Midnight passed and we were still wheeling our way through sleeping villages, consulting maps under rays of flashlights, gathering directions some of the time from mile posts and wall signs, and at other times gaining knowledge of roads and turns and hills from sleepy heads in curl wrappers that protruded from bedroom chambers and were over-generous in advice.
The animals were tired. Rain soaked the cigarettes and made them draw badly. Above was drizzle and below was mud. There were a few grumbles, but no man in our column would have traded places with a brother back home even if offered a farm to boot.
It was after three in the morning when we parked the guns in front of a château, brought forward some lagging combat wagons and discovered the rolling kitchen had gone astray. In another hour the animals had been unhitched but not unharnessed, fed and watered in darkness and the men, in utter weariness, prepared to lie down and sleep anywhere. At this juncture, word was passed through the sections that the battery would get ready to move immediately. Orders were to clear the village by six o'clock. Neither men nor horses were rested, but we moved out on time and breakfasted on the road.
The way seemed long, the roads bad and the guns heavy. But we were passing through an Eden of beauty—green fields and rolling hills crested by ancient châteaux. At times, the road wound down through hillside orchards, white and pink with apple blooms. Fatigue was heavy on man and beast, but I heard one walking cannoneer singing, "When It's Apple Blossom-time in Normandie." Another rider in the column recalled the time when his father used to give him ten cents for standing on the bottom of an upturned tin basin and reciting, "Over the mountains winding down, horse and foot into Frederickstown."
"The jar of these guns as they grind over the gravel is enough to grind the heart out of you," said a sweating cannoneer who was pressing a helping shoulder to one of the heavies as we negotiated a steep hill.
"What in hell you kicking about," said the man opposite. "Suppose you was travelling with one of them guns the Germans are using on Paris—I mean that old John J. Longdistance. You'd know what heavy guns are then. They say that the gun's so big and takes so many horses to haul it, that the man who drives the lead pair has never spent the night in the same town with the fellow who rides wheel swing."
A young reserve lieutenant with mind intensely on his work, combined for my benefit his impressions of scenery with a lesson in artillery location. His characterisation of the landscape was as technical as it was unpoetical.
"A great howitzer country," was the tenor of his remarks. "Look at the bottom of that slide. Fine position for one fifty-five. Take that gully over there. That's a beaut of a place. No use talking. Great howitzer country."
During the afternoon, a veterinarian turned over two horses to a French peasant. One was exhausted and unable to proceed, and the other suffered a bad hoof, which would require weeks for healing. News that both animals were not going to be shot was received with joy by two men who had ridden them. I saw them patting the disabled mounts affectionately on the neck and heard one of them say,
"'Salright, old timer—'salright. Frenchy here is going to take care of you all right. Uncle Sam's paying the bill and I am coming back and get you soon's we give Fritzie his bumps."