september - october - Fort Sill

COMPARISONS AGAIN
Here was familiar ground. Here they could shine. The work of the battery
commander was considerably lightened by this spontaneous interest.
Troubles peculiar to motors came in swarms, and ranged from joy-riding to
burned-out bearings. But in time these troubles were overcome, and the
progress of training was such that after three months the regiment was
ready to take the field with all its equipment, including the heavy repairshop
trucks. The men already knew more or had learned more about motors
in three months than about horses in a year of garrison and campaign. The
comparison may be partly unfair in that when the men took up their duties
with the animal regiment, they were recruits of the rawest variety; and
when they started in on motors they had the experience of a year and a half
in the Army. They were trained in things common to both horse-drawn and
motor-drawn artillery, such as road discipline, bivouac and billet.
Now, as concerns combat efficiency: The battery was drawn by horses
throughout its combat service, and comparisons are possible only when
like conditions are assumed. It was the writer's experience that even with
careful planning and detailed reconnaissance, it was not feasible to
occupy a battery position or to change position in daylight. (This would
probably be the case in the face of an enemy with air service, in another
war.) The heavy night work, the scanty rations and the presence of
mustard gas around the rear echelons, all tended to weaken the animals.
More than once, just when the battery commander would want the
maximum motive strength from his horses, they would be weak and
staggering in their traces. Several times it was critical in the campaign
north of the Marne, and during the rainy nights of September and
October, 1918, on the Meuse. The position might be near a hard road,
say a hundred and fifty yards from it. The last hundred and fifty yards
of the night's march were the important ones and the hardest. The
desperate feeling of a battery commander with his carriages stalled in
soft ground, the men and horses dead tired and the position littered with
camouflage nets and ammunition—dawn streaking the sky and enemy
planes droning overhead, all this is a very vivid memory, and an item, at
least, in the comparison of horses and tractors. Tractors are not
exhausted by standing for hours in a traffic jam on a narrow road at
night, and after hauling the battery almost to the position, they will not
all fail at once from a common fatigue and deliver the merest fraction of
power that they are capable of under normal conditions. Often, little is
gained by hitching spare teams of tired horses to a stalled carriage, for
the conditions are such that they must be hitched in tandem and the
tandem length is too great for united effort, but a unit as short as a
tractor can be a real help even in a tight place to another stalled tractor.
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