Established thus, the organizations extended over a considerable stretch of territory. The 109th, for instance, was at Mitry and Mory, twin villages, but a short distance apart and usually referred to, for convenience, as one place, Mitry-Mory, eight miles by airline from division headquarters.
The 53rd Artillery Brigade still was hard at its training work miles away and the doughboys, surmising that they would not be withheld from action to wait for the guns, gave thanks that it was the old Second, and not one of their regiments, that had been turned into artillery. Men of the old Third, particularly, recalled that it had been generally expected, when there was talk of transforming an infantry regiment to artillery, that theirs would be the regiment to be chosen, and that the naming of the Second had come as something of a surprise.
CHAPTER II
Off for the Front
The infantry regiments had been assembled during June and a long and a wearisome wait impended while other units moved into the divisional concentration. No leaves were granted to go to Paris, although the crown of the Eiffel Tower could be descried above the haze from the city by day and at night the searchlights, thrusting inquisitive fingers of light through the far reaches of the sky in search of prowling Hun airmen, seemed to point the way to joys to which all had long been strangers.
From the other direction came, when the wind was right, the dull rumbling, like distant thunder, which they had learned was the guns.
Longings were about evenly divided between the two directions. If they could not go up to the front, whither they had been headed for these many months, they would have liked to go to Paris. Failing of both the front and Paris, they would have liked to go "any old place away from here." Which is typical of the soldier, "here," wherever it may be, always being the least desirable place in the world.
So the doughboys and engineers whiled away the long, warm days, drilling and hiking, doing much bayonet work, polishing and cleaning rifles and other equipment and variously putting in the time as best they could, and fretting all the time for a chance at real action. That may be said to have been one of the most trying periods of their long probation.