CARRYING a full ration of ammunition, the first elements of the regiment, comprising vehicles and field guns, entrucked for Southampton January 9th, 1945. The Passage here is a scant seventy-five miles wide, but as perilous in wartime as three thousand miles of the Atlantic. Every precaution was taken. A standard Liberty ship lay waiting alongside of one of the port's quays, and the work of loading and blocking the vehicles began immediately. By evening of January 10th, the mild English weather had capriciously turned, but the job was finished and all hands aboard grimly prepared to make this voyage in the refrigerated hold of a cargo vessel. For six days the men shivered on a C-ration diet as the ship crossed the Channel, lay off Le Havre for a day waiting for tide and then inched up the Seine seventy miles to Rouen. On either bank of the river lay wreckage of last July's Normandy campaign, and in Rouen, the vehicles were put ashore amid the partially repaired ruins of the great French port's once-famous docks. The war was becoming visual instead of hearsay.

CHANNEL PASSAGE

The main body of the regiment, meanwhile, had proceeded to Portland, England, on January 10th to board LSTs. The flat-bottomed monstrosity labeled LST was no smooth-sailing Brazil. Men jammed into every corner of the hold, piling equipment beside them. The boat wallowed through the choppy Channel, taking its toll of seasick soldiers. To "improve" matters, an inexplicable change in plans required the men to pull blankets from their duffel bags and attach horseshoe rolls to their packs--a near-impossibility in the space available. When the regiment disembarked at Le Havre on the same evening, there was no disappointment over the shortness of the journey. That, undoubtedly, was because the men were ignorant of what lay ahead.

UP from the battered waterfront, through the city's hilly streets and into the French countryside, the troops struggled (and straggled) with their heavy packs. Mile after mile they trudged, into a blinding snowstorm. A bivouac of pyramidal tents loomed through the snow. This must be their destination. But the march continued. At last, almost ten miles from Le Havre the column turned off the road down a slippery, nearly invisible path. They had -reached their area-an open field!
Shades of Boscombe billets! Here was a bed of slush and ice. Some of the men made sleeping-bags of their shelter halves. Others pitched pup tents. It is still a subject for debate which was wiser. One could keep warm or keep dry, but not both. Next morning, the men

laughed it off over a breakfast of Spam, bread and coffee. The appearance of a convoy of two-and-a-half-ton trucks gave them a new outlook on life. So the regiment moved on to the vicinity of Yerville [NE from Yvetot - U.Koch], where the regimental CP was located, with the units in nearby villages. Billets in the guise of peasant barns were gratefully taken over, and the men basked in the comparative luxury of hay, and the warmth of flagrantly adjacent cows.
Here was a tentative introduction to the language, customs and cognac of France before the regiment continued on the next leg of a misery-filled winter journey through France.

AT home they were good for a laugh as American Legion parade stuff. But in France, 40-and-8 box cars were a painful reality and still in style as late as January, 1945. Marching to Auffay January 19th, the regiment boarded these "conveyances" for a ride that was more picturesque than comfortable. Bedded down in straw, (without horses, but with the full complement of forty men) the troops cooked their ten-in-one rations on mountain stoves and witnessed the passing scene in great detail as the trains made a halting advance through northern France. Beauvais, Compihgne, Soissons, Reims--at last the long trip was over.
As the regiment set up temporarily in the vicinity of St. Hiliaire le Petit, an advance party was already on its way to Belgium. There were a few hours to thaw out frost-bitten feet and enjoy a hot meal before the regiment went on in trucks to its Belgian rendezvous.
Every passing mile brought the 304th nearer to the fighting. Forgetting freezing hands and feet, the men eagerly examined this battleground of the centuries . . . Sedan, where the Nazis had broken the back of the French in 1940 . . . the Ardennes Forest, classic, battlefield of World War I . . . the "Bulge" area which they were now approaching. Names from the pages of a history book had turned into cobbled streets and roads beneath the wheels of trucks and jeeps and houses dourly lining the sides and steeples actually towering overhead. A "news commentator 's war" was becoming grimly real!