Next day, August 12, found the regiment in the Bois de Chatelet, where they examined the site of the “Big Bertha” which had been there. Only a huge turntable ten yards in diameter, with a concrete base at least eight feet deep—one saw that far down a circular trench around it—was left, with the railway tracks along which the carriage ran. The ball-bearings of the turntable were the size of a man’s head.
That day Corporal Holton was appointed first sergeant. Corporal Collier succeeding him as gas N. C. O. Sergeant Landrus, who had been appointed “top-cutter” in O’Meara’s place July 24, had gone to Saumur to officers’ school.
Two days later the regiment marched through Chateau Thierry, to which its citizens were just returning. French soldiers guarded German prisoners at work clearing out houses and cleaning the street. Before some doors stood wagons loaded with furniture. Other doors bearing the sign, “Habitée,” indicated those houses’ occupants were settled. The church’s walls, torn by shell holes, bore witness to the severe shelling the town had received. On the hillside beyond, lay the village of Vaux, now a heap of white bricks, where the Germans had advanced. Hiking both morning and afternoon, the battery reached a woods on the bank of the Marne, near the hamlet of Mery-sur-Marne, where we encamped.
For three days the battery lay here, twenty men going to Paris on a 48-hour pass, the others visiting La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, more thriving now than when we had detrained there three weeks before. But prices were very high: peaches and plums, 3 francs a pound; melons, 4 and 5 francs each; tomatoes, 15 sous a pound; potatoes 10 sous a pound; sugar, 20 sous a pound. Swimming in the Marne was a favorite pastime until the drowning of a member of Battery F clouded our enjoyment of it.
On August 18 the regiment hiked along the Paris highway, alongside the Marne, to Trilport, where it entrained that evening.
A box-car was a welcome haven of rest then. The weeks in this sector had passed like months. The constant moving up, the difficulty of getting adequate rations, the lack of good water, the shortage of sleep, and the continual and strenuous activity through it all, had worn out the men and killed many of our horses. But the division had done much in the time during which it had been in the line, and our fatigue seemed lightened by such statements as that of the divisional commander: “In eight days the 42d Division has forced the passage of the Ourcq, made an advance of 16 kilometres, and met, routed and decimated a Prussian Guard division, a Bavarian Reserve division and one other division.”