Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/210

186 from the inain road anyway? We'd have to come back by dark again over this risky trail. And our horses were tired. The only excuse that occurred to us was that we were going to a particularly safe and convenient bivouac.

As the east grow ruddy the flashes faded. We saw a fourgon on its side by the road. The horses stood by, gazing at it with rather a pleased air. Tired soldiers made unavailing efforts to get it up.

"No sleep for those guys," wc said pityingly. "They'll have to unpack everything, jack her up, and pack again." "Say, that must be a peach of a bivouac we're going to." It wasn't.

Just ahead two large masses of forest barely detached themselves from the slow dawn. There was an open field between. Some of the batteries were already strung out along the edge of the woods. The rest of the column halted. A group of officers and men stood in the field, talking and gesticulating. One heard:

"Who made the reconnaissance for this blasted thing?"

There had been a reconnaissance the previous day, but something certainly had gone wrong. We asked eager questions. The woods in spite of their size were for the most part choked with underbrush, and the remainder was rough and honey-combed with infantry trenches. There wasn't room for the regiment under cover, and Iun planes might appear at any moment.

"And those woods," you heard, "are full of dead things."

Without calling attention to it we had all noticed the thickening of the nauseating odor of wholesale animal decay,

"It's bad for the men."

“The men have got to get used to it."

"But it's better to see those things in the heat of action."