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Upstarts
A sealed beam headlight was less temperamental, but it had its drawbacks, too.
When we first started using it, the light came out in irregular streaks and patches, which
were distracting, especially when the headlight swayed. Then we found that a sheet of
tracing paper tied over it diffused the light beautifully. The major problem was a source
of electricity. There weren't any light sockets to plug into, and if there had been, the
electric lines in the combat zone wouldn't have been working anyhow. The sealed beam,
which was intended for a truck, had to run off a truck battery. And running it twentyfour
hours a day soon discharged the battery. We didn't have a generator to recharge batteries,
so we had to have a truck running its motor most of the time to keep the batteries
charged. That was expensive and hard on the truck engine. It was also noisy. The sound
could be heard for a long way, and made us as easy to locate as if we had been showing
lights.
After mid-November, when it got uncomfortably cold in tents, we were usually
able to find buildings with roofs for our CP: mostly farmhouses or barns, once a castle
with parquet floors. And once, I remember, a pig sty. (We
ran the pigs out.) But the
summer and autumn we spent in the CP tents. Mostly we erected our two tents together,
with the non-entrance ends butted against each other and the end walls rolled up, forming
one long room with an entrance at each end. The FDC all squeezed into one tent, to
discourage visitors from trying to squirm in among them and getting in the way. The S-2,
Tech Sgt Johnson, PFC Levine, and the Situation Map occupied the other, with plenty of
room for loafers and people getting in out of the rain.
As I have said elsewhere, one of my duties was as a general gofer. I ran errands
and coordinated with other units: the 359th Infantry, Div Arty, and other artillery units,
either within the division or temporarily assigned to reinforce our fire. All these contacts
involved visits to other people's CP's, and an amazing number of them were at night. As a
result, I got a lot of practice in approaching unfamiliar CP tents in total darkness.
First, you have to get to the CP, an adventure in itself. It was always wise to look
at the map first, to see where they claimed their CP was. Then you had to memorize the
route, because under blackout regulations, there would be no way to consult a map on the
road.
Driving blackout at night was always a strain. The only lights on the jeep were the
cat-eyes, which provided no illumination but hopefully allowed others to see us coming.
But I will skip over that here, merely assuming that Joe B. Davis succeeds in driving you
somewhere near the strange CP, despite the fact that the actual ground has a way of
looking different from the map, especially at night, and the CP you are looking for is
doing its best to be invisible.
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