Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/252

218 The major lifted the hand set.

"Tucker. Which one is he?" he asked, You see he had only been with the regiment a few days then.

“What's the matter with Tucker?" Reed asked.

"First battalion says they've just heard he's been killed."

There were close personal friends of Tucker's among the detail in that cellar. They swore softly as they went about their jobs.

As the major replaced the telephone hand set on the table the blanket which hung as a curtain at the cellar entrance waved. A hand drew it aside and in stepped Corporal Tucker.

Our men didn't believe in ghosts. They grasped his hand and a laugh burst out.

Tucker denied the Second Battalion's story, and made his report. Thayer had sent word by him that he was going to establish a new observatory. We had gone over the ground with a line tooth comb. The change in the location of the observatory would only be a matter of a few yards. A digging detail was ordered up to him with a guide. Lieutenant Klots, with a number of bandsmeni, bearing picks and shovels, arrived about the same time, and started to dig in a regimental observatory. Cor- poral Caen ran up to stand by the telephone in the old observatory until the change could be made to the new ones, And all night the Hun remembered the ridge with high explosive and gas, while stray aeroplanes swooped low there, to let fall a bomb or two.

The curtain in the ccllar swung in again.

"For the Lord's sake keep that curtain down," somebody grumbled. "If an acroplane sees this candle we'll be bombed out in a jiffy."

But it was a battery commander who had balted his