HISTORY
of
THE 306th Field Artillery
Tales They Tell
There seems to be an inherent fear in
man, of anything connected with high explosives. Even an
empty shell-case is not always trusted as foolproof by
the folks back home. A typical example is that of the old
lady who is afraid of a revolver, and won't touch it,
even with the chambers empty.
One of the men at Regimental Headquarters sent home to
his sister a German 77 shell-case as a souvenir, Into the
shell-case, he placed several cubes of British taffy,
sent him by a friend in London. He thought he would like
to have his sister sample the taffy, but neglected to
write her of the fact. He was surprised, about two months
later, to receive a letter from his mother:
MY DEAR ARTHUR:
We have received your souvenir and we thank you very much
for it. Sister Ethel insisted that the substance inside
the shell case is taffy, and wants to eat it, but I have
forbidden her to do so, for what if it should explode
inside her! I have carefully buried the package in the
back yard until I hear further from you.
Your loving Mother.
New Use for a Potato Masher"
Wise in the way of the 0. D. Pill, the medical department
found in the exigencies of war, a new use for the German
"potato masher." This hand grenade derives its
name from its peculiar shape. It has a cylindrical head,
with a wooden handle.
At the Vesle, a medical man, whose horse
refused to go, seized one of these deadly contrivances
from the side of the road, and to the consternation of
his comrades, began to beat the " cheval " over
the rump with it. There was a wild scramble for cover as
he threw the thing down, having finished with it. But it
didn't go off. Battery A's first gun passed over the
" potato masher " half an hour later and
exploded it. Although graver consequences than the
general excitement and gas alarms that resulted might
have ensued, no one was injured.
Fly Cops
On the Vesle sector, our impotence in the air was a
constant source of irritation to all. We hadn't enough
planes to patrol the entire sector, and when our flyers
were in one part of it, Jerry always cut up capers in the
other part. One day after a hostile airplane had
destroyed an observation balloon, three or four of our
planes came hotfooting it to the scene of the
catastrophe. Chief Mechanic McAleer, of Battery D,
watching them, remarked drily:
" Here they come, like the cops after a fight,
taking the names!".
Help Wanted
When the regiment entered its course of training at Camp
de Souge, officers and men were at once immersed in the
intricacies of French firing data. Everything was done
with endless streams of tables printed on endless reams
of pink, green and yellow paper. If one did not carry a
pencil for one's chief weapon, one stood in grave danger
of losing the war. It was there that a bright wit gave
birth to the sentence:
" I thought I was going to be an artilleryman, but
now I can see I'm going to be a bookkeeper for a
cannon!"
Discipline First
Captain Stantial, of supply company, stood chatting with
a brother officer in supply company's orderly room, one
December afternoon. The regiment was then billeted in the
village of Dancevoir. An orderly entered, stood at
attention, waiting for the conversation to end. When
about five minutes had elapsed, the orderly became
noticeably fidgety.
"Well," said Captain Stantial finally,
"what is it?"
"Sir," said the excited orderly, saluting,
"they sent me over here for an axe. Regimental
Headquarters is on fire!"
"And There I Am!"
In just what barracks it happened is not certain, but
Lieutenant D. R. Hyde says it occurred during the early
Camp Upton days. The "ten minutes to dress and make
reveille, with K. P. if you don't" schedule was then
in effect. It was brought to the lieutenant's attention
that a casual was in the habit of going to bed with all
his clothes on-" sleeping in full equipment C,"
as a facetious supply sergeant put it. Called to task for
not undressing, the rookie explained:
" Vell you see, Lieutenant, it's dis vay. If I takes
off my clothings, I can't put 'em on qvick enough in the
mornin', but vid dis scheme, you see how easy it is
yourself, Lieutenant,-I jumps out of bed,-and there I
am!"
The "Gassing" of Battery A
The prevalence of false gas alarms during the early days
at the Vesle, and the imminence of genuine ones, set all
the men so on edge against the deadly vapors, that the
least disturbance of any nature usually ended up with a
gas alarm for good measure. The situation was not without
its humor.
It was a dark night in Nesle Wood, with only the lone gas
guard awake, pacing up and down-up and down. Suddenly he
took a deep sniff,-then rang the gas alarm with might and
main. Gas masks were fumbled on in sleepy haste, and five
minutes later, removed in disgust. There had not even
been an explosion. But the lone gas guard had walked over
a dead cat!
Following that, Battery A's guns were
being brought up to Chery-Chartreuve, rumbling along with
the drivers half-asleep. A lead driver sang out to a
fellow in his rear:
" Are you all right, Shirk?
