Tracing a grandfather's service

With the observance of Veterans Day and Remembrance Day on November 11, many in the Quoddy area will recall the sacrifices of family members who served in the U.S. and Canadian armed forces.
Sam Winch of Lubec remembers when he was a child and his paternal grandparents, Nana and Pappy, would visit for the holidays. On one of those occasions, his grandfather began telling stories about his battlefield experiences in World War I. "Over the next few minutes everyone else in the room got up and walked away while I sat and listened to his stories, for what seemed like hours, about being gassed and about the constant artillery barrages."
Both of Winch's grandfathers served in World War I. His mother's father never talked about it. "I guess either his role was inconsequential, or his silence was the best way he had to cope with what had happened. On the other hand, it seemed like my father's father never stopped talking about his time in the 'Great War.' He was an interesting but somewhat scary-looking guy for me as a small child. We called him Pappy, but his name was James Paine Winch. He was born June 20, 1896, and died on November 5, 1970, when I was just 15." Winch adds, "I do know it changed his life because he was a healthy, young-looking guy in pictures taken before he left, and in pictures from a year later he looks like a middle‑aged man."
A few years back Winch received some of his grandfather's wartime mementos, including a hat with the number "37" and "AEF" embroidered on it, a collection of postcards, a map of France with a line tracing where his grandfather had fought, some ticket stubs and theater programs, and an artillery manual with firing tables. Winch says, "I couldn't resist it; it seemed like a trove of precious historical clues." On a corner of the map his grandfather had written a list of places with dates of the camps and towns where he'd been stationed during the war. Fascinated by his grandfather's military service, Winch embarked on a personal journey to learn more. The following is what he discovered.

Retracing his grandfather's map of service as told by Sam Winch
James Paine Winch, "Pappy," was living in Ohio when he joined the Army National Guard in May 1917. He was assigned to Ohio's 37th Division, the "Buckeye" division, which became part of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in WWI. He was sent to the National Guard's Camp Sheridan in Montgomery, Ala., and then Camp Upton near New York City. His final training was for seven weeks at Camp de Souge in France.
The 37th Division artillery units (134th Field Artillery) were sent to Camp de Souge to learn how to use the French artillery pieces. When the U.S. joined the war in April 1917, it didn't have any sizable number of artillery pieces, tanks or airplanes, whereas France and Britain did, by virtue of having an aggressive neighbor with a history of invading. After training, Pappy was a corporal in Battery A of the 134th Field Artillery. A battery consisted of four guns, typically, with three or four soldiers working as a team on each gun. Pappy's army specialty was as an instrument man on an artillery team, along with a gunner and a communication agent. As an instrument man, he did the calculations for aiming and arming.
In September 1918, the 37th and other units were assigned to the St. Mihiel "salient," a bulge where the Germans had pushed the front further south, just east of Verdun. The American units attacked and moved the line back about 20 miles and removed the salient. Pappy arrived at the front about a month after this operation, but he went to the new front, including Hattonchatel, Heudicourt and Vigneulles. Pappy's first position in the battle was in a small town north of Nancy called Sainte Genevieve, located on a hill that would have been a good place for artillery to shell the German lines. He was deployed on a defensive mission in the Marbache Sector, which was the area just north of Nancy along the Moselle. His next deployment was to the Pannes Sector, where he was involved in both offensive and defensive missions, including the Bois de Bonseil offensive.
I remember Pappy told me when I was little that his unit was in a battle that left few of them surviving, and then he and the other survivors were assigned to a different unit, and then the same thing happened again. I also remember him telling me they were gassed with mustard and phosgene, and that he had to have battlefield surgery on his intestines. He was in ill health for the rest of his life.
While the fighting ceased with the Armistice on November 11, 1918, it took months to get the 2 million American soldiers back to the states. Pappy didn't get home until March 1919, holing‑up in Rambluzin from November to February. One of the final unsolved puzzles was the notation on the map of being deployed at a "Chateau du Chanois" in Rambluzin. None of the people I talked with in Rambluzin in November 2018 could figure it out. However, I did come up with a theory, after having perused several French grocery stores where they sell mutton, or chamois. I bet he spent his final months in France holed-up in a sheep barn, which he called the "Chateau du Chamois."
The final mystery is a notation on his military record that he served in the Bois de Bonseil offensive, which Pappy does not note anywhere on his map. The offensive involved the 134th Field Artillery. They were to eliminate German machine gun nests near the town of Haumont-lès-Lachaussé. On the morning of October 30 they did so, exchanging fire with German artillery until the Germans retreated and the 56th Army Infantry Brigade attacked and took prisoners. An historian of the 134th wrote, "The sounds of our guns and the steady singing of the shells as they passed overhead raised our spirits a hundred percent, for we had all the confidence in the world in the men behind those guns." I'd like to think my Pappy was one of those men.