Though there were losses in other batteries of the regiment, Battery E went through the engagement without a casualty. The death of Lieutenant Cowan, who had enlisted in the battery as a private, gone with it to the Mexican border, and been commissioned an officer of it before leaving Fort Sheridan, in August, 1917, came as a heavy blow to the men of Battery E because he was so generally and thoroughly well liked by them. His transfer to Headquarters Company had merely removed him from their eyes but not their hearts. As liaison officer, he was in the forward trenches during the engagement, and there a shell fragment struck him on the afternoon of July 16. The weird beauty of his funeral the following evening left a deep impression on the men who were at the regimental horse-lines at the time. After a drizzling rain early in the evening, the sky cleared, and the moonlight sifted down through the trees, glittering on the wet leaves, as the procession marched slowly through the woods to the band’s solemn music of Chopin’s “Funeral March”. The call of “Taps” through the dead of night, the final rifle volleys, brought the keener anguish at the thought that our first loss at the enemy’s hands had been a comrade with whom we would have parted last.
On Friday, July 19, came orders to move. All ammunition was carried into the trench and camouflaged. When darkness came the flat-tops were taken down, and everything packed. The limbers were up early, and at 10 o’clock the battery pulled out. Our way was through Dompierre and into a woods, where we camped during the next day. Next night, leaving at 9:45, the regiment made a wide detour around Chalons, which was receiving heavy bombing by dark, and arrived at Vitry-la-Ville about 7:30 a. m. That night we entrained, bound for the west, where the Allies were pushing back the Chateau Thierry salient. Our destination was not far by direct route, but the presence of the enemy in the valley of the Marne about Dormans cut us off. So we traveled in a circuitous course, southward to Brevonne, then westerly through Troyes, Rumilly-sur-Seine, Longueville and Gretz, to the environs of Paris, and east again down the valley of the Marne, through Meaux, to La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, where we detrained at midnight, July 22.
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| Lieutenant “Kelly” Ennis | Home Life in a Dug-Out | |
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| En Route to the O. P. | Lieutenant Adams at the O. P. |
CHAPTER V
Clearing the Chateau Thierry Salient
At our encampment near Montreuil-aux-Bois, whither we hiked from La Ferté-sous-Jouarre on the morning of July 23, we found traces of the horse-lines of the artillery of the 26th Division, in the shape of trampled picket lines, bunks of woven branches, and abandoned equipment of all kinds. Stories of heavy losses, of nights and days without sleep or rest, as the New England batteries tried to catch up with their infantry in the wake of the rapidly retreating Germans, of extraordinary advances by the American forces, of hardships and lack of supplies due to the inability of supply trains to catch up with the rapid progress of the forward troops, met us on every hand. They might have been, as we recall them now, prophecies of what we, too, were to undergo in this sector.
We had only a day’s respite. On the 24th, a large number of the battery were allowed leave to visit La Ferté. The civilians had not long returned to the city, from which they had fled when the enemy had advanced beyond Chateau Thierry, and shops were only beginning to be restocked. Fruits and vegetables were plentiful but at high prices. Meat was altogether lacking, and eggs were few. No restaurants were open at all, and few cafes. To secure a meal, one had to first buy the food, and then seek a housewife who would cook and serve it.
Next morning came a sudden order to move, and, three-quarters of an hour after its receipt, the battery was on the road at 9:30 a. m. The way led through places whose names were already known to our ears for the splendid fighting American troops had done there—Coulombes, Bouresches and Belleau woods. In the golden fields of wheat were big splotches where shells had torn up the black earth; trampled spaces often held a mound marked by a rifle stuck bayonet first into the ground—time was only enough to bury the dead, not yet sufficient to put wooden crosses over them. Along the roads was equipment and material of all kinds, abandoned by the Germans in their hurried retreat, or cast aside by the Americans pushing on in pursuit.