we could go without guns or caissons or horses—for gradually it had become clear our animals would be left behind—why all this fuss about harness?
And the division was moving. Headquarters stole out of camp one early April night.
Not long after we were awakened by the shouts of many men and the wanton splintering of barrack window glass. The sky reflected many bonfires. Next morning the area of one of the infantry regiments was empty. Machinegun battalions followed. Another infantry regiment. Each day we expected our orders. During this period of suspense several changes occurred. A special order from the War Department arrived giving Captain Untermyer an extended leave of absence. In his place arrived Captain Henry Reed. He had received his commission at the First Niagara Training Camp, had instructed at the Second Camp, and during the winter and early spring had been just across the hill instructing at the Third Camp. He was assigned to the regiment as adjutant of the first battalion. Major Wanvig returned from Fort Sill. Lt. John W. Schelpert of the Dental Corps came to us on March 24th, and remained with the regiment until August 19th where he was transferred to the Ammunition Train.
Then the blow fell. A very high officer indeed was heard to say with a laugh at the Officer's House:
"The artillery? They won't get to France before apples are ripe.”
And on top of that came the order that seemed to confirm him. An infantry regiment that was moving at once was short of men. The artillery brigade would fill it up.
By that time we had developed that organization spirit that is just as essential as it is delicate to breed. To take fifty or sixty men from each battery seemed a destruction of the greater part of all that we had worked to achieve. Men who had trained during seven months in the ways of artillery as a rule resented being transplanted all at once into a branch of the service to which they were strangers. Nor did their officer's care to see them go.
"Good men! Good men!" was the cry.
By that time, we believed, there weren't many that didn't fall in that class. But soniehow the lists were made up, the victims equipped, the dazed exiles marched away to a new formula, to strange companions.
It happened once more just before the last infantry regiment departed. As the result of those two orders, within a few days of our sailing for France as a combat regiment we had torn from us 698 men. The Headquarters Company lost 50, the Supply Company, 27; Battery A, 93; Battery B, 119; Baltery C, 113; Battery D, 95; Battery E, 116; Battery F, 82; the Medical Detachment, 2; and the Veterinary unit, 1.
At Upton the artillery alone remained, and we stared with a sense of threading the mazes of an unpleasant dream at half filled mess halls and skeleton ranks.
Troops began to pour in from the south. Upton, we heard, was to become an enbarkation camp. Our area, however, would remain sacred to us.
The vast German offensive of the spring 1918 was dangerously under way. We could understand a stern need of infantry: yet, we argued, infantry in such a war isn't very valuable without supporting artillery. How could Europe furnish enough of that?
“We won't move before July," was the general cry. Studying our shattered regiment, that was easy of belief. The changes—the incredible changes of army life!
Coming back from town on the night of April 14th you heard October as the most likely date of our departure, yet, as it turned out, that was to be our last Sunday home before sailing.
On Monday morning the October guess continued good. A new smoke-bomb range had been designed and miles of wire laid. We were instructed to unpack a great deal of equipment. Elaborate schools were planned for the warm, favorable weather. On Tuesday whispers slipped apparently from nothing. On Wednesday the Supply Company awakened to a new activity. From it escaped the significant news that we would get harness at once. Nothing more was to be unpacked. All that we had taken out was to be put back again in the cases.
"But," we objected, trying to stick to logic, "they wouldn't have stripped us this way. We can't go without men, and you can't take green men and train them on an ocean voyage.
Can't you, though? We were to find out about that. For on Thursday the officer in charge of arriving casuals conferred with us. From him we learned that trainloads of men from the West had been gathered at Camp Devens, and would come to us at once. We grasped at every comfort. If these replacements were from the West they'd probably know something about horses.
Selected officers and non-commissioned officers were awakened at 2 o'clock on the morning of the 19th. The trains were about to arrive.
There was a chill in the air. A mist, pearl-colored about the lamps, veiled the dreary similarity of the barracks.
The trains crawled in with a stealth harmonious with the secrecy of all these movements. The throbbing of the locomotives was discreet as if the mist sought to muille it.
Out of the cars they poured, sleepy-eyed, struggling ineptly with barrack bags, not at all voluble as soldiers in groups usually are. Our old men lined them up with a gentleness designed to destroy their attitude of strangers, bashful and apprehensive. We counted them again and again to be sure we were getting all we were entitled to. We marched them off in groups through the fog. The fog seemed friendly to them, for at that time they were with out personality to us—just so many things, counted and recounted, to fill the ranks of a regiment about to go to war.
Taking up the march again, after a rest in which two groups had got a trifle mixed, an officer counted his objects and found one missing. He and his non-commissioned aides ran up and down through the mist.
"I'm shy a man. Have you got an extra man? Count up.
"What's he look like? Know his name?"
“How the deuce could I? Doesn't make any difference. All I want's a man. Anything'll do."
After many counts he was supplied, and the nameless things, taking up their barrack bags, stumbled on through the mist.
It was four o'clock when we reached the area, but lights burned in the mess halls, and mess sergeants and battery clerks were about their tasks. The odor of coffee was prophetic.
Each barrack swallowed its quota. The old men neglected the sleepy, half-frightened expressions of the recruits to stare at the amazing variety of hat cords. Only on a very few hats did the red of the artillery show. On the rest were the colors of the infantry, the signal corps, even the medical corps. With sinking hearts we remembered how our artillerymen had gone to fill the ranks of the infantry. By what curious chances during those days did a man find himself here or there? By what devious contrivances was such a circle drawn?
With so many men in them the mess halls were curiously silent. The drone of voices, reading service records or questioning, increased an atmosphere of somnolence. There was the familiar variety of names and accents and countenances. Most of these men were, in fact, from the West and many of them had had experience with horses. That would help.
The mess sergeant placed steaming cans of coffee and tins of corn bread on the counter. His voice sang out cheerily:
"Come and get it!"
The inert and drowsy groups aroused themselves. A rough line was formed and passed stolidly by, each man taking his share without words.
As they munched they stared at the bare walls and the pine tables and the windows beyond which the indifferent dawn illuminated a little through the mist the unfamiliar wastes of Upton.
A sergeant cried with rough good humor:
"We're not going to bite you. What's the matter? Talk up! Haven't you got a song?"
On some of the sleepy, grimy faces a grin struggled. There was no song, but sporadic conversations sprang up here and there and died away.
One man's head rested on his arms which were stretched across a table. A snore disturbed the silence. Others followed with unequal effect. There was a laugh or two.
In a corner a little fellow, bronzed from the western sun, sat before his untasted bread and coffee. He didn't laugh with the others. His expression altered, There grew about his mouth an uncontrollable twitching. For a moment we thought he was going to laugh, too. He began silently and with difficulty to cry.