History of the 305th Field Artillery | Page 7

as you're told. I wouldn't mind wearing that blouse myself."
"But," an officer would whisper to him. "You're not quite as big as a good-sized elephant."
The officer would grin and continue to show us how to make the best of the material in hand.
"That hat isn't too big for you," he would call out in his cheery voice. "Gives your hair a chance to grow."
So we struggled on through the days and nights until the first quota was classified and at least partially equipped. And out of that quota came for us, as related, five hundred and thirty-five recruits-not far from half a regiment.
"The men we're to live and fight and die with," someone said.
It wasn't to turn out quite like that. We didn't foresee the wholesale transfers, the all-night conferences when officers and non-coms tried to do the fair thing without destroying their organizations. Still those dark days of transfers fall more reasonably in another chapter. For the present we were a trifle hypnotized by our growth and our power. We looked along the lines, guessing at the good and the bad for, like all regiments, we had both.
The faces we saw were pretty white, and the frames not, as a rule, powerful. For we were a part of the Metropolitan Division. Most of our men came from the crowded places of New York. Out of city dwellings, offices, subways, and sweatshops they poured into the wind-swept reaches of Upton. They knew none of the tricks a boy picks up in the country that fits him, after a fashion, for such fighting as we were destined for in the Vosges, on the Vesle and Aisne, in the Argonne, and on the Meuse.
"Will soldiers grow from such material?" visitors asked.
From the start officers and men knew the answer as affirmative. Day by day beneath the bland autumn sun faces bronzed, chests seemed to expand and shoulders to broaden before the tonic of physical labor. For it wasn't all drill. The miracles continued, but there weren't enough ci-vilian workmen available to construct the city, to clear vast spaces for drilling, and to arrange artillery and small-arms ranges. So orders came for the draft men to pitch in and help. Thus commenced the cheerful game of stump pulling.
Of our original quota there are very few that couldn't qualify as expert destroyers of wildernesses. The famous skinned diamond exists as a monument to our skill. The target range is a document written in the passionate sweat of our brows.
During this education the first effects of discipline were apparent. Faces might darken with rage or whiten from weariness, but in the realized presence of a superior work went on without too painful comment. Occasionally, if hidden through chance by a screen of bushes, you might hear burning opinions of army life in general and stump snatching in particular. At school we had been taught that the average man's vocabulary is scarcely more than five hundred words. The understatement is obvious. Any soldier of the 305th who couldn't apply as many adjectives as that to the common noun " stump " was frowned upon as mentally deficient or as one affecting an ultra religious pose.
Such tasks were, in a sense, a digging of a pitfall for one's own feet. As the skinned diamond expanded our drills waxed proportionately ambitious. But the entire process was performing another miracle. Where formerly had slouched slovenly ranks appeared now straight lines of soldierly figures, heads up and shoulders squared, exuding a joy in things military.
"What's all this guff about West Point?" you'd hear. "Watch my outfit drill any day."
And the veterans of a week or so exposed a most amusing tolerance for newer recruits. The difference between a uniform and civilian clothing created an extensive gulf. In a few days it would be bridged. The awkward squad of the day before would face the awkward squad of today with expressions of veteran contempt. For the recruits poured in during October. On the first we received one hundred and thirteen, on the ninth one hundred and eighty-three, on the tenth two hundred and fifty-four, on the twelfth, two hundred and eight. So that by the end of that month we had forty-one officers assigned, eighteen attached, and one thousand three hundred and thirteen enlisted men. The 305th was a regiment. All we needed were horses and guns to realize that we were, indeed, artil-lery, designed to throw projectiles at the Huns.
To give variety to our stump-pulling sport Colonel Doyle called our attention to certain long, low and harmless -appearing buildings across Fifth Avenue. Still living in the J section, remote from these constructions - the men hadn't suspected in them any further spur to their vocabularies. Now, it seemed, they were to be our stables. The civilian workmen's responsibility had ceased