FIELD PIECES AND BIG GUNS
War seemed less remote in the artillery camp than in any other section
of the American training area for the roar of the guns filled the air
every morning and they sounded just as ominous as if they were in
earnest. They were firing in the direction of Germany at that, but it
was a good many score of miles out of range. Just the same the French
were particular about the point. "We always point the guns toward
Germany even in practice if we can," said a French instructing officer,
"it's just as well to start right."
The camp consisted of a number of brick barracks and the soldiers and
officers were well housed. It was located in wild country, though, where
it was possible to find ranges up to twelve thousand yards. Scrubby
woods covered part of the ranges and the observation points towered up
a good deal higher than would be safe at the front. We went through the
woods the morning after our arrival and heard a perfect bedlam of fire
from the guns. There was the sharp decisive note of the seventy-five
which speaks quickly and in anger and the more deliberate boom of the
one hundred and fifty-five howitzer. This was a colder note but it was
none the less ominous. It had an air of premeditated wrath about it. The
shell from the seventy-five might get to its destination first but the
one hundred and fifty-five would create more havoc upon arrival. A
sentry warned us to take the left hand road at a fork in the woods and
presently we came upon one of the observation towers. It was crammed
with officers armed with field glasses. Every now and then they would
write things on paper. They seemed like so many reporters at a baseball
game recording hits and errors. When we got to the top of the tower we
found that large maps were part of the equipment as well as field
glasses. These were wonderfully accurate maps with every prominent tree
and church spire and house top indicated. The officers were ranging
from the maps. The French theory of artillery work was not new to the
American officers, but this was almost the first chance they had ever
had to work it out for we have no maps in America suitable for ranging.
According to theory the battery should first fire short and then long
and then split the bracket and land upon the target or thereabouts. The
men had not been working long and they were still a little more
proficient in firing short or long than in splitting the bracket. Later
the American artillery gave a very good account of itself at the school.
The French instructors told one particular battery that they were able
to fire the seventy-five faster than it had ever been fired in France
before. Perhaps there was just a shade of the over-statement of French
politeness in that, but it was without doubt an excellent battery. In
the lulls between fire could be heard the drone of aeroplanes for a
number of officers were flying to learn the principles of aerial
observation in its uses for fire control. Turning around we could also
see a large captive balloon. All the junior officers were allowed to
express a preference as to which branch of artillery work they preferred
and, although observation is the most dangerous of all, fully
seventy-five per cent, of the men indicated it as their choice.
Some American officers in other sections of the training area came to
the conclusion in time that we should go to the English for instruction
in some of the phases of modern warfare. We did in fact turn to the
English finally for bayonet instruction and a certain number of officers
thought that the English would also be useful to us in bombing, but I
never heard any question raised but that we must continue to go to the
French for instruction in field artillery until such time as we had
schools of our own.
The difference in language made occasional difficulties of course. "It
took us a couple of days to realize that when our instructor spoke of a
'rangerrang' he meant a 'range error,'" said one American officer, "but
now we get on famously."
We left the men in the tower with their maps and their glasses and went
down to see the guns. Our guide took us straight in front of the one
hundred and fifty-fives while they were firing, which was safe enough as
they were tossing their shells high in the air. It was better fun,
though, to stand behind these big howitzers, for by fixing your eye on a
point well up over the horizon it was possible to see the projectile in
flight. The shell did not seem to be moving very fast once it was
located. It looked for all the world as if the gunners were batting out
flies and this was the baseball which was sailing along.
The French officer who was showing us about said that he could see the
projectile as it left the mouth of the gun, but though the rest of us
tried, we could see nothing but the flash. Later we stood behind the
seventy-fives but since their trajectory is so much lower it is not
possible to see the shell which they fire. They seemed to make more
noise than the bigger guns. Fortunately it is no longer considered bad
form to stick your fingers in your ears when a gun goes off. Most of the
officers and men in this particular battery were as careful to shut out
the sound of the cannon as schoolgirls at a Civil War play. Not only did
they stuff their fingers in their ears, but they stood up on their toes
to lessen the vibration.
Guns have changed, however, since Civil War days. They are no longer
drab. Camouflage has attended to that. The guns we saw were streaked
with red and blue and yellow and orange. They were giddy enough to have
stood as columns in the Purple Poodle or any of the Greenwich Village
restaurants.
