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Upstarts
Sgt Hallick, being closest, picks up the phone. "Upstart Fire Direction," he says into it.
Then he announces "Fire Mission!" to everyone within earshot, says "Wait, " into the phone and
hands it to Thomson.
Everyone scrambles into position. Devlin and Harris lean over their firing charts, plotting
pin in hand. Each of the three Battery Computors, having assembled all his equipment, cranks his
telephone on the direct lines to his firing battery, and says, "Stand by," into the mouthpiece.
Meanwhile, Captain Thomson hears his telephone say, "This is Upstart Charley FO 2.
Fire Mission! Enemy machine guns in vicinity of Concentration three one five. Request
battalion. Will adjust. "
He repeats "enemy machine guns in vicinity of concentration three one five" for the
benefit of the board operators, and pauses for about one second, during which time he checks the
location of Concentration 315 to make sure it's safely out in front of our own lines, considers the
wind direction and the amount of ammunition available. Then he announces loudly, "Shell HE.
Charge 5, Fuze Quick, Battalion Baker, Center Right, two volleys. "
Pandemonium ensues.
T/4 Devlin has stuck a pin into the Horizontal Control Firing Chart in the middle of a tiny
circle marked Concentration 315. He already had three other pins in the chart, one for each
battery position, so he now uses a big fan-shaped piece of clear plexi-glass to measures the
distance and direction to the target for each battery and starts singing out: "Baker: Base
Deflection right one three two, Range four two hundred. Able: Base Deflection right one zero
four, range. . ."
Even before hearing this, T/5 Gillis has already sent a partial command to B (Baker)
Battery: Fire Mission. Battery adjust, Shell HE, Charge 5, Fuze quick -" and now that he has
more information, he continues, Base Deflection right one three zero -" Then he cuts off and
calls to T/4 Harris, "SI Baker?"
Harris, the Vertical Control Operator, has already been making the calculations necessary
to figure the angle of Site (SI) necessary to make up for the difference in altitude between the
target and the battery position, so he is able to sing out, "SI Baker, minus 2."
Gillis now completes his command to the battery: "SI minus 2, Center Right, 345."
While Gillis is performing, the other two computors are getting similar data and giving
similar commands to their guns, but incomplete ones, because they will not fire until after B
Battery's fire has been adjusted precisely on the target, so that their data can be corrected before
they join in the Fire for Effect.
All this has taken about a minute.
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