We worked hard in camp, but the fellows liked it. We had good food, lots of fresh vegetables, and meat. It is a fact that the closer you get to the firing line the better care you get. There was plenty of recreation through the Y.M.C.A. activities, but we did not have many furloughs. Remember that at the time I am writing of, the American boys were new in France. One of the reasons for the lack of furloughs was that in many of the towns near the great camps that were set apart for the Americans the merchants had decided that it was harvest time, and prices had gone very high. General Pershing himself ordered that no member of the American force should buy anything in these towns until the matter of prices was adjusted, and this was speedily done.
A journey in motor trucks.
Making the new quarters sanitary.
I had been in the training camp about a month, making a special study of telephone work as carried on between the front-line trenches and outposts regimental headquarters, and the various gun batteries of the regiment. At the end of that time I was detached from my regular battery and assigned as Signal Sergeant to work with another battery proceeding immediately to the American sector of the Front. We did not travel forward in gradual stages as is the usual custom of approaching the firing line for the first time, but made the journey as quickly as possible, in motor trucks—a never-to-be-forgotten journey. Our destination was a village between five and ten miles from the Front, where we were to be billeted, and where the American troops would spend their time while not actively in the trenches. We got there in the afternoon, and a batch of the men were detached to make the place clean and perfectly sanitary. It needed their work. The village had been used by the French soldiers for some time, and there had been no time or opportunity for repair work. With the coming of the Americans it was different. Cleanliness is a strictly enforced rule with the fellows of our fighting force, and from a standpoint of sanitation we are literally introducing soap, water and whitewash into France.
The order to advance.
Later that afternoon, when it was growing dusk, came the orders to go forward—and at nightfall I found myself walking beside the French officer across rough ground, a very occasional dull boom telling us that there was an enemy before us—but all other sounds seemed natural.
As I said before, it is impossible to accurately describe the sensations that come over a fellow when he discovers that he is on the firing line, and I welcomed the work to which I was so quickly assigned, and which we rapidly accomplished. I marveled at the precision with which I had gone to work that first night on the front, but everyone had their work to do, and did it so quickly and coolly that we had no time to think of personal feelings.
An interesting day on the firing line.
The first day on the firing line was very interesting. The battery kept up a constant fire, getting range from the map which is issued daily—as well as the given ranges, targets, etc. (which arrived over the field telephone). That night we stood ready to do any work required, but no orders came through, and I had my first experience in sleeping in a gun pit.
Our food, by the way, was brought up daily from the headquarters at the village and was prepared in rolling field kitchens.