History of the 305th Field Artillery

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History of the 305th Field Artillery
by Charles Wadsworth Camp
1919
* * *
1. The Regiment is Born
2. It Has Growing Pains
3. And Becomes Acquainted With Paper Work
4. On the Range
5. Holidays and Rumors
6. The Ages of Getting Ready
7. Good-Byes and the Submarine Zone
8. Brest, Pontanezin, and the Chemin De Fer
9. Sourge and the First Casualties
10. Hustled to the Front
11. Making the Hun Dance
12. Consolidating in Lorraine
13. Barrages and Raids
14. The Fires beyond Chateau Thierry
15. Across the Marne to the Nesles Woods
16. Reconnoitering in Front of Fismes
17.Les Pres Farm and Much Shell Fire
18.The Cost of Battle
19. Spies and the Advance
20. The Argonne
21. Always Through the Forrest
22. The Last Phase
ROLL OF HONOR
* * *
Athletics
Where Wing Was Hurt
The Response
A Trip to Germany
Observation
A Memorable 48 Hours
The Accompanying Gun
Gassed Cave at La Petites Logette Near Blanzy
The Dud
The Dud Again
Praise and Advice
Doing Scout Duty For the Artillery
Rustling Supplies
A Good Dinner Shot To H---
The First and Last Shots
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I
THE REGIMENT IS BORN
WHEN it comes to beginnings, regiments are not unlike humans. They aren't pretty objects, or self-sufficient. They gaze upon the world with inquiring eyes. They address it with lusty and surprised lungs.
We were very much like that, and our first surprises came with our first days, when the men commissioned from the second battery at the first Plattsburg Reserve Officers' Training Camp reported at Camp Upton.
The adjutant's office was in an unpainted wooden barracks. A line stretched hour after hour, snake-like, half around it, its head investigating the somber corridor where the adjutant's assistant sat making assignments. Nearby, those who had survived the ordeal stood in groups, ill-at -ease, wondering.
"What is a casual officer? Something to do with casualties?"
"They told me at Plattsburg," you might hear another say, "I was in the regimental quota. That fellow in there says no. I'm in a thing called Military Police, and when I told him I'd never swung a billy in my life he wanted to know what that had to do with it."
"I'm in the Depot Brigade," a third grinned sheepishly. "Good God! Do we have to run the trains?"
A captain walked from the corridor and came up with a pleased smile.
"What did they hand you?" someone asked.
In his voice was pride, and a vague, new responsibility.
"I'm assigned to the 305th Field Artillery, National Army."
Several joined as in a chorus:
"So are we. That's going to be the number of our regiment."
And the surprise and gloom deepened on the faces of those shifted thus unexpectedly to unforeseen branches of the service.
After that fashion the regiment was born and baptized, and we heard for the first time the significant number in which officers and men have, to an extent, merged their thoughts, their actions, and their individualities.
Colonel Fred Charles Doyle was the first to report. He came from the regular army, and received his assignment from Major-General Bell on August 28th, 1917. For ten days afterward the officers poured in and commenced to prepare for the men who would arrive in the course of the next few weeks.
Without the men, during those days of its beginnings, it wasn't, to be sure, much of a regiment, yet it possessed from the start ambition, pride Of organization, and already-a noticeable factor-an instinct that ours was to be bigger, better, and more terrible to the enemy than any other regiment of Field Artillery.
Yet we went gropingly at first, asking earnest but absurd questions about equipment and rations, or demanding with concern where we could house even a single section. For the welcome Camp Upton gave us was not of arms outstretched and smiling hospitality. We had stepped from New York through a screen of dreary pine wilderness to a habitation, startling and impossible. A division was to be trained here to fight the Hun, but to any observing person it appeared that if the war should last another decade Camp Upton could not become useful. It wore an air of having just been begun and of never wishing to be finished. A few white pine barracks stretched gaunt frames from the mud against a mournful sky. Towards the railroad two huge tents had an appearance of captive balloons, half-inflated. For the rest there were heaps of lumber of odd shapes and sizes, and countless acres of mud, blackened by recent fires-half-cleared land across which was scattered a multitude of grotesque and tattered figures. These workmen went about their tasks with slow, indifferent gestures, their attitudes suggestive of a supreme faith in the eternity of their jobs.
Some of us gathered on Division Hill the night of our arrival. We gazed from the little that was done to the immensity that remained untouched.
"Where are they going to put the 305th
Captain Devereux had gathered some information. He pointed to the northwest.
"That's the area assigned to the regiment. We'll live and train there."
For a long time, with skeptical eyes, we