There were a number of ruined buildings along the road, souvenirs of bombardments and bombing attacks. We turned into a woods road that breasted a hill, and rested at the top behind a heavy screen of evergreens. The first sounds of actual warfare reached us there. To everyone it seemed that we were too near the front for road training. The men fell silent. Faces were serious.
A good deal of that firing was undoubtedly from infantry grenade and small arms ranges, but we couldn't know that. We didn't even suspect it then. Our minds absorbed the bark of cannon, and the hateful stutter of machine guns as special menaces for us. We visualized ourselves as just behind the front line.
We reached finally a thick forest on the slope of a hill. Scattered among the trees were Adrian barracks and huts constructed of small logs and trees, of a pattern we had all seen in pictures of fighting in the Vosges.
This was the Bois de Grammont on the main road from Bertrichamps to Neuf Maisons. The Headquarters and Supply companies, we learned were in the woods by Bertrichamps. The Second Battalion would bivouac near them. Both these woods were too peaceful for war time. In their shelter even the firing we had heard fell away.
Drawn by Capt. Dana, Battery A
The picket line
"A bad place for gas," Colonel Johnson decided.
"We're as close as that?" someone asked. "Rather near for a bivouac."
Colonel Johnson smiled, and whispered:
"Not a bivouac. It's our echelon."
Such a place didn't meet with one's preconceived notion. An
