HISTORY
of
THE 306th Field Artillery
BACCARAT
ENFIN, Au FRONT!
Ended at last all the riding of sharp-spined horses amid
the dust clouds of the boiling plain of Souge! Never
again would we waste good shells on the innocent dummy
trenches of its target range. Finished were our long
months of training, and before us lay the Front-that belt
of upturned earth and rusted wire which for four years
had separated the Boche from civilized man.
Sometimes,-usually, in fact, we had not thought much
about the Front. But when, on July 11, 1918, we saw our
Supply Company moving out of Camp de Souge-wagons,
trucks, horses, men-and leaving the low brown buildings
which had been our homes since early May, marching out to Bonneau to entrain, and we knew that we would not be many
hours behind them, the Front suddenly became a thing of
personal interest to each of us. We would soon be making
communiques, not merely reading them from our bulletin
boards. Our good howitzers would be talking to the Boche
in the only language he understands. There was a sense of
elation about it, but a rather nervous elation; of course
each of us hoped and expected to be lucky but we could
not but know that some of us would not return. However,
training was finished; it was time to go. In those days
things had been going none too well on the Front; they
needed the 306th there, and the 306th was ready.
But before reaching the Front there was the little matter
of a railway journey across France, and preliminary
thereto the task of entraining. Coming from Brest we had
loaded ourselves into these funny little four wheeled
boxcars labeled " 40 men, or 8 horses," and
found it fairly simple but we never tried putting those
eight horses aboard. Some of us loaded our horses by day
and some of us by night, but the hour made no difference
in the degree of their perversity. Many of them became
insulted at the notion of boxcars and declared for a
first-class passenger compartment, or nothing. Many
others seemed convinced that the quickest way to the
Front was not via the boxcar door but by trying to fall
through the narrow crack between the car and the loading
platform. Did their objections to entering betoken an
obscure equine presentiment that they, at least, would
never return from the Front? Certain it is that there
were few among them whose carcasses were not to rest
along the Vesle, in the Argonne, or beside the long white
highways of Champagne. However, willing and unwilling,
led, cajoled, or pushed aboard by brute force, they went
with us. Our kitchens, our rations, our fuel, our cooks
were aboard. Our fantastically painted howitzers and
their caissons were on the flat cars. The engines emitted
the thin anTmic shrieks characteristic of the French
locomotive whistle, and, one by one, between the 12th and
the 15th of July, our long trains crawled away from
Bonneau, headed we knew not where except that it was
" Au Front!"
For three days then we journeyed through the pleasant
land of France. Now and again we stopped -to form lines
at our kitchens for coffee, to carry pails of water to
the thirsty horses, or to wash at the water tanks we
passed and stretch ourselves after the tedium of our
cramped quarters. As often as possible we ate corned
willy and hard bread were the staples, eked out by such
jam or cheese as the fore-handed and enterprising had
secured. Between the diversions we slept (in relays, for
there was not room for all the occupants of a car to lie
down simultaneously) or dangled our legs comfortably from
the open doors, while we watched the trim landscapes
gliding past. We became steadily darker, with
accumulating layers of soot and dust, and no man might
call us for appearing with unshaven jowls, for shaving
facilities there were none. Then, too, there were the
appreciative audiences which watched our trains crawl
through the towns or stop in the stations -strange mixed
throngs of American soldiers, small boys, French girls,
British Tommies, donkeys, poilus, market women,
Moroccans. It was such an audience that greeted us at
Limoges-the whole city seemed to be taking its promenade
and, moreover, was sumptuously decorated with French and
American flags. We took this as a generous tribute in our
honor, disdaining the suggestion of those few wise acres
who thought Limoges might be celebrating Bastille Day.
No mishaps marred our journey; even when Private Folvig
of A Battery felt off the train he was not suppressed for
long, but reappeared a few days later, somewhat tardily
but in good order. Occasional excitement would be caused
by the habit of the French railroad authorities of
unexpectedly and surreptitiously detaching a car, now and
again, and permitting its train to proceed without it.