" Ya-as! " replied Shirk, in his New England
drawl,
Ya-a-s, I a-am! "
A half-dozing driver further down the line pricked up his
ears, then shouted:
" Ga-a-s-s I "
The alarming cry was repeated from man to man, and again,
out came masks. And poor Shirk had only meant to say
" Yes! "
Sergeant Hark and Private Bert Spencer of Battery C had
an unusual experience with " gas " one night
during the usual heavy shelling at Chery. They were
sitting on the stump of a tree. Someone shouted:
" Ga-a-s-s!
Hark and Spencer thought they heard a peculiar hissing,
buzzing and humming sound, like a gas shell coming over.
Suddenly Hark jumped up from the stump and cried:
" Ouch! I'm wounded!
They had been sitting on a hornet's nest!
All is not Pills that Swallows
Being rather severely troubled with rheumatism, Private
Joseph Gonzalez, Lieutenant Colonel Peek's orderly, begot
himself to the infirmary one day to procure some sort of
alleviation. He stated his
troubles to the Regimental Surgeon, Major Jarrell, who
handed him a couple of pills, with the remark:
"Here, take these."
The Major then interrupted the diagnosis to give some
instructions to a medical orderly. He turned again to
Gonzalez when he had finished, and continued:
" Dissolve those pills I gave you in a pint of water
each, and rub your legs well with the solution. "
Gonzalez turned pale with dismay pictured on his
countenance.
"But, Sir, I have already swallowed them!" was
his reply.
"Battery S"
This is the story of a supply company that aspired to be a battery. It
achieved its ambition-to the extent of one shot. So great was the
regimental enthusiasm in the advance from the Vesle to the Aisne, that
supply company could not resist the temptation of playing a grim joke on
Jerry by turning one of his own io5mm. howitzers against
him. The howitzer was a salvaged one.
Under direction of Captain Stantial and
Lieutenant Delamater, Supply Company's picked gun crew
hauled the captured howitzer to a position near Vauxcere
and emplaced it. Other enthusiastic supply men scoured
about for powder and ammunition that had been left in
dumps by the fleeing Germans, and succeeded in amassing a
goodly pile.
All was set. The bread-and-jam-delivery gun-crew struck
attitudes, and Numbers One to Ten inclusive were ready to
give the long lanyard a good big yank.
" F-i-r-e! " shouted Captain Stantial.
" Wo-o-o-sh! " the German shell whizzed on its
way to the Aisne.
" Cr-a-s-s-h-h! " the howitzer barrel flew off
its carriage, and the carriage itself kicked back and ran
over a cannoneer's foot.
Battery S, after firing a total of One Round, was fini.
"
It Worked Both Ways
One can often combine two widely different jobs to work
well together, in the army as well as else-where. At Camp
Upton, Lieutenant Friedlander was Regimental Gas Officer,
and also Regimental Insurance Officer. It was his custom
to deliver two lectures to the batteries and companies of
the regiment-one on gas, and the other on insurance.
After he had delivered both, it was said of him that he
was wont to conclude:
"And so, Gentlemen, should you not be quick enough
in the application of the gas mask, of which
I have told you in a former lecture, you should certainly
become the beneficiaries of the insurance, of which I
have also told you!"
He Remembered
Wherever the American soldier goes, though it be even to
brave danger and death, his irrepressible sense of humor
goes with him. This humor crops out at grim moments,
sometimes.
It was one of the habits of Captain, then Lieutenant
Clark J. Lawrence, of Battery E, during horse
instruction, to shout at the awkward horsemen, "Bend
Over!" This was in correction of a stiff, erect
attitude while riding. Lieutenant Lawrence used this
admonition so many times that he became
known, secretly, as " B endover John. "
At the Vesle, with the constant singing and bursting of
shells all about, camp idiosyncrasies had almost been
forgotten, when a shell burst unusually close to Battery
E's position. Lieutenant Lawrence, solicitous for the
welfare of his men, called out, saying:
"Where did that shell strike?"
The answer came, clear and distinct, from a neigh-boring
dugout:
"Bend over, and see!"
His Feet Were not Mates
It was at Camp Upton, during the training days. Private
Joe Carroll, of Headquarters Company, was changing from
hikers to dress shoes in order to be presentable at
Retreat. Suddenly the whistle blew for that formation,
and Joe went helter-skelter out of the barracks with a
hiker on one foot and a dress shoe on the other.
First Lieutenant N. R. Coleman was Officer of the Day.
