History of the 305th Field Artillery | Page 5

chevrons for our needs. There lay their records of battery
punishments and courts martial. We pitied those distant, unknown
commanders. If these were their best we shrank from picturing their
days and nights with the worst. The audacity of the thing caught our
imagination. There was, we felt, something to be had from it. They
weren't all bad, by any means. Some became the most useful of
soldiers.
Our medical department arrived about the same time, a worried-looking
little group, that trudged through the dust, dodging piles of lumber. It
was led by Lieutenant James B. Parramore, who later became captain,
and for a time, regimental surgeon. Lieutenant Dennis J. Cronin was
assigned as 1st Battalion Surgeon, and Lieutenant Marshall A. Moore
as 2,nd Battalion Surgeon.

That very day Dr. Parramore constructed a table in Regimental
Headquarters. He placed upon it with proud gestures a tin of alcohol, a
demijohn of castor oil, a few assorted pills, and gallons, literally, of
iodine. He announced himself open for business.
Business, fortunately, was dull, so the adjutant reached out for
Parramore's enlisted personnel, sat them on a bench in the hall,
and-Behold!-for the first time Regimental Headquarters had orderlies.
There was no doubt about it. We were growing.
On September 27th the arrival of our chaplain, John J. Sheridan, was
another reminder; and two days later the long dreamed of moment
arrived. Five hundred and thirty-five recruits were assigned to the
regiment.
These men, of course, did not come directly to us from their local
boards. We received them after two weeks' work of reception and
assortment in which all the officers of the division shared. During that
phase the once strange term "casual" became a by-word. For all the
draft men arrived at Upton as casuals. Officers met the first train loads
at Medford on September 15th.
There are, let it be granted, few days in the history of our country more
impressive than that one which saw the triumph of universal service
and the birth of our great national army. But it is rather so from a
distance, for in the minds of the officers and men who assisted there
lingers beyond question, woven with the sublime, a pal-pable tracery of
amazement and mirth.
The draft came in ancient railroad coaches whose sides were trimmed
with placards suggestive of an abnormally swift and terrible march to
Berlin, via Upton; and a number of penalties for the Kaiser, very
ingeniously thought out.
Then there was the provocative personal adornment. There had been
word in the papers that all civilian clothing worn to Upton would have
to be cast away. So these young men took no chances. Tattered straw
hats were thrust from the windows; crushed derbies, through which

wisps of hair straggled; top hats, in a few cases, so venerable that it was
a pity to see them out of their sepulchres. And Palm Beach suits of
previous summers were there, and the dinner jacket, an affair of
generations, and the suit that had been worn on Sundays long before
the owner's maturity. It was an assortment that would have taxed the
sanity of a Hester Street dealer.
You tried to sound the meaning of such a trip to these Young citizens.
You could only sense definitive separations from home and comfort
and affection; a shrinking from our uniforms, which meant a discipline,
terrifying and undesired; and, perhaps, a perplexed apprehension,
somewhere just ahead, of violence and the close of experienced things.
No mind, however, could linger on that side. There were too many
races, clamorously asserting themselves. There had been too much
made of a number of departures. There still lingered too many
souvenirs of feasts. Out of the shadows slipped an eager voice.
"Hay, Tony! Finish off that bottle before these officer guys can grab it."
And another, less concerned:
"Grabba da hell. My gal, she givva me a charm against da evil eye of
officers."
And some had reached the point where speech ends.
A man in uniform grew disgusted.
"So," he grumbled, "that's what we've got to teach to fire a three inch
gun!"
But we knew he was wrong. He had judged by the high lights. In the
really fundamental background we saw a sober and determined spirit.
We felt even then the presence of some of the best soldier material in
the world.
After meeting a few of these erratic train loads the least confident of

shavetails could forecast his ordered garrison tasks with case of mind.
For such recruits weren't simple to control.
When we gathered at night in J20 the gossip of every group revolved
around the arriving casuals.
"How many souses did you have today, Bill?"
"Two. One wanted to weep on my shoulder, and the other wanted to
give me an uppercut."
"What did