On June 11, Major Odom went to a Corps school, and I was left in charge of the battalion. Of course, that evening orders came in to move next morning. We had just begun to get in our English transport—the little limbers and the cranky rolling kitchen with which we were to become so familiar later. Up to then we had cooked on our American field ranges.
At 7 o’clock next morning we pulled out and marched down to Rety. There we fell in behind the 2d battalion, and started on our first full day’s hike. The packs were still heavy, and those full cartridge belts—Lord, how much 100 rounds of ammunition can weigh after a while! As usual with green troops, the leading element set too fast a pace. Rests seemed but a minute. Finally, on a long, long up grade, we halted for lunch. After chow and an hour’s rest, we pulled on, picking ’em up and putting ’em down. On, over broad white roads; turning off into narrower roads shaded by rows of tall trees, turning into the highroad again. We passed stragglers from the 309th and 310th Infantry, so knew that the whole 78th Division must be in France and on the move near us. The hills were higher, the women were older. We came to a village; three estaminets, two stores, a school house, a blacksmith’s shop, a sign. “Brunembert.” Regimental Hdqrs. and Supply Co. are halted there. We keep on; on the other side of town “C” and “D” companies meet their advance party guides and turn off; we hike on half a kilometer, half way up a hill, turn off to the right, hike around the hill, and finally, at about 3 P. M., plumb tuckered, the company is split, two platoons going to one farmhouse, the other two to another, at Haute Creuse.
Haute Creuse itself was only a crossroads, with one poor cottage. Battalion headquarters was there. The company billets were a good quarter of a mile apart. In addition, when I inspected the billet assigned the 3rd and 4th platoons, I found a remarkably dirty old barn, with a cesspool and manure heap outside that was awful, even for France. The only spring was near the pool. So the next morning we moved these platoons over to the other billet, pitching pup tents in a beautiful field just on the other side of the barnyard.
That afternoon an old duffer in an English major’s uniform came ambling along. He expressed great anguish at our not using the billets assigned to us. It meant nothing to him that our comfort, health, convenience were served by our using our own tents. The plan was that that lousy old typhoid trap should be occupied, and so it must be done. And he, it appeared, was the “area commandant.”
So I said “Yessir,” and tipped Sgt. Ertwine off to have some men make a great show of striking tents, and resolved privately to take a chance yet. Jimmy Johnston came along later and told me that area commandants were a tribe of dud officers who were given that job to keep ’em out of mischief.
I was hauled over the coals three or four times about it. The old Major wrote to his General Hdq., and they wrote to our hdq., and it came down the line to our Colonel, whose soul shivered before the wintry blast. But finally Lt. Col. Myers took it up and obtained permission for us to stay where we were.
At Rinxent a number of second lieutenants, just commissioned at the Officers’ Training Camp at Langres, had joined us. We had a captain and five or six second lieuts. attached to “B” Co. The captain, who was commanding the company in my absence at bn. hdq., was a peculiar individual, with very fierce and imposing mustachios, and a manner to match; but an absurdly incongruous weak and husky voice, due to throat trouble. The lieuts. were rather a good bunch; men who had been n. c. o.’s in outfits that had come over during the preceding year, and some of whom had been in the trenches already. We were fortunate in keeping one of them, Lieut. Bivens Moore, in the company; the others we lost by transfers from time to time.
Training was resumed again; schools ran in full force. Officers and men were continually going off to sundry corps or army schools in the vicinity; at St. Omer or points near by. Harold Sculthorpe went off to a cooks’ school, and we didn’t see him again for many a month. Sgt. Peterson was made Brigade Postal N. C. O. We received our first mail from home, and nobody can ever tell how welcome it was. Letters were the one slender thread that connected our new life with the old. A bit of mail cheered up a soldier for days; a disappointment when mail came in without one for him made him blue for a week. It was pleasant to see the earnest faces of fellows like Sgt. Schelter, and Corporal DeGrote beaming when they heard from their wives and little ones. With the impatience and eagerness of the newlyweds, I was of course sympathetic. And as for the majority, who were waiting for letters from the best little girl in the world, they were either insufferable in their glamourous egotism, or serio-comic in their suffering, according to whether the lady had seen fit to be kind or cool when she took her pen in hand. Certain ones, too, who shall be nameless, would receive letters in sundry handwritings, with a variety of post-marks. Don Juans, these; gay and giddy Lotharios in the old home town.
We were billeted at a typical French farm of the larger type. As you turned in off the road through the gateway, a black dog chained in a little stone dungeon just inside barked fiercely. This poor beast had been chained in that one place for so long that he knew nothing else. He was half blind; and one day when I unchained him and took him for a walk down the road, he was desperately frightened; and as soon as he got back he made a dash for his kennel, and refused to come out.
The long, two story house took up most of the left hand side of the courtyard. The officers had two rooms here, one of which we used for a mess. The family lived mostly in the big kitchen, where a little fire burned on the great hearth. On the other two sides were stables, some of which were used as billets, storeroom and orderly room. The manure heap adorned the center of the courtyard. Behind lay a small but important yard, which in turn opened on the big field where two platoons were in pup tents around the border, and where the company formed.