Charles Wadsworth Camp

“ We all piled from the train and had half an hour's brisk march through the picturesque little city. But it was the railroad station that impressed us most. Permissionaires swarmed there in faded blue uniforms and battered helmets. Some were smiling and happy, talking with vivacity and wide gestures to civilians. Evidently they had just arrived. The soil of the front line still stained their clothing. Others, far neater and encumbered with equipment, did not have much to say. ”

“ Studying their faces, you might decide they gaze with horror on the result of some red and impulsive work their hands have just accomplished. That, or that the souvenir of some murderous indiscretion, has unexpectedly risen from the past to challenge their content. For their faces are not without horror—a helpless, desperate horror, and one does gasp:
"Great Cæsar's ghost!"
But there's really no ghost, or any crimson relic-nothing exceptional all in the plain little room except one perfectly good set of artillery harness.
An officer flings his hands above his head in a gesture of despair. ”

“ The mess sergeant placed steaming cans of coffee and tins of corn bread on the counter. His voice sang out cheerily:
"Come and get it!"
The inert and drowsy groups aroused themselves. A rough line was formed and passed stolidly by, each man taking his share without words.
As they munched they stared at the bare walls and the pine tables and the windows beyond which the indifferent dawn illuminated a little through the mist the unfamiliar wastes of Upton.
A sergeant cried with rough good humor:
"We're not going to bite you. What's the matter? Talk up! Haven't you got a song?" ”

“ That night, or early the next morning, a story went on the lips of the most conservative, that we had, towards midnight, actually run into a submarine nest, and that two torpedoes had been fired at the Northern Pacific, and one at the Von Steuben. Judging from the letters home it was accepted generally as a fact.
We knew we should be in by Saturday, and everyone was glad. It was growing irksome to sleep with one's clothes on, to carry everywhere the blue Life jacket, to stumble about at night in the insufficient green light, unable to read or play cards. ”

“ 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 civilian 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. ”

“ When a battery had finished loading it looked a good deal like a circus train. The heads of horses appeared through the open doors of some box cars. Men sat, dangling their legs, in others. The fourgon always appeared gigantic on its fat, and behind it stretched the sleek inquisitive noses of the pieces and the stubby bulk of caissons and limbers. Usually the water cart and the rolling kitchen were on a flat next to the men's cars. Brown figures were busy about the kitchen, and a promising smoke belched from its chimney. ”

“ They chased about us as if in pursuit of each other, tearing along our sides, doubling about and dashing perilously beneath our bows or stern. They cheered everyone. The sun was unclouded. The sea had gone down. We commenced to pack.
Early the next morning thick fog shrouded us. We were summoned to abandon ship drill—another business like call, and when we glanced at our compasses we saw that the boat had turned around, and that we were headed west. ”

“ The captain's face would usually express an emotion bordering on tears—an eloquent emotion, which usually interpreted everything for the official. His face would brighten. He would look at his own watch. Realizing the futility of further words, he would carefully indicate two points on the dial.
"Quarante—minutes," the captain would say. "Get them out with mess kits," he would call to his aides. Tumbling from their cars the men would come and form a feverish line. Details would carry pails of food forward to the drivers. The captain would watch with a smile. ”

“ Since most of the regiment couldn't go to town, families came down; and wives, mothers, sweethearts don't speed their nearest on to battle with dry eyes.
These final farewells were given as far as practicable a just proportion of the last rushed days. From morning to night the hostess houses were filled with women, soberly clothed, who knitted, and, for the most part, sat silently, glancing up each time a brown clad figure hurried in.
Towards the end they learned the way to the barracks, and sat in noisy, cluttered mess halls. At each opportunity their men would sit with them. ”

“ An infantry regiment that was moving at once was short of men. The artillery brigade would fill it up.
By that time we had developed that organization spirit that is just as essential as it is delicate to breed. To take fifty or sixty men from each battery seemed a destruction of the greater part of all that we had worked to achieve. Men who had trained during seven months in the ways of artillery as a rule resented being transplanted all at once into a branch of the service to which they were strangers. Nor did their officer's care to see them go. ”

“ The honor of parading these fell to Battery A, in command of Captain Dana. He was the first officer of the brigade to have a chance at entraining and detraining a battery. It spoiled his holiday, but it was good experience. The crowd cheered that single battery as it crunched through the snow past the reviewing stand, little Wing, the Chinaman, on one of the lead horses, pointing with unconscious pride the democratic, the universal power of our army. ”

“ For days shells of all calibers had fallen about the place without accomplishing any more damage than tearing up the soil. Then this one arrived. It fell at the picket line. The horses stood in a row. Private Almer M. Aasgard groomed a horse near the end of the line. Near him sat a group of telephone men, winding wire on makeshift reels-a necessary diversion of the telephonc detail when there was nothing else to do. The men heard the whine of the approaching shell and realized from their acquired judgment that it would fall very near. ”

