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Upstarts
Strange things sometimes happened. One of our battalion wire teams was out one
day with their truck, picking up a line that they thought was no longer in use, when they
almost literally ran into the back end of a larger truck from Division Artillery that was
laying the same line.
"Hey!" shouted the sergeant from Div Arty. "What d'you think you're doing?"
"We're picking up the Upstart Liaison Two line. How come you're laying it?" "Like hell
you are! This is the line from Universe to Upstart. Now you turn around and put it back
where you found it!"
Maybe I should explain those esoteric names "Upstart" and "Universe." Each
army unit large enough to have its own switchboard had a code name, somewhat like the
exchange names the Bell System used to have before they went to all numbers. The 90th
Infantry Division's code name was UNICORN, the 90th Div Arty was UNIVERSE. The
915th had the code name UPSTART. If you had wanted to call me, you would twist the
crank on your field telephone, wait for a switchboard operator to answer, and say, "Get
me Upstart 2." Eventually, depending on the number of switchboards the operator had to
go through first and assuming that all the wire was intact, you would get a fuzzy answer:
"Upstart 2, Sgt Johnson speaking. Captain Moore is out somewhere. "
When wire crews first laid a line, they did it as fast as they could and still make it
work. Since the quickest way was from a truck, using the big reel holding a drum with
one mile of wire on it, they would generally lay it along a road, sometimes running along
behind the truck, pulling the wire off the reel and throwing it into the ditch, sometimes
actually standing on the bed of the truck, pulling and throwing the wire from there. Either
way, they tried to pull off at least 25 % more than appeared to be needed. Wire with a lot
of slack was less likely to get broken and easier to splice if it did break. The worst insult
to a wire crew was, "Their line's neck high and so tight you could play 'Nearer, my God
to Thee' on it."
But once the wire is on the ground, the wire crew is not finished. As soon as they
can find time, they go back out to tag and tie it. The tags, tied on the wire every fifty
yards or so, identify the owner of the wire and where the line goes. This is to prevent
mishaps like the one described before, where one crew is picking up while another is
laying down the same line.
Tying is a tedious process. That may never get completed, unless you are in the
same position for many days. It means lifting the wire off the ground with a long pike-
pole and tying it up onto trees, fence-posts, telegraph poles, or whatever. That is because
while the wire is on the ground anywhere near a place where vehicles pass, some passing
wheel can break a wire, or still worse, wind it up around an axle and carry it away.
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