Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/23

Rh 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