“ Local celebrities stood there, and French and American generals. Opposite was a line of veterans, some with missing limbs, They held flags, decorated with the names of breathless battles. These they dipped, and our bright new colors bobbed back.
It did us good. It painted our work for the first time with sentiment. It was our first touch of the spectacular side of things military. That has the thrill that war lacks. ”

“ Yet consider the soldier who gets nothing—the replacement, perhaps, who was entrusted with his own service record and who has lost it. "Do you know what this means?" the captain snaps at him. “Do you realize your entire record is gone- punishments and rewards, clothing, allotments, every- thing? Do you understand that without your service record you can't be paid?"
The replacement glances at the paper work suspended from the walls, littering the table, overflowing to the floor. His lip trembles.
"I don't know much, sir, since I got inteh the army." ”

“ ON THE RANGE
We learned things, in spite of that curse of efficiency, Simulation. Cold weather found us well along in standing gun drill. One battery would get the pieces one hour, another the next, and so on. Caissons simulated pieces, and limbers, caisson. But we got the mechanics of laying, loading, and firing, and the specialists learned enough to make panoramic sketches of the dreary Upton landscape and to lay telephone lines in suicidal fashion. ”

“ With a sober comprehension we watched the small bands of casuals, bent beneath blue barrack bags, go lurching down Fourth Avenue to the station—away from Upton, away from us who had more often than not learned to like them, away from the land of passes home.
The philosophy of the average soldier is direct and competent. It was after such an exodus that one explained to his companions during mess:
"What's the use of grouching? That's what war is—saying good-by. ”

“ Weary-eyed we turned our backs on our sylvan rest camp, and tramped to the Brest railroad station. It was here that most of the regiment saw for the first time the now familiar Hommes and Chevaux palace cars. The regiment that pulled out ahead of us had them. Our train was composed of third class carriages, and we laughed at the other fellows while we munched our luncheon of bread and corn willy in the railroad yards.
“Those bullies are traveling like a lot of cattle," one heard. ”

“ 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 an 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. ”

“ The horses were hustled down the runways. The carriages were lowered along ready planks. The teams were harnessed and the battery stood ready for the road. We glanced often at the dull sky, our ears alert for the whir of aeroplane engines, or the crash of bombs. The air remained free of menace, but the sense of imminence persisted, and we were glad when a French guide appeared and told Colonel Johnson he was to conduct us to our bivouac. The column started. Colonel Johnson paused to confer with the colonel commanding the French artillery brigade which our brigade was to relieve. ”

“ But we were fortunate. The Northern Pacific and Von Steuben were better than a good many other transports. And they were fast. Anyway there wasn't much grumbling. Whatever came it was a part of the game. Yet that day and the next were hard—more difficult than storms at sea or the conscious dodging of submarines. For during that period we lay at the pier, seeing the ferryboats go by, answering the fluttering handkerchiefs or the few cheers, and all the time, forbidden to step from the transport, we watched the smoke curling above our homes. ”

“ It would take its place in the brigade column on the national highway beyond. So at four o'clock each organization mounted and pulled out of its comfortable billets. August smiled its best that afternoon. The cheerful countryside seemed reluctant to let us go, Natives watched us with emotionless faces. In their eyes we saw dull souvenirs of four years of departures.
In the old days of pitched battles men walked from their bivouac directly into the obliterating shock of a fight whose duration was a matter of hours. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The crew, from an ordered group, had become a thing, scattered and incomplete. Men stumbled oddly as they ran out of the cloud. There were not enough of them.
"Cease firing!" Major Johnson ordered. "Where's the surgeon?"
The operator passed the word over the telephone. Flames sprang from the shouldering caisson, Shells there were evidently bursting. Major Johnson ordered everyone from the observatory, and, followed by his adjutant, Captain Reed, and Captain Ravenel walked forward and threw sand at the caisson. Unasked, volunteers sprang from the ranks into the danger zone. ”

“ It is no wonder that the grease of one meal couldn't be cleaned from the mess kits for the next. For meals nearly overlapped each other. Organizations had to be fed in turn. In the corridors were processions of men, wondering if they could last until they got in, or if they could manage to get through if they did. And the odorous ghosts of many vanished meals pointed the transient nature of the one in progress.
For one on the edge, the atmosphere inside was nearly unbreatheable. The floor was awash with greasy, coffee-colored water. ”

“ Al best it had taken delicate handling to get an automobile, without prematurely aging it, in or out of Camp Upton. Spring altered rock-like dirt roads into unnavigable morasses. For a time the railroad was our only practical means of communication with the outside world. ”

“ Eating from the rolling kitchen introduced a sporting element into our travels. The mess sergeant gambled on having his meal ready for a suitable stop. The train commander hazarded leaving many men behind when he ordered them to descend from their cars and form a line by the kitchen. For you couldn't tell much about the length of halts anywhere except at coffee or watering stops.
The train would pull up, let us say at noon. The mess sergeant would announce himself ready. The train commander would confer with the chef de gare. Sometimes the train commander would know French. ”