HISTORY
of
THE 306th Field Artillery
TRAINING AT CAMP DE SOUGE
WE had experienced
a rest camp; somewhere ahead lay a work camp. We looked
forward to it with misgivings. It was a long walk from
the railroad station at Bonneau. The heavy packs galled
us. The dust was an evil omen.
Then as we made a turn in the road, a great arched gate
in a frame of trees came into view. " Camp de
Something " said somebody in a vain attempt to
decipher the lettering that spanned the arch. " Camp
de Souse! " shouted someone else with all the
natural wonder and delight such a name would arouse. By
that time we were near enough to read: "Camp de
Souge," and that matter settled, gave our attention
to the strange county-fair colony that clustered outside
the gate.
Here stood a gaudy wagon that promised gaudy cinema
entertainment when the gaudy engine worked; beside it
were several push-cart venders of oranges, nuts,
cherries, and dates. Opposite, stood a complete mercerie
on wheels offering a thousand gim-cracks -of no value at
exorbitant prices. But most interesting of all were the
wine shacks, which bore the names " Le Petit
Caporal, " doubtless in commemoration of Napoleon,
and " Caf6 New York " certainly in preparation
for us. Later, we were to discover the little stationery
shop, with its diverting stock of " La Vie
Parisiennes " and the tiny charcuterie with its
aromatic sausage, suspiciously cheval and undeniably
garlic.
Inside the gate, a new world. An endless line of brown
barracks stretched on an endless yellow road through a
drab and endless desert of sand. There were trees here
and there, as there are oases in the Sahara. There was
even a lake-surely the little pond in which so many of us
bathed deserves that title if the Ourcq, the Vesle, and
the Aisne may be called rivers. Yet Souge was a barren
place, more barren than the barrenest stretch of No Man's
Land in the Argonne.
Place was found for us in the dismal colony of dismal
barracks and we settled down to the business of learning
the art of war. It seemed that our artillery methods of
old Upton were most excellent for fighting Mexicans but
painfully inadequate against Germans. Officers and men
were told to forget everything they knew and begin all
over again. From Colonel Miller down to the lowliest greaseball, began weeks of school in which we were
initiated into the mysteries of dvo's corrections of the
moment, canevaux trenches, splices, tuning coils, panels,
and the nomenclature of the piece, ~ la Francais and
according to each man's special function as laid out in
the tentative organization tables of the time.
Meanwhile, those who weren't bitterly regretting the
innumerable occasions they bad cut math classes in a
former incarnation, were taking advantage of such
diversions as the camp afforded. Principal of these were
those most picturesque Allies, the coolies. France had
drawn them from her Asiatic colonies with the magnet of
fabulous pay: in return all France seemed to demand was
that we be amused. As Corporal Cabbie remarked, "
They can get more rest out of a shovel than most of us
can got out of a bed! " Never was there a more
leisurely road gang. Never more sublime and complete
defiance of the latest program communique from Beaunash
with regard to "what the man will wear." Here
lounged a bland heathen in pink pajama drawers, his
bronze and glistening torso bare from the waist up, a
yellow scarf at his neck, a prim suburban straw several
sizes too small for him perched precariously on his head.
There under a black umbrella, basked a more elderly, a
more weazened specimen, attired in blue overalls, his
crossed legs unevenly encased in ragged 'khaki wrap
leggings, a red bandanna knotted at each corner serving
as a hat. Everywhere were reclining and colorful Chinois;
nowhere was there a sign of life save for an occasional
Oriental who, desperate for "les cigaret
Angleesh" and in hopes of a reward from an
appreciative audience, would rise and wait a ludicrous
chant in a high falsetto to the weird accompaniment of a
violin made from a cigar box or gasoline can.
Yet, somehow, the
road in Souge was a good one, kept in good repair.
Perhaps the Chinois worked in the cool hours before dawn;
more likely it was the handful of downcast Austrian
prisoners de guerre, with the big P. G-'s painted on
their tunics, who performed this marvel under the eye of
the diminutive but entirely self-possessed little brown
Algerian guard.
