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BEING THE NARRATIVE OF BATTERY A OF THE 101st FIELD ARTILLERY

Page 177

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concerned. Our course lay for three hundred yards up an impossible slope, made hideous by terraces, shell-holes, darkness and rain. At first with six horses, then eight, ten, twelve and finally with every man in the Battalion straining at the ropes, the first gun was boosted inch by inch up the hill. It was discouraging to contemplate eleven more such bouts, but fortunately B and C Batteries were assigned positions near the foot of the hill, so that we were spared. We, however, tugged away at A Battery's three remaining pieces all the rest of the night. The rain increased, and it grew colder.

                Daylight found us shivering, wet to the skin, half­frozen, plastered with mud, feebly coaxing the last gun into position on the top of the hill. The horses had long since been sent back exhausted. It was at this unenlightened moment that Capt. Huntington rejoined the Battery after his seven months absence at Coetquidan.

                By a miracle the Germans had not fired on us all night, but about seven o'clock in the morning they made up for this negligence. Our three cooks had established the kitchen near the road, some hundred yards down the hill from the guns. They were peace­ fully cooking steaks, and several of the men were trying to thaw out by the fire in spite of a cold wind, when the first 150 mm. H. E. lit in the road near them. There was a quick rush towards the nearest shelter, the Boyau D'Haumont of 1916 fame, a battered trench which, starting across the road from our kitchen, straggled up the hill, along the crest, and finally lost itself in the direction of Brabant. Before three

 

 

 

 

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