History of the 305th Field Artillery/The Regiment Is Born
History of the 305th Field Artillery
I
THE REGIMENT IS BORN
When it comes to beginnings, regiments are not unlike humans. They aren't pretty objects, or self-sufficient. They gaze upon the world with inquiring eyes. They address it with lusty and surprised lungs.
We were very much like that, and our first surprises came with our first days, when the men commissioned from the second battery at the first Plattsburg Reserve Officers' Training Camp reported at Camp Upton.
The adjutant's office was in an unpainted wooden barracks. A line stretched hour after Hour, snake-like, half around it, its head investigating the somber corridor where the adjutant's assistant sat making assignments. Nearby, those who had survived the ordeal stood in groups, ill-at-ease, wondering.
"What is a casual officer? Some-
thing to do with casualties!"
"They told me at Plattsburg,"
you might hear another say, "I was
in the regimental quota. That fel-
low in there says no. I'm in a thing
called Military Police, and when I told him I'd never swung a billy in my life he wanted to know what that had to do with it.
"I'm in the Depot Brigate," a third grinned sheepishly. "Good God! Do we have to run the trains?"
A captain walked from the corridor and came up with a pleased smile.
“What did they hand you? someone asked.
In his voice was pride, and a vague, new responsibility.
"I'm assigned to the 305th Field Artillery, National Army."
Several joined as in a chorus:
“So are we. That's going to be the number of our regiment."
And the surprise and gloom deepened on the faces of those shifted thus unexpectedly to unforeseen branches of the service.
After that fashion the regiment was born and baptized, and we heard for the first time the significant number in which officers and men have, to an extent, merged their thoughts, their actions, and their individualities.
Colonel Fred Charles Doyle was the first to report. He came from the regular army, and received his assignment from Major-General Bell on August 28th, 1917. 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.
Yet we went gropingly at first, asking earnest but absurd questions about equipment and rations, or demanding with concern where we could house even a single section. 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. It wore an air of having just been begun and of never wishing to be finished. A few white pine barracks stretched gaunt frames from the mud against a mournful sky. Towards the railroad two huge tents had an appearance of captive balloons, half-inflated. For the rest there were heaps of lumber of odd shapes and sizes, and countless acres of mud, blackened by recent fires—half-cleared land across which was scattered a multitude of grotesque and tattered figures. These workmen went about their tasks with slow, indifferent gestures, their attitudes suggestive of a supreme faith in the eternity of their jobs.
Some of us gathered on Division Hill the night of our arrival. We gazed from the little that was done to the immensity that remained untouched.
"Where are they going to put the 305th?"
Captain Devercux had gathered some information. He pointed to the northwest.
"That's the area assigned to the regiment. We'll live and train there."
For a long time, with skeptical eyes, we continued to stare at that blackened desert. We strolled back to J22, our temporary quarters, depressed and doubtful. In the barn-like upper floor, where we had erected cots, we gathered about a candle lantern, and in low tones probed the doubtful future. Colonel Doyle, who was to be the regiment's commander from its birth to its final demobilization, was to us that night no more than a name. He lived somewhere on Long Island and would be in camp the next day. At least we had a colonel, but who would be our lieutenant colonel? We had one major, made at Plattsburg. What about the other we needed?
Lieutenant Derby pronounced the first of the regiment's innumerable rumors. It should be said, too, that it's about the only one that ever came true. He had heard in town that Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War would come to us as lieutenant colonel.
We gossiped about the unexpected shifting about of our friends. Many that we had expected to have with us had been quietly spirited away. Others, whom we had not hoped to see after Plattsburg, sat in our circle, assigned to the regiment. We had, at the start, found the army full of odd surprises. It gave us all, for the moment, a sense of instability. Our commissioned tables of organization, filled out painstakingly the last night at Plattsburg, would have radically to be revised. Nor was that the only unexpected task. We couldn't forget the black waste, seen from Division HilI. Before many days the men of the first draft would stream in. We would have to share in the miracles that would feed, clothe, and house them; that would give them that vital initial impression they were going to be taken care of in the army. Our doubts increased when we sought our own washing facilities that first night. Who will forget the scouting among piles of lumber, the stumbling over roots and stumps, the escapes from superbly imitated swamps, or the final, triumphant discovery of a single pipe and faucet, surrounded by a mob of violent temper. For more than a thousand officers had reported at that time, and of the twenty-five thousand workmen of the Thompson-Starret Company, some undoubtedly craved that which is next to Godliness. Even then there may have been other pipes at Upton, but for a time that one remained our only dis covery; and it had a miserable habit of falling languidly over into the mud unless it was supported by a comrade who had the strength and the will to fight off an army.