That worthy Southerner had won fame from the manner in
which he always gave the command: " P-e-r-a-a-d-e
R-e-s-t! " drawling it in a manner most comical.
Also, one never knew whether he was cracking a joke, or
allowing one to be put over on him. As he came slowly
down the long front rank, the lieutenant noticed the lone
hiker among the polished dress shoes. He paused before
Joe Carroll. Then he took off his strong-lensed glasses,
looked again, wiped the lenses, and concentrated his gaze
upon the phenomenon. Clearly something was wrong. Had
somebody lost a leg in the scuffle? But Lieutenant
Coleman wished to convince him-self. Turning to Carroll,
whose countenance was changing from color to color like
an electric sign, he inquired:
"Private Carroll,-Ah say-Are both those feet
you-ah's? "
Joe Sanchez, mounted battalion agent with the first
battalion, had a favorite Maltese mule whom he dubbed
" Soissons " because he was so hard to handle
about the flanks. One dark and stormy night at the Vesle,
Soissons grew tired of following the same old trail from
regimental headquarters to the battalion, so he took the
bit between his teeth, and decided to join the infantry.
Joe was in the saddle, and didn't care much about joining
the doughboys, but Soissons had his weather eye on a
little Ford ambulance, and was following it at a gallop
toward the front lines, never stopping until a dressing
station was reached. Here a medical man yelled at Joe:
"Hey! what are you doing 'way up here with a horse?
"
" It's not a horse, it's a blinketty-blink
mule!" remonstrated Joe, "If it was a horse, it
would have sense enough not to be here!"
Joe and the medical man tried their best to ease the
animal into an "about-face" 'mid a stream of
machine-gun bullets, but to no avail. The mule wouldn't
budge until the ambulance returned loaded, when he
followed it back as he had come. Arrived almost at
battalion headquarters, Soissons got his nigh hind hoof
caught in the stirrup. This was the last straw for Joe.
He dismounted in disgust.
" Soissons, " he said sorrowfully, " if
you're gonna get on, I'm gonna get off! I'm gonna get off
and walk! "
And walk he did, with Soissons following him into the
stable at a hobble.
Blow Bugles Blow
The parade in Bordeaux was a trying time for many-not
least for the buglers and Major Moon. The major was a
great deal put out to find that although the third
battalion bugler knew his calls well enough, he could not
separate the preparatory commands from the commands of
execution.
In vain he tried to explain to the embarrassed musician
who only became more confused. After some minutes the
major turned in his saddle quite without any intention of
giving a command, but the bugler eager to anticipate his
slightest wish blew "Halt." And so tremendously
did he blow it that he bit off the mouthpiece of the
bugle.
The column, by this time accustomed to receiving orders
by bugle, refused to move without one. Only after many
irate repetitions of the command by Major Moon did it
decide to "forward march." Meanwhile our
overzealous bugler instead of finding another bugler to
take his place rode from one battery to another and
called out all the buglers. Major Moon spent his noon
hour gently but firmly and precisely assuring the entire
corps of buglers that he did not require their services.
The Whole Mess Line
The first night at La Haraz6e was a wild one, but even at
the front it had been proved that it is an ill wind that
blows nobody good. The good came the second night to
Private Alberts of Battery C.
Mess was ready to be served when the
shells began to fall. Thinking that the program of the
preceding night was about to be repeated, everybody,
including all the cooks and kitchen police, fled to
cover.
There was one exception-Private Alberts.
He had been on the end of the line and saw his great
opportunity. Mess pan in hand, he dashed from one
steaming receptacle to another, taking huge helpings of
everything in sight. This he bore back to safety in
triumph and explained:
" Did you think I was going to lose the first chance
I ever had to get a square meal in the army?"
The Resurrection of the Dead
More than once it has been proved that the A. E. F.
artillery horse is a creature of discernment and
understanding. Did not one choose to commit suicide in
the Marne when he realized the grim future he faced, and
have not others (not always draft horses) escaped army
service by ways that are dark and in at least one case,
by tricks that are vain.
Coming out of the echelon near Baccarat there were many
halts caused by anything from an enemy plane flying low
to a loosened saddle-girth. Captain Allen was informed
during one of these halts that one of the battery horses
had died on the road. Yes, he certainly looked dead-and
did not respond to any treatment. The stable sergeant
pronounced him ready for burial and the work of removing
the harness began. Much pushing and pulling ensued now by
the head and now by the tail, until finally the animal,
deciding it was better to endure army than submit to
further indignities, scrambled to his feet and wandered
to the roadside to munch grass. Evidently the army wasn't
such a bad place after all.