Invariably it contained something we needed-instruments,
caissons, a few of ourselves perhaps-and retrieving it
always afforded an interesting diversion. Possibly the
best play of the trip was executed by an A Battery mare,
which, while endeavoring to get a really good view of the
scenery, fell out of her car, landed, catlike, on her
feet, and then, realizing her mistake, set off at a
patriotic gallop to catch her vanishing train. She won,
of course, cantering briskly down between the rails,
whinnying signals to stop the train, and was finally
hogtied and hoisted aboard again amid the plaudits of the
Battery.
Thus, in warm and delightful weather, we crossed the
beautiful land of France. We shall never forget those
green and well-kept fields and the gray little villages
clustering about their church towers. And thus we came to
Luneville, in Lorraine, and the first traces of the
Boche. From Luneville on we saw many evidences of his
presence houses burned, or with ragged holes in roofs and
walls, broken down bridges which might have been mined
during the first weeks of the war, and the little brown
crosses which, scattered here and there along the
highways or among the scarlet poppies of the fields
marked the resting places of those who had died in the
first great battles, when the Germans had swept over the
frontier to be stopped and driven back by the men whose
graves we passed.
It was at the little town of Baccarat, so far south on
the Lorraine Front that it was not many kilometers from
the Alsatian border, that our trains finally stopped,
arriving one by one between the 14th and the 18th of
July. Generally they arrived at night. And so most of us
detrained and moved out to our first camps unaided by any
light save the stars, for lights are taboo in territory
where the Boche planes patrol nightly. In darkness, then,
we dragged our guns and wagons from the flat-cars,
fumbled in the boxcars for our personal belongings, led
off our horses, sorted ourselves out, hitched the teams
to the gun carriages, and battery by battery, moved out
upon the dim roads which led toward the east and the
Boche. Through strange villages, all lightless and
seemingly empty of human life, and under trees standing
dark against the sky, we wound off into the unknown
hills, until before daylight, we had turned into woods
which would conceal our presence when the light came, and
our first night march had ended. Then picket lines could
be stretched, packs slipped from tired shoulders, and
presently, with dawn breaking through the dripping trees,
our cooks could begin their task of preparing the
breakfast coffee. They were not the soul-trying affairs
which our later night marches proved, but they were our
first experiences of moving by night in an unknown
country and going into camp in the dark in a strange bit
of woodland, and the first practical lesson which the
Front taught us.
And in the sunlight of that first morning each man began
to take stock of the Front. Under a sky of the purest
blue our rather sleepy eyes beheld a land of rolling
hills, dark thick woods, and fields as orderly and well
tilled as any we had yet seen. French farmers-old men,
women, and children-were working about us in those fields
in a way which seemed to us rather reckless. There did
not seem to be any trenches about, at least not in our
immediate neighborhoods. True, there were strips of brown
burlap hung across roads and sometimes forming curtains
along their sides to hide one's movements from the Boche
balloons-" camouflaged" roads-but on the other
hand there was no noise of guns and nobody was shelling
us. We carried our gas masks religiously and took care to
have our helmets handy, but there seemed to be nothing to
require their use. We kept under cover, too, under the
trees which sheltered our guns and our picket lines. We
received many strange orders against wandering about in
the open, and the sin of walking where none had walked
before and thus making new paths for the Hun camera to
photograph from its plane was suddenly explained to us as
being cardinal.
And presently we saw that plane. We all came out to look
and were sternly shooed back under cover like small
chickens beneath a hawk. Very high and small it was, with
wings glinting silver-gray in the sun, while around it
sprang out against the blue the fluffy little puffs of
white where the Archies' shrapnel was bursting. And it
paid no attention whatever to the little white puff balls
but sailed on about its business, whatever that may have
been, and everything became charmingly peaceful again. So
this was the Front!