Yet we shaved. Yet we contrived to look clean.
"Horrors of war, No. 1,” we labelled our pipe.
So we struggled on, preparing ourselves as best we could for the day when the first enlisted men would arrive. We gazed at night with new interest at the multitude of fires that blazed, crimson, against the forest, surrounded by ragged groups of workmen, who sat for the most part in a sullen and unnatural quiet. For the miracles happened under our eyes. Day by day the wilderness receded, the mushroom city spread. This morning you might walk in a thicket. To-morrow you would find it cleared land, untidy with the beginnings of buildings. A faith grew that the 305th would have a home.
Side by side with these, other and more intimate miracles developed. Colonel Doyle established a regimental headquarters on a mess table in the mess hall of J1. Whatever stateliness it may have acquired later, headquarters went in those days, as one might say, on hands and knees. Colonel Doylc explained how things should be done, and we did our best to do them right. Already from the pots and pans of J1 Paper Work raised an evil head and sneered at us.
Before we'd got the table really untidy with baskets and typewriters and files and reports, other organizations came enviously in, and established headquarters on that table too. There was a machine gun battalion, the ammunition train, and maybe a bakery company or so. Things became rather too confused for an accurate count. We stole quietly to J20, to the upper floor of which we had already moved our sleeping quarters.
That same afternoon Major Wanvig appeared, bearing under each arm an oblong board sign. One he nailed at the entrance of the building. The other he fastened to at post by the road, so that no one passing could deny the presence he approached.
Each of these signs bore on a white background in striking black strokes:
“Headquarters, 305th F. A. N. A."
We stood about staring.
"That's us—the 305th Field Artillery. Are we going to make it big and successful enough?"
There were at least no visible shirkers, and we had acquired already a belligerent disposition to stand fast for the rights of the regiment. That was as it should have been, since we were destined to be among the first of the combat organizations. There was, moreover, need of such a spirit.
Take J20, for example. Once you had got a bit of floor space there the whole world conspired to tear it from you, or, as more convenient, you from it. Regimental Headquarters had established itself modestly in a corner of the lower dormitory. Officers of high rank sought sleeping space, complaining that we were in their way. Brigade headquarters sent messengers to measure us broad and long. Commanding officers and adjutants of various organizations, quartered in the same building cast in our direction threatening glances. Low-browed hirelings of the Thompson-Starret Company came, demanding the return of panels of Upson board and pieces of deformed lumber with which we had endeavored to barricade ourselves against an eager and conscienceless world. In spite of everything Regimental Headquarters clung to its corner until, in late October, it moved to its own building in the 305th area. Those few weeks in J20, moreover, witnessed our adolescence. When we tramped across the hill we were, indeed, a regiment.
September 6 was a day that must be recorded notice ably. It saw the first enlisted personnel of the 305th. His name was Frank Dunbaugh. He stood at attention before Colonel Doyle, saluting.
"Private Duubaugh reports as directed.”
And behold we were a regiment—officers and man! We all, I think, felt a call to take out that pleasant young fellow and give him dismounted drill, simulated standing gun drill, physical exercise, semaphore, wig-wag, and buzzer; the beginnings of firing data, and scouting; with, perhaps, in his off moments, a little of grooming and horse-shoeing, and the theory, at least, of equitation.
But he was a little man, and Division Headquarters tore him from us before we could really annoy him. An order came down:
"Private Frank Dunbaugh is relieved from duty with the 305th F. A. N. A., and is attached to Division Headquarters," and so forth.
Paper Work grinned.
For that matter lie had plenty to chuckle over already. Headquarters was aware by now of his portly and increasing figure. General Orders, Special Orders, Memoranda, and Bulletins were suspended in neat wads from the wall. Captain Gammell, the regimental adjutant, threaded his way among them with haughty ease. At his suggestion, indeed, an officer brought from Division Headquarters a bundle the size of a small bale of cotton. We gathered around it, admiring the countless neat forms it contained, all labelled "A.G.O., No. so and so."
“What a system!" everybody gasped.