Then there were the
passes-the little white tickets that permitted us to
visit St. Medard, St. Jean d'Illac Martignas, Isaac and
the precious blue ones that meant Bordeaux. How we ate in
Bordeaux! How we stared! And, since this is history and
the truth, how we drank! The good Bordelaise wondered at
our capacity, but soon took our affluence for granted.
Madame-Monsieur was always ii la guerre-would shrug her
shoulders: Les bons gourmands soldats Americains and
added that it was well that we were all millionaires. It
was indeed.
And then, calamity. The horses arrived in camp. Here was
a regiment almost entirely recruited from the City of
Disappearing Horses. And here were something like twelve
hundred horses. Consternation and curses in as many
languages as you will hear in that same city of New York.
For these horses were not your amiable milk wagon nags,
nor the knowing cabby's plugs of an older day, but great,
raw, burly, snorting, untamed monsters for the guns, and
scraggly, mean, vicious mounts for the officers and
special detail men.
Some of us in our innocence still believed in Black
Beauty, the Noble Horse, and similar romantic fables.
Lieutenant Ketcham gave one group a preliminary lecture.
"When this war is over," said he, " and
the Hun has been licked and you go back to civil life,
there will be one thing you will miss more than anything
else, one thing above all others that you will hate to
leave behind, and that is your horse!" We didn't
believe you then, Lieutenant, and Captain, we know better
now. If there is a Camorra, a Black Hand, and an I. W. W.
among horses, our horses belonged. They were desperate
characters. Some of us who fed, watered, and manicured
them at imminent peril of our lives, will never forget
them. Nor the long plow through the hot sand from the
stables to the watering troughs. Let them boast of our
dangers and conquests on the Vesle and in the Argonne-the
scene of our greatest dangers and most heroic deeds was
the stable at Souge.
There was one other ordeal-the gas chamber and the gas
masks. The We Fear the Worst Department at G. H. Q.,
desiring that all men should know what gas was like, had
a huge concrete tank constructed with an attractive
little gas-tight doorway. Then they filled the place with
a mild but sufficiently nasty concentration of tear gas,
bade us don our "respirator box," and invited
us into the parlor. We suffered more from ten minutes of
gas in that blue-gray hole of a tank than during our
whole tour of the Front.
At length came word that we were to proceed to the
artillery range for practice. As a child with a toy
pistol longs for the Glorious Fourth we longed for the
chance to pull the lanyards of our big howitzers and see
a hundred pounds of super-steel travel from here to
miles-away in a few seconds.
It was here on the range at Souge that the regiment
received the training that made it a factor in the
fighting A. E. F. The range was the scene of the finals
in the great contest for promotion within the regiment.
Here officers, gun crews, the telephone, radio, scout,
and instrument details for the first time put their
theoretical knowledge to the test of actual practice. We
were told at Souge, that no regiment of artillery had
done so well at the range before. And certainly if we did
not set the world afire we made a brave and all but
successful attempt the day the range was aflame. Hundreds
of us fought and conquered that fierce brush fire with no
better tools than picks, shovels, and rakes. The smoke
filled the sky for miles, alarming the whole
countryside-even as the roar of our guns had caused a
temporary panic in Bordeaux, for these were days when the
Boche was a very real terror and the end of the war ten
years away, if you were logical and understood European
affairs.
On July 4th we did our best to reassure Bordeaux. We
paraded her streets in force. The bands blared, the
caissons rolled along, quite as the song would have it,
and our path was strewn with roses and invitations to
partake of Bordeaux's best.
At length came
orders to pack up and leave Souge, its sand, its flies,
and its Bordeaux passes forever. We had come to Souge a
regiment of rookies, masters of obsolete artillery
methods, minus the very guns needful. We left Souge, a
trained and powerful fighting force, well-organized,
well-taught, well-equipped, ready to take our place in
the line, the first regiment of heavies in the First
National Army Division in the First American Army in
France.
MILTON GOODMAN,
Sergeant, 306th F. A.