Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/310

266 know what was gathering, or else he was waiting with a little surprise of his own. A day or two now would show.

Both battalions moved juto the positions selected near La Chalade during the early morning of September 24th. Regimental Headquarters at the same time went forward to Terme Ferdinand.

Those positions were trying on both officers and men, not because of enemy harassing but because of their exhausting natural difficulties. Out in front in No-Man's Land, and for a considerable distance back the forest survived only as a ghostly collection of stripped tree trunks. Two thousand meters to the rear, however, where our guns were placed, it had suffered less, and there was a dense anderbrush with practically no tracks. The cannoneers, in consequence, had to chop a way in. The pieces were unlimbered on the road, then manhandled a half a kilometer through the brush to their emplacements. That would have been hard enough by daylight. Before the dawn it was a task for a Hercules with the vision of a cat. Still it was done before sunrise and the work of consolidation was got under way.

These positions were in a piece of forest known as the Bois de Haut Batis. They were near some old French reserve trenches in which our infantry waited for the great moment. The doughboys didn't seem to know exactly what was going to happen to them, or to care particularly. The difficulties of the terrain failed to appal them. They watched curiously the artillerymen as they went about their labor.

Ammunition was the chief difficulty. The firing would be intense. Consequently vast quantities of shells would be required at the emplacements. Time was short. Word to commence firing might come any minute. Yet a point on the road about 400 meters from the guns