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Upstarts