tery
was in readiness to move out, the caissons having gone and the guns
waiting for sundown to follow, the enemy gave a parting salute, a
little fuller of thrills than any before. In the trail pit was the only
protection. The buzz of jagged fragments through the air, the loud whang
and eruption of sod and soil from a burst not far from Captain Robbins'
tent, sent everyone to this slight shelter. Fortunately the farewell
ended with no one injured.

Next day, August 12, found the regiment in the Bois de Chatelet, where
they examined the site of the "Big Bertha" which had been there. Only a
huge turntable ten yards in diameter, with a concrete base at least
eight feet deep--one saw that far down a circular trench around it--was
left, with the railway tracks along which the carriage ran. The
ball-bearings of the turntable were the size of a man's head.

That day Corporal Holton was appointed first sergeant. Corporal Collier
succeeding him as gas N. C. O. Sergeant Landrus, who had been appointed
"top-cutter" in O'Meara's place July 24, had gone to Saumur to officers'
school.

Two days later the regiment marched through Chateau Thierry, to which
its citizens were just returning. French soldiers guarded German
prisoners at work clearing out houses and cleaning the street. Before
some doors stood wagons loaded with furniture. Other doors bearing the
sign, "Habitee," indicated those houses' occupants were settled. The
church's walls, torn by shell holes, bore witness to the severe shelling
the town had received. On the hillside beyond, lay the village of Vaux,
now a heap of white bricks, where the Germans had advanced. Hiking both
morning and afternoon, the battery reached a woods on the bank of the
Marne, near the hamlet of Mery-sur-Marne, where we encamped.

For three days the battery lay here, twenty men going to Paris on a
48-hour pass, the others visiting La Ferte-sous-Jouarre, more thriving
now than when we had detrained there three weeks before. But prices were
very high: peaches and plums, 3 francs a pound; melons, 4 and 5 francs
each; tomatoes, 15 sous a pound; potatoes 10 sous a pound; sugar, 20
sous a pound. Swimming in the Marne was a favorite pastime until the
drowning of a member of Battery F clouded our enjoyment of it.

On August 18 the regiment hiked along the Paris highway, alongside the
Marne, to Trilport, where it entrained that evening.

A box-car was a welcome haven of rest then. The weeks in this se