About 4 p. m. the batteries of the second battalion gained a crest to the right of the Foret de Nesles.
“How far are our lines from here?” asked an officer in the lead, of a signal corps man on the road.
“There’s only a company and a half of infantry beyond here. I don’t know how far ahead they are,” was the reply.
So the battalion turned back and took cover in woods behind the crest. Here supper—canned corn and stewed dried apricots—was served, and here were established the horse-lines, which only stayed a day. German equipment and dead lay strewn through the woods.
After mess came the order to harness and hitch. The Second Battalion trotted into position for the first and only time in the regiment’s history. The sight of the guns and caissons dashing into action was stirring, and it sent up the spirits of the fatigued infantrymen to a pitch that enabled them to carry on when already exhausted. In the morning we learned that during the darkness the company and a half of infantrymen, who had been scouting to gain contact with the enemy, had withdrawn, leaving us the nearest unit to the enemy. But the enemy were retreating so rapidly that they were beyond our range again by afternoon. The road forward was swarming with supply trains, artillery, machine gun carts, and infantry that passed, company after company, their packs on their backs, pushing ahead to keep the enemy on the move, giving him no rest in which to organize and entrench himself.
On the evening of August 3 came the order to move forward again, compelling us to abandon our mess to pack up. Our route, through Chery-Chartreuse, was so congested that progress was slow. Supply trains were doing their utmost to execute their mission, difficult because the line was pushing forward so rapidly, and leaving railroad heads so far behind. At one point it was necessary to halt for several hours because the road ahead was being constantly shelled, making passage impossible. It was daybreak when we pulled up a long steep hill, passing through muddy fields to avoid danger on the shelled roads. The horses, already worn out by continued labor, little food and scarcity of water, could hardly make the ascent even with cannoneers pushing, shouting and urging them on by every means possible.
Our position here was on the forward slope of a bowl-shaped valley. At the bottom, in the shelter of a line of bushes, were the guns of the First Battalion. To our left were woods, in which the horses and limbers took cover. At the right was a large farm house that housed the B. C. detail and some other men. Far down, in the depths of the basin were two roads that drew much fire. In front along the crest ran another, also a frequent target. Artillery, infantry and supplies were coming up all the time in preparation for an attack to push across the Vesle river.
The men had traveled all night in the rain and cold. But before there could be any rest, trail pits must be dug, in order that we might be able to fire if called upon at any time to do so. With increasing experience of hunger and consequently keener eye to the emergencies ahead, the men had levied upon a pile of rations lying where they had been abandoned by some cart whose load was too great to make progress along the miry road. They had, therefore, for breakfast—ere the battery kitchen had time to get its fire going—some of that canned commodity labelled by the packers “canned roast beef” but more generally termed, by the consumers, “monkey meat.” Canned sweet potatoes heated in a mess-kit over a can of solidified alcohol was an excellent dish, the more appreciated because they had never been issued to the battery. The infantry were favored in this regard, it seems. The discovery that elderberries grew in the woods near by furnished dessert, for sugar was supplied from some one’s store, acquired, no doubt, from some other abandoned rations. But the dessert was, for most, a mistake, as they realized when they began to feel sensations like those of years before resulting from an overdose of green apples.
When the digging was done, the cannoneers passed the afternoon in sleep. In the evening the battery fired. Heavy shelling on the road behind, after midnight, was accompanied by another call to the guns to fire again. The caissons, which had gone back after more ammunition after they had come up with the pieces, came up with their second load in the midst of darkness. The first two reached the position without delay, but the others, halted by the constant shelling on the road, had to wait till nearly daybreak before it was safe to venture up.
Rain fell next day. But the big tarpaulins belonging with the guns were stretched as a tent under the camouflage, and gave comfort to the men so long as they were not called upon to fire. The bread that came with meals—carried in cans from the kitchen in the woods—was green with mould, from the long journey in inclement weather from the bakeries. The coffee tasted like quinine, since the water to be found was so bad that it had to be strongly chlorinated. But a big sack of mail came to the battery that day, and all troubles were forgotten in the joy of hearing from home.