Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/300

260 grouping, Cohan, and Coulognes, to the Bois de Meunière which was selected for the first bivouac. Between eight o'clock in the evening and three in the morning the column covered 29 kilometers.

After the exhausting work of the past two months it was a tired, nearly voiceless column that rode away from the flares, the flashes, and the star shells. Many drivers slept on their horses. The cannoueers, doomed to walk, stumbled forward, only half awake.

There was a delay of nearly half an hour just before reaching the bivouac. The column halted as if automatically. The men rested where they were, deciding it was quite like old times. Impatience seized a group of officers, and they rode forward to learn, if they could, why the halt continued, Ahead the road was open save for one obstacle. A machine gun cart rested in the middle. On the seat was a dozing driver. Attached to the cart was a mule, supremely indifferent and content. The group awakened the driver hurriedly.

“Reckon," he yawned by way of explanation, "Jinny's decided she's gone far enough to-night."

Jinny and her master suffered the application of united brute force, and watched the column go by.

It was on this first stage that Battery F wandered astray. In the dark it mistook the 306th column for our own, and followed it for some time, until scouts located it, explained the situation, and led it back to the fold.

During the day men fought the light and the noise again for a little sleep, and at 8 o'clock moved out once more. In the early morning the carriages rumbled across the Marne on an engineers' bridge at Vermeuil. The average man's sensations were very different from those aroused by his previous crossing at Château Thierry. And again the river was a dividing line. The country seemed immeasurably less disturbed to the south. The march