Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/33

Rh long dreamed of moment arrived. Five hundred and thirty-five recruits were assigned to the regiment.

These men, of course, did not come directly to us from their local boards. We received them after two weeks work of reception and assortment in which all the officers of the division shared. During that phase the once strange term "casual" became a by-word. For all the draft men arrived at Upton as casuals. Officers met the first train loads at Medford on September 15th.

There are, let it be granted, few days in the history of our country more impressive than that one which saw the triumph of universal service and the birth of our great national army. But it is rather so from a distance, for in the minds of the officers and men who assisted there lingers beyond question, woven with the sublime, a palpable tracery of amazement and mirth.

The draft came in ancient railroad coaches whose sides were trimmed with placards suggestive of an abnormally swift and terrible march to Berlin, via Upton; and a number of penalties for the Kaiser, very ingeniously thought out.

Then there was the provocative personal adornment. There had been word in the papers that all civilian clothing worn to Upton would have to be cast away. So these young men took no chances. Tattered straw hats were thrust from the windows; crushed derbies, through which wisps of hair straggled; top hats, in a few cases, so venerable that it was a pity to see them out of their sepulchres. And Palm Beach suits of previous summers were there, and the dinner jacket, an affair of generations, and the suit that had been worn on Sundays long before the owner's maturity. It was an assortment that would have taxed the sanity of a Hester Street dealer.

You tried to sound the meaning of such a trip to these young citizens. You could only sense definitive separa-