Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/195

Rh tired drivers. It is seldom that the places chosen for the picket line and the park please. The ground is swampy, or there isn't enough room, or the tree trunks are too small, or —

The most indifferent commander can find something lacking in the most perfect park or line.

The advance agent, of course, isn't to blame for these short-comings. The town major, as a rule, has given him no choice.

"That's it,” he has said. "Take it or leave it."

But a battery commander doesn't analyze causes when he is displeased by effects. He decides darkly to make the best of things. He considers his disappointed advance man.

"All right," he says. "The thing's impossible. You ought to have done better than this, Smith, but it's getting dark. We'll make it do. Undoubtedly you've arranged to billet the drivers in a group close to the picket line, and the cannoncers by the park. Explain your distribution to the first sergeant."

If the advance agent is a man of parts he salutes, seeks the first scrgcant, curses, and with him arranges some kind of a compromisc. If, on the other hand, he flushes and stammers forward with facts about some of the billets be- ing large and some small, and cverything scattered through the town and the surrounding country, he usually tries the battery commander's paticnce too far. Then he sees himself as others see him.

As soon as the animals are arranged for, and he is certain his men will have some kind of a lodging, the battery commander turns his attention to the kitchen. The site of this, too, has been more often than not an arbitrary selection of the town major's. It is nearly always in a farmyard, redolent and wet with manure, and thronged by an assortment of unclean animals.

It is at this point that the billeting non-commissioned