engines running full steam ahead, we were making twenty-five knots an hour. This speed,
coupled with the small size of the boat itself, made it a very poor target for a submarine, and we
felt secure.
FRANCE, AT LAST.
On the morning of July 18th the regiment awoke to find itself in the landlocked harbor of
Cherbourg, France. The two boats upon which the regiment had crossed the channel lay side by
side and after a scanty breakfast of English reserve rations, consisting of cheese, hard tack, and a
little jam, the organizations began to disembark. This was not an easy matter as during the
passage the crowded condition of the boats had badly scrambled the units, but in a remarkably
short time we were disembarked and baggage was unloaded and the regiment formed on French
soil at last. Then, with the Colonel at the head of the regiment colors flying, and the band
playing, we began our first march in France – five miles to another English rest camp.
CHERBOURG REST CAMP.
France, at last, it was, – but somehow we felt more remote from the war than upon the
ocean, wearing life belts and doing boat drill, for here in Normandy things were quiet, pleasant
roads overshadowed throughout their length by magnificent trees and quiet fields. Near the
camp was an old castle, said to be of the old Dukes of Normandy. In this rest camp two days
were spent, but here too there was little rest. The camp was over crowded, due to the unwonted
number of troops passing through, American Divisions, hurrying into training areas. The
soldiers of the regiment were placed ten and twelve in small tents and were again made to
appreciate the abundance of American rations, whi1e subsisting on tea, jam, cheese, hard tack.
The two days were spent largely in bathing and washing clothes. Here, for the first time,
members of the regiment saw officers and soldiers coming back from the front to go on leave, or
having spent their well earned leaves, on their way back to their units at the front, telling many
stories of things as they had seen them. These stores, together with an English unit, which
straggled in late one afternoon fresh from the front, foot-sore and tired from the days of fighting,
made us impatient to get speedily to our training area to get a taste of what we had come to do.
FRENCH RAILWAYS.
Late on the afternoon of July 19th the regiment made its acquaintance with French troop
trains. Our first experience was not a pleasant one. The whole regiment was put on one train,
consisting of cars of “forty hommes and eight cheveaux” type. There was one third-class car for
officers, It was, indeed, a new experience for American troops this box car traveling. No doubt
the American soldier had been spoiled by the troop trains in its native land, despite the fact that
when in America he could grumble because the Pullman cars were a little old and three men
must bunk in one section. Certainly many members of the Three Hundred Forty-Fourth Field
Artillery sighed and longed for these self same “three-men sections” and American Pullmans
many times in the next four days. These “forty hommes and eight cheveaux” were extremely
uncomfortable – no where to lie and only to sit on one’s pack with cold air rushing in at every
crack, with the jam of the English travel rations sticking to one’s clothes and hair. Rationing was
difficult; there was but one ration car on the train and details from cars in which the men were
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