What a system, indeed! But we couldn't dream of all those delicate forms portended. Captain Gammell distributed them. Colonel Doyle explained how simple it was to handle them, and we turned again to the apparently more serious business of getting ready.
Shorn of their sole enlisted personnel the officers with grin determination pounced upon each other. There was no reasonable drill ground, but we took ourselves to the stumps and the logs of half cleared spaces. We drilled each other. We shouted at each other. We abused each other. How, we asked, would new officers and men take this or that?
"If you make a rookie laugh it's all off," an officer said after an exceptionally piercing cry of command.
“Or," another put in dryly, "If you give him the impression you're going to murder him he won't respond cheerfully enough."
We endeavored, therefore, not to resemble fools or assassins. Sometimes it was difficult.
Each day now, for a time, Colonel Doyle rescued us from our harsh treatment of each other. He took us to the slope of Division Hill where we sat on charred logs and listened to him discourse at length on various methods of computing firing data, or interpret the Articles of War and Army Regulations, drawing on his long experience in the Regular Army.
The activity about us was frequently distracting, unreal, a trifle prophetic. In the rapping of countless hammers you could fancy the stutter of machine guns. The fall of heavy timbers was suggestive of the crash of rifles of our own calibre. At the base of the hill, to give a more realistic touch of war, lay the encampment of the colored troops of the 15th New York National Guard.
It should be recalled in passing that these dusky doughboys were a very small oasis of soldiers in a thirsty desert of officers. In salutes and courtesies they received a maximum of practice.
Lieutenant Colonel Stimson came to us during one of these classes. That was on September 6, and by evening of the next day the last of the officers sent down from the First Plattsburg Training Camp had reported and been assigned or attached to the 305th. Since the majority of them led the regiment into its first battles a record should be made of their names in this chapter of beginnings. We commenced then with the following officers, most of whom had abandoned civil life only three months earlier:
Colonel Fred Charles Doyle, commanding the regiment; Lieutenant Colonel Stimson, temporarily assigned to the command of the First Battalion; Major Harry F. Wanvig, commanding the Second Battalion; Captain Arthur A. Gammell, regimental adjutant; 2nd Lt. Allen A. Klots, acting adjutant, First Battalion; Captain Douglas Delanoy, adjutant Second Battalion; Captain M. G. B. Whelpley, commanding the Headquarters Company; 1st Lt. Edward Payne, temporarily in command of the Supply Company; Captain Alvin Devereux, commanding Battery A; Captain Gaillard F. Ravenel, commanding Battery B; Captain Noel B. Fox, commanding Battery C; Captain Frederick L. Starbuck, commanding Battery D; Captain Robert T. P. Storer, commanding Battery E; Captain Cornelius Von E. Mitchell, commanding Battery F; First Lieutenants Sigourney B. Olney, George P. Montgomery, William M. Kane, Harvey Pike, Jr., Watson Washburn, James L. Derby, Edgar W. Savage, Frank Walters, and Drew McKenna; Second Lieutenants Sheldon E. Hoadley, Thornton C. Thayer, Norman Thirkield, George B.
Headquarters Hill, Camp Upton
Brooks, Lydig Hoyl, Thomas M. Brussel, Lee D. Brown, Chester Burden, Charles W. Camp, Paul Jones, Oliver A. Church, Roby P. Littlefield, William H. M. Fenn, Jolin R. Mitchell, Warren W. Nissley, Ilarold S. TVillis, Frederick L. Beck, Danforth Montague, Melvin E. Sawin, George P. Schutt, Lloyd Stryker, Lawrence Washington, John A. Thayer, Karrick M. Castle, Harry G. Holchkiss, George E. Ogilvie, William L. Wilcox, Lewis E. Bomeisler, Jr., Darley Randall, and Edward W. Sage.
Almost at once changes were made in this list of our charter members, as one might call them. Officers were assigned away from us, while strangers were brought into our midst. Thirty-five of the charter members accompanied the regiment to France. After the armistice there remained only nineteen.
The eternal changes of the army system were largely responsible for these losses, as they accounted also later for the passing of many enlisted men, but whenever we meet the old friends we think of them as belonging peculiarly to the 305th. Some we can't see again, because the Vesle, the Aisne, or the Argonne holds them forever away.
But it is a dreary business to anticipate. They were very much with us and very much loved at Upton.
So the first week ended, and we were, speaking sketchily, on our feet, if still unsteady.