Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/109

Rh the tracks—a wobbly soldier just descended from the express and supported by a medical orderly.

There is, after all, a great deal of anti-climax about war. The present case failed to give us the thrill we had anticipated. It boiled down to indigestion, rather severe, still vulgarly gastric. It bad struck the wobbly soldier at the previous station. Captain Parramore had instructed one of the medical orderlies to take him from the train and care for him. The train had departed sooner than anyone had expected, leaving the sick man and his attendant. They hadn't worried because they were told they could catch us by the express. Captain Parramore had told the Colonel they had been left. After our premonitions we didn't miss a more dramatic dénouement.

Such incidents break the monotony of a journey. A different sort spelled variety the next morning. We rolled into Nantes about seven o'clock after a cramped night. We weren't surprised to learn we would be there until eight, for Nantes is a large city. A warm breakfast beckoned. Some of us snatched it in nearby cafés, and hurried back to the train which left without any particular warning at 7:50. Men scurried from every direction and scrambled through the open doors of the compartments. We made a hurried check. Everything was all right except that neither battalion bad a commander or an adjutant. Majors Johnson and Wanvig and Captains Reed and Delanoy had breakfasted not wisely but too well. What the colonel thought about it we never heard. There was, this time, no effort made to hold the train for the missing, although their misfortune, too was vulgarly gastric.

So we crossed the Loire and turned to the south through Les Roches Sur Yonne, La Rochelle, and Rochefort, where our missing officers rejoined us, grateful to the French for a travel order and convenient express trains. They looked