With the new year began our preparations for service at the front. At 8:30 New Year's day, the regiment was inspected by Colonel Reilly in its field equipment of steel helmets, woolen helmets, packs, side-arms and rubber boots. Our "tin derbies" had been issued the evening before, and were just beginning to furnish the unfailing fascination of revealing their long list of varied uses: candle-stick, camp-stool, market-basket, cymbals, wash basin, etc.
There was no turkey on this holiday, but the menu was pretty nearly as good as on preceding fete-days: Roast beef, mashed potatoes, creamed carrots, lettuce salad, apple cobbler and coffee. In the packages from home were ample additions to the battery mess in the form of candy, cake, cookies and occasionally cocoa. The three stoves, at each end and in the middle of the long shack, formed the centers of parties limited in size to the number who could squeeze into the warm circle. The others, engaged in reading letters from home or writing in reply, sat or lay on their cots, iron beds with steel springs, furnished with mattress, pillow and plenty of blankets. On the shelf between the windows and on the row of hooks below, were arranged each man's belongings. Electric lights cast some glow from the beams above, but reading or writing demanded the aid of a candle at one's side. Save when the rain, falling heavily, dripped through the roof, so that certain unlucky men had to stretch their shelter-halves as awnings over their cots, the quarters were comfortable enough, so comfortable that at a later date, in some muddy gun-pit, we looked back with longing upon the winter months at Coetquidan.
While the cannoneers had been firing at the range, the drivers had been busy with horse exercise and grooming. Four guns had been left in permanent position at the range. Now the time had come when we were to practice on other ranges, and our guns to be taken thither by our own drivers and horses each time. The first of these occasions is historic, for it was the day of Sergeant's Newell's famous report.
Rain had caused postponement on the first day set, Monday, January 7. Two days later snow made the attempt abortive, blowing in the windows all night and lying on the ground several inches deep when we arose, at 4 a. m. At 6 the battalion was harnessed and hitched, ready to start. The ground was so slippery and the winter morning was still so dark that the drivers did not mount, but led their horses. Things went difficultly but regularly until the Third Section piece was leaving the gun park. There was a slight downhill slope; the brakes refused to work; the horses, new to artillery harness, became tangled up, and ended by running away, disappearing from the column into the darkness. Sergeant Newell was having some concern over starting the caisson. When he caught up with the column on the road, he learned his piece was missing. At the call, "Chiefs of sections, report," he approached the captain, saluted and said: