History of the 305th Field Artillery | Page 7

get me into this."
Everybody worked with patience and a desire to be fair, but, just the
same, you had to make both ends meet and as the hours flew by you
may have hurried a little.
It was during these sessions that a rotund and good- natured officer
gave us a stirring example and prophesied his own future.
"You're in luck. That's a wonderful fit," you'd hear him say to a man
with a 39, chest lost in a 36 blouse. "You're a perfect 36. Might have
been cut for you."
The man would gather a fistful of the excess cloth, stretching it towards
the officer.
"Cut for an elephant."
"The tailor will alter it so it won't look like the same blouse."
"I'm not saying anything about its looks. All I'm saying is maybe it isn't
quite big enough for a good-sized elephant."

The officer's buttons would stretch.
"If you want to get along in the army, young man, you'll do 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.