Before we left the camp we met Major General Peyton C. March, the new
chief of staff, who was then an artillery officer. We agreed that he was
an able soldier because he told us that he did not believe in
censorship. Regarding one slight phase of the training he bound us to
secrecy, but for the rest he said: "You may say anything you like about
my camp, good or bad. I believe that free and full reports in the
American newspapers are a good thing for our army."
We traveled many miles from the field gun school before we came to the
camp of the heavies. This, too, was a French school which had been
partially taken over by the Americans. The work was less interesting
here, for the men were not firing the guns yet, but studying their
mechanism and going through the motions of putting them in action. Many
of the officers attached to the heavies were coast artillerymen and
there was a liberal sprinkling of young reserve officers who had come
over after a little preliminary training at Fortress Monroe. The General
in charge of the camp told us that these new officers would soon be as
good as the best because the most important requirement was a technical
education and these men had all had college scientific training or its
equivalent. Just then they were all at school again cramming with all
the available textbooks about French big guns. They did not need to
depend on textbooks alone, for the camp contained types of most styles
of French artillery.
The pride of the contingent was a monster mounted on railroad trucks. It
fired a projectile weighing 1800 pounds. After the French custom, the
big howitzer had been honored by a name. "Mosquito" was painted on the
carriage in huge green letters.
"We call her mosquito," explained a French officer, "because she
stings."
"Mosquito" had buzzed no less than three hundred times at Verdun, but
she had a number of stings left. The Americans detailed with the gun
were loud in its praises and asserted that it was the finest weapon in
the world. There were other guns, though, which had their partisans.
Some swore by "Petite Lulu," a squat howitzer, which could throw a shell
high enough to clear Pike's Peak and still have something to spare.
There were champions also of "Gaby," a long nosed creature which
outranged all the rest. Marcel could talk a little faster than any gun
in camp, but her words carried less weight.
All the menial work about the camp was done by German prisoners. I was
walking through the camp one day when I saw a little tow-headed soldier
sitting at the doorstep of his barracks watching a file of Germans
shuffle by. They were men who had started to war with guns on their
shoulders, but now they carried brooms.
"Do you ever speak to the German prisoners?" I asked the soldier.
"Oh, yes," said the youngster; "some of them speak English, and they say
'Hello' to me and I say 'Hello' back to them. I feel sorry for them."
The little soldier looked at the shabby procession again and then he
leaned over to me confidentially and said with great earnestness as if
he had made up the phrase on the spot: "You know I have no quarrel with
the German people."
When we got home after our trips to the artillery camps we found an old
man in a French uniform eagerly waiting to see us. He told us that he
was an American, and more than that, a Californian. His name was George
La Messneger and he was sixty-seven years old. He was French by birth
and had fought in the Franco-Prussian war, but the next year he went to
California and lived in Los Angeles until the outbreak of the great war.
Although more than sixty, La Messneger was accepted by a French
recruiting officer and he was in Verdun two weeks after he arrived in
France. Three days later he was wounded and when we met him he had added
to his adventures by winning a promotion to sous-lieutenant and gaining
the croix de guerre and the medaille militaire.
Old George came to be a frequent visitor, but though we urged him on he
would never tell us much about the war. He wanted to talk about
California.
"I tell the men in my regiment," George would begin, "that out in Los
Angeles we cut alfalfa five times a year, but they won't believe me."
Gently we tried to lead George back to the war and his experiences. "How
did you get the military medal, lieutenant?" somebody asked.
"Oh, that was at Verdun," replied the old man.
"It must have been pretty hot up there," said another correspondent.
"Yes," said George, and he began to muse. We imagined that he was
thinking of those hot days in February when all the guns, big and
little, were turned loose.
"Yes," said George, "it was pretty hot," and we drew our chairs closer.
"You know," continued the old man, "a lot of people will tell you that
Los Angeles is hot. Don't pay any attention to them. I've lived there
forty years, and I've slept with a blanket pretty much all the time. The
nights are always cool."
I had heard George before and I knew that he was gone for the evening
now. As I tiptoed out of the room the old soldier in French horizon blue
was just warming up to his favorite topic. "San Francisco's nothing,"
said George, dismissing the city with as much scorn as if it had been
Berlin or Munich. He talked with such vehemence that all his medals
rattled.
"We're nearer the Panama Canal," said George, "we're nearer China and
Japan, and as for harbors----"
But just then the door closed.