Page:History of the 305th field artillery (IA historyof305thfi01camp).pdf/71

Rh The third, our boat was in the harbor, and we'd have to Lustle to get off.

Some of the saner-minded weighed the matter.

We couldn't fight the Huns with our one battery, our few horses, our insufficient harness, our incomplete instrument equipment. Moreover, a number of our battery commanders were at Fort Sill for instruction. Others were scheduled to go. If proposed departures should be cancelled, and the absent captains recalled we would begin to put our affairs in order, for it was clear we couldn't go on marking time perpetually at Camp Upton.

Washington's Birthday, in some measure, cleared the air. It fell on a Friday, We commenced to speculate when we were informed that on the holiday there would be a parade, and that night a monster Division ball in the armory of the Seventh Regiment, and that as many of us as possible would be given passes between Thursday evening and the following Monday's reveille.

"Looks like a farewell show, and a last chance for a good visit home," sums up the commoner interpretation.

This was strengthened when, as we struggled to town Thursday night, word passed through the train that the absent battery commanders had been recalled.

The parade was solemn. It had an exotic touch, American soldiers had never looked quite like that before. The men wore their new winter caps instead of the familiar campaign hats. A blankety snow fell and became, apparently, a part of the uniform. The spectators gazed with a sort of wonder at city youths, broadened and ruddy and clear-eyed, and in a setting that placed them all at once, as it were, in a different world.

It was almost entirely an infantry affair. In spite of the highly technical nature of our branch, our lack of equipment even at this late date, barred most of the artillery brigade from the column. Among the entire three