september - october - Fort Sill

CURRENT FIELD ARTILLERY NOTES
to high explosives. He must know how to shoot a pistol, a machine-gun and
a cannon; he has not only got to know how to ride a little cavalry horse; but
also to man-handle a pair of big busters that weigh a ton and a half between
them; and he must learn how to ride the trail and hold his seat on a
pitching, roaring seventy-five. You can't be a coffee-cooler or a cake eater
in the branch that wears spurs with a red hat-cord. As a certain member of
the organization remarked on a famous 'After Dinner' occasion: 'You gotter
be a Buller in the Field Artillery.'
"Why do they like it? The answer is two-fold. The first is the spirit.
Artillerymen have always had it. They stick together in a remarkable
manner. With but few exceptions you will find them a loyal lot; they will
fight at the drop of the hat for their organization, and whatever growling is
done within the family they seldom woof to outsiders. Traditions running
back through the Revolutionary War have a lot to do with this condition;
there are more songs, poems, stories and yarns about the Field Artillery
than all the rest put together. Their loyalty is hereditary; their enthusiasm
contagious.
"The second reason for the popularity of the Field Artillery is the joy
of the life itself. Ask the driver. He will tell you that it is worth all his
grooming and harness cleaning to experience the thrill of a snappy
morning's battery drill at a brisk trot; the rhythmic pound of the hoof
beats in his ears and the pungent smell of hide and leather in his nostrils;
feeling the powerful muscles of a magnificent horse responding to his
rein and spur, the stiff breeze crackling around the guidon, the musical,
'jingle-bumpety-clank,' as Kipling describes it, of the guns and caissons
as they go rolling along; all filling the air with such an exhiliration of
sound and moving life that his spinal column arches and his toes wiggle
in his stirrups for joy. John D. Rockefeller with all his millions or Rudy
Valentino with all his looks, cannot draw a bigger kick out of life than
this.
"Ask the B. C. Detail or the Headquarters Specialists. They will tell you
that the job at the observation post is the best of all jobs; that there is no
better reward for work well done than the sight of the first salvo bursting
around the target.
"Ask the cannoneer. He will tell you that no doughboy drill can equal
the satisfaction of the trained gun crew's play; when, working silently and
with the speed and smoothness of a machine, they feed their guns the shell
and shrapnel, as it kicks and bucks and bellows, and with a 'crack-whistleswish
and roar' throws out its iron messengers of death. 'Them babies that
raise such hell up the line.'
"This year the boom of the Soixante-quinze will reverberate
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