In fact it was a "Peace Front" to which we had come, where there had
been no serious fighting for years and which was being used as a
finishing school for our new divisions. But for all that there was much
to be learned there and many new things awaiting us. First, there were
our doughboys, who had been in Flanders and already had a month's
experience of Baccarat and whom we now rejoined, with their tales
(sometimes highly imaginative) of trench life in both sectors. There was
the novelty of sleeping in the open in those tiny shelter tents we had
practiced pitching but never slept in-and pitching them by daylight and in inky darkness when
one's tent pins mysteriously vanish are different things.
The regiment was scattered to the four winds, too, with
its Headquarters Company in Baccarat itself and its
batteries stretched over many kilometers of hills and
woods to the north and the south of the town. And each
battery promptly divided itself into the echelon, which
stayed with the horses in the rear, and the firing
battery, which lived with the guns in their concealed and
camouflaged positions in range of their probable targets.
Then, for the first time, Battalion P. C.'s sprang up,
close to the batteries,. where the majors took up their
abodes and gathered around them the Battalion details,
which, until now, had lived happily in the bosom of their
own company. There was also, for some of us, the first
experience of living in billets, in those really thickly
populated villages which had looked so deserted when we
first passed through them by night. We had imagined that
soldiers were usually billeted in the pretentious mansion
of a count, or the marble palace of a duchess. Actually
it appeared that as a rule they found themselves in a
hayloft, approached by a rickety ladder and requiring
caution in its use, lest while sleeping peacefully, you
should roll through a hole in its floor and disturb the
night's rest of the antique cow which bunked below you.
Also some of us met dugouts-affairs with reassuringly
solid roofs of timbers and sand bags, but of such
inferior ventilation that we preferred to sleep outside
in pup tents, pitched conveniently nearby in case Boche
shells should make dugouts a necessity. And here we first
heard of spies-by all accounts the place was reeking with
them. On the very night of their arrival Sergeant Brown
and six other members of Headquarters Company were
suddenly drafted, armed to the teeth, to surround a
totally empty house from which-according to a strange and
excited officer-a spy was flashing signals to the Boche
planes. Here some of us first made the acquaintance of
observatories and had the pleasure of sitting therein for
' hours watching through scissors or monocular telescopes
the generally deserted and lifeless landscape which
stretched away beyond the enemy's lines, alert to catch
and report the least sign of animation, and very
occasionally rewarded by the sight of a camion (well out
of range) on a distant road, or of two Boches proceeding
leisurely " from the point K 4932 to the clump of
trees about one hundred meters south of that point."
Of an evening we listened to far-off bombardment, or
enjoyed the displays of signal rockets rising from the
distant trenches. And also of an evening some of us
improved our command of French by chatting in
International Language with the inhabitants of Merviller
and Reherry, learning something from those kindly people,
who had suffered from invasion in 1914, of why and how
bitterly they detest the Boche. " All the evil that
has ever come to Lorraine, has come from
Over-Rhine." And there we studied the manners and
customs of the people among whom we lived and tried to
philosophize on why a French villager prefers to keep his
ancestral manure pile before his front door instead of
behind his back door, and exactly for what reason he
installs the family cow in a room which, by rights,
should be the sitting-room of his dwelling. Others
explored the town of Baccarat-a considerable part of it
the bare walls of houses which the Boche had burned in
1914 before evacuating the place. Our special details
clambered over the hills, solving the manipulation of the
com-pass goniometer and the mysteries of Italian
resection. Our telephone details ran and patrolled their
lines and our radio men set up their wireless sets and
began to take and send messages. D Battery acquired
muscle in the process of digging gun emplacements and we
began to develop expertness in spreading camouflage
nettings to screen our guns and dumps of shells from
overhead observation. They were busy and interesting
days-those first days of our fortnight in the Baccarat
Sector-while the Regiment began, haltingly but earnestly,
and with every man putting forth his best, to function as
a unit in the line. And finally we sent a few of our good
F. A.'s and 0. A.'s over the intervening kilo-meters of
hills into Hunland.
