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

Page 30

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camp on Southampton Common. This rest camp was a remarkable affair. Our part of it consisted of small conical tents, smaller than Sibley tents, each having a circular wooden floor, large enough for six men but accommodating ten. To go with the tents, we were at once issued blankets, but as soon as we had drawn them we were ordered to take them back to the store house again. This caused some hard feeling until we learned that the previous users had been quarantined South African negro troops and that, in the mean­ time, there had been no fumigation.

The next morning we found that we were not the only American troops in camp, the others being regulars from the Coast Artillery. They left early and we followed in the afternoon, trying to keep step with the band in which the drum was half a beat behind the rest of the music, and boarded the little steamer "Cesarea" for one more dart past the U-boats. We took up every inch of available space and a man who tried to find a more comfortable spot than the one he occupied simply lost what he had: there were no comfortable spots! At dusk we slipped down the harbor, anchored outside to wait the passing of a bright moon, and dashed across the channel with an escorting destroyer to find ourselves at Le Havre bright and early in the morning. Some there are who say a torpedo was actually fired at us as we crossed and that we only escaped it by inches. It is at least possible. On the dock we had breakfast of canned Willie and hardtack under the shadow of a railroad station doing war service as a hospital, and after satisfying the curiosity of stray members of the Atkins' family,

 

 

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