The next stop was made at Tours from 6 to 8 p. m. A short lay-over was also made at Poitiers at 11 p. m. The troop special was then nearing its destination. But few on board were aware that at the end of the next thirty-four kilometers was Montmorillon, in the department of Vienne, which was to be the stopping off place of Battery D for a stay of several weeks.
The troop special of thirty-five coaches and box cars, pulled into the station at Montmorillon at 1 a. m.; all was quiet about the station. A majority of the soldiers were too tired to care about location. They slumbered on as best they could in their box-car berths, while the special was pulled in on a siding, to remain until daylight when the order to detrain was to be issued.
[Illustration: MONTMORILLON STATION Where Battery D Detrained in France After Leaving British Rest Camp at Cherbourg.]
[Illustration: MONTMORILLON STREET SCENE Building Marked X was Billet for Half of the Battery During the First Month Spent on French Soil.]
Dotted with quaint architecture of 12th and 13th century Romanesque and Gothic design, the hills of Vienne department, France, cradle the crystal-clear and drowsy-moving waters of the Gartempe, a river, which in its course winds through the town of Montmorillon, where four thousand French peasantry, on August 7th, received their first lesson in American cosmopolitism.
Montmorillon, where the boys of Battery D were billeted for the first time in the midst of the French people; where they received their first impressions on French life and mannerisms, lives in memory of the boys as the prettiest, cleanest and most-comfortable place of any the outfit visited during its sojourn in France.
Despite the fact that a feeling of strained hospitality attended the reception of the 311th Artillery, the first body of white American troops to visit Montmorillon, the cloud of suspicion was soon lifted and four weeks of smiling August sunshine days, undarkened by rainclouds, were spent along the banks of the Gartempe.
When the 311th troops alighted from the troop special early on the morning of their arrival, the station and avenues of approach to the town were guarded by American negro M. P.'s, members of the 164th Artillery Brigade, who had arrived in the town several weeks previous and had made themselves at home with the natives.