It was on July 24,
1918, that the regiment fired its first shot at the
enemy, and the first six-inch shell fired by any National
Army Regiment on any front and in any war was sent on its
way by Gun No. 4 Of E Battery. Captain Allen commanded
the battery while Lieutenant Chipman acted as executive.
Sergeant Blake commanded Gun No. 4, which had been laid
by Corporal Birnbohm, gunner, while First Class Private
Worn had the honor of pulling the lanyard which started
our first "present for Jerry"-with the names of
the whole gun crew chalked on it-to its destination.
That same afternoon F Battery registered and during the
next day or two all the batteries did some shooting. But
we did little firing at Baccarat. To begin with, too much
firing might result in reprisals from our friends, the
enemy, thereby disturbing the serenity of a Peace Sector,
and, in the second place, ammunition was expensive and
the supply limited, So when B Battery expended ninety-one
shells in one afternoon the authorities promptly
requested explanations as to why a whole week's allowance
of ammunition had been dissipated in a single joyous
hour. There were other impediments to our destroying
Huns-the farmers persisted in working in the fields in
front of our guns and it was necessary to warn them away
when we wanted to annihilate their enemies. And D Battery
had thoughtlessly placed its howitzers on the edge of a
potato field, with the result that their blasts
prematurely dug many valuable hills of potatoes. We did
not understand exactly what the owner of that field said
when he came to talk the matter over with us but somehow
we gathered that he had not come to congratulate us on
the excellence of our gunnery. In fact he seemed rather
blind to the necessity of slaughtering Boche and unduly
impressed with the importance and monetary value of
" pommes de terre. " Apropos of the
inhabitants, they had a disconcerting manner not only of
taking you for granted, like people who had seen almost
enough of soldiers, but also of not taking the present
hostilities in their fields and farm yards very
seriously. Of course they had been at the Front f our
years longer than we had but it seemed to us that they
ought to treat the Front-any Front, indeed-with more
respect.
As for the Boche, he was almost as casual in his conduct
toward us as were the inhabitants. He seemed for the most
part content with watching us carefully from his
observation balloons, which hung continually above the
horizon, and from the planes, which came over steadily
despite the efforts of our Archies. It seemed that, so
long as he observed nothing unusually suspicious and we
behaved ourselves peaceably, he was resolved to do
likewise. Certainly he never shelled our batteries and
indeed only a few of us ever heard a hostile shell on
that Front-and those few shells were comfortably far
away.
But if, on any front where there exists a tacit agreement
that neither party will seriously annoy the other, you
are so faithless as to disregard that agreement, you must
expect that the outraged enemy will probably give vent to
his indignation. Prisoners had reported that the Boche
had some five thousand minnenwerfer shells stored in the
church of the village of Nouhigny. F Battery sent forward
a gun to a point from which this munition dump could be
reached, and destroyed it utterly. In spite of the
coincidence that the day was a Sunday, the target a
church filled to the doors (with shells), Captain Ketcham
of F Battery a minister's son and, that Sergeant
Berkmeyer, commanding the piece, was a priest's brother,
everyone considered the affair a complete success and
went to bed with a feeling of something accomplished,
something done. But Jerry did not seem equally pleased
and robbed us of our night's repose by sending his planes
over and bombing the whole sector all night long, paying
particular attention to our munition dumps. The annoying
part about it, after we had exercised so much care to
keep under cover and not betray our position, was that he
bombed dumps with a precision which demonstrated that he
had known where they were all the time.
This was not Jerry's sole performance in the role of
bomber; apparently he considered an occasional air raid
de rigueur even in a Peace Sector, and, the nights
becoming fine and moonlit, he came over to Baccarat and
spent several evenings with us. He had an annoying habit
of arriving about eleven o'clock, when everyone was
enjoying the first sweet sleep of night. Then one might
hear the unmistakable pulsating drone of the Boche
motor-coming nearer -and presently the Archies would open
viciously to a staccato accompaniment of machine guns
stuttering from the house tops of the town. Presently the
custodian of the Baccarat steam siren would awake, and,
soon after the first crashes of exploding bombs had set
the townspeople to shivering in their cellars and
"caves" he would add his pet's weird notes to
the general pandemonium. By this time its unearthly howl
was a little late to serve as a warning for approaching
aircraft but at least it officially stamped the event as
an air raid-and no air raid on a French town is complete
without a siren accompaniment.
We did not know that at first, and consequently many
members of Headquarters Company, who lived in the town,
took the siren to be a gas alarm, so that much excellent
and prompt drill in the assumption of gas masks resulted.
In this sector we suffered severely from gas. Not that
any of us were gassed, for the Boche never fired a gas
shell at us, but that we underwent the usual epidemic of
false gas alarms which assails untried soldiers. Imagine
being awakened about midnight, because an A Battery
driver passing through Merviller had seen men wearing gas
masks (?) and brought back news of the same to his
battery, and then donning your suffocating rubber and
isinglass affair and perspiring in it for an hour and a
half while the truth of the report was being
investigated. Then, too, certain officers displayed the
execrable taste of deliberately giving occasional false
gas alarms to see how quickly masks would be assumed-they
should have been pleased with the results!
And yet even the false gas alarm has its uses. For on a pleasant
afternoon there rolled up to E Battery an impressively large touring
car, whence issued several resplendent staff officers and, in their
midst, a vision in straw hat and white flannel trousers -Congressman
Blank, come to share the dangers and hardships of "the boys in the
trenches." Most unfortunately Sergeant Bonner, E Battery's Gas N. C. 0.,
an excellent man who always obeyed orders and who had received careful
injunctions from Captain Allen as to how to receive
visiting staff officers, after first craftily waiting
until our visitors had separated themselves from their
car by about one hundred meters, sounded the gas alarm.
Where-upon E Battery lifted up its voice and shouted
" Gas " as one man. And Congressman Blank,
without lifting up his voice, but turning suddenly and
strangely purple, unhesitatingly sprinted the hundred for
that car, where, after desperate fumbling, he hid his
countenance in an ill-smelling French mask. With the
distinguished legislator departed, with somewhat greater
dignity, the resplendent staff officers and the
impressive car bore them swiftly from the tainted airs in
which E Battery was strangling in efforts to render its
laughter inaudible.
One other event should be recorded; we were, for the
first time, "deloused." Under the chaperonage
of our Medical Department we marched dry and dusty
kilometers to the Divisional Delousing Plant, bearing
with us to their doom our all unconscious cooties. There
we were usually privileged to sit some hours, waiting our
turn, and watching the exits of those who had preceded
us-sad exits too, of once brave soldiers, who now emerged
in a condition of primitive undress and profanely set to
work to find out in which of the innumerable wrinkles of
their now unrecognizable clothing they belonged. But our
Medical Department was inexorable-it always is-and we in
turn found ourselves sadly regarding the damp wrinkles of
our presumably cootieless clothing and wishing that we
owned more than one uniform apiece. Let not the
uninitiated suppose this a trivial or unimportant
happening; he who has experienced the sad shock of
discovering that little Brother Cootie has come to live
with him, who knows the breathless excitement incident to
the chase of those carnivorae, and has felt the stern joy
which surges on hearing his death rattle, knows better.
We spent only a fortnight at Baccarat and when it ended
we realized that we had not been doing real fighting but
only putting finishing touches on our training. But
without those touches we would have found ourselves in
evil case in the sterner work to which we were sent. It
was on July 31st that we were relieved by French
artillery and on the same day the regiment lost its good
friend and leader, Colonel Lawrence S. Miller, our
commander at Upton and Souge, who was transferred to
other duty. Our Lieutenant-Colonel, Frederick Harrison
Smith, took command in his place and, on the night of
August 1st, led us away from the Peace Sector of
Baccarat. We did not know our destination-rumor gave us a
choice of Toul, Rheims, Soissons, or Italy. In one
particular only was rumor correct-that we were going to a
front where real fighting awaited us.
ALEXANDER GORDON,
Captain, 306th F.A.