Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/339

Rh The story of that day of homecoming is in everyone's heart-a trifle vague still, perhaps, because it was difficult to realize that we were, after more than a year, again in New York Harbor; that, where twelve months before we had slipped out, hidden between decks, we were now steaming noisily in, surrounded by cutters and ferryboats, decorated with banners and filled with shouting friends.

Everything, indeed, was reversed. But on the pier there were still men and women who gave us things to eat and smoke. We piled on to the same ferryboats, and went around the welcoming town to Long Island City.

That night we reached Camp Mills, and the next morning, after a final delousing, half the regiment went home for forty-eight hours, the other fifty per-cent. following two days later.

Even then you had a feeling that you were through. You could count already the hours that separated you from a return to a normal life, a final rupture from the service to which everyone had given himself whole-heartedly, but with which nearly everybody wanted to be done now that the emergency was over.

The parade alone held us. We went to New York Monday morning for that, left our equipment in the 9th Regiment armory, spent Monday and Tuesday night home, and on Tuesday morning marched up Fifth Avenue from Washington Square to 110th Street, where we saw the last of our Division and Brigade commanders.

The return to Upton the next day was the commencement of the final phase. There, where the regiment had been born, it was to end its career. Upton had altered little, yet it seemed oddly different. That was because it was ourselves we had changed.

At Upton the machinery of demobilization seemed to be out of repair by day and to grind only during the dark hours. After three nearly sleepless nights the last for-