Rude Awakening

On Friday, October 26, 1917, Grant Willard, Allen "Happy" Ahlers and Eric Astlett returned to Paris from leave on the French Riviera--and entered a new life as soldiers in the U.S. Army. They reported to headquarters the following morning and immediately ran afoul of the American military bureaucracy. Report in an hour for transport to the Sandricourt training base! You can't be ready in an hour? Well, come back at 1430 hours for the transport. Returning at 1430 they were told to report Sunday morning at 1030.

The former Norton-Harjes boys were in for rude awakening when they reached their old base north of Paris. The quiet, picturesque farm at Sandricourt they had known only four months earlier had been transformed into a larger American military base. In the months to come, Grant and his comrades would come to know the routine and drudgery of army life.

Sunday, October 28, 1917:

This A.M. at 11:30 we (Eric, Hap and I) left for Sandricourt Base via Neuilly. We got our noon meal and left there at 2:30, arriving in Sandricourt about 5 o’clock. The place is far from being the old Sandricourt Base. Several hundred Ford Ambulances are parked in what used to be a beautiful green pasture in front of the courtyard. The old orchard now affords shelter for barracks and a YMCA tent. The yard was piled with packing cases and Packard trucks with many campaign-hatted soldiers walking around.

A bugle sounded and everybody lined up for mess. We were handed dishes and told to fall into line and report in the office after dinner. We ate soup, meat, potatoes and coffee. In the office we were given blankets and the order of the day and told to get to bed. We were put up in the attic with strangers. It was cold and dark. The heat furnished by a little stove at one end of the room passed out through holes in the roof without giving much comfort. But I slept and slept hard and was plenty warm in spite of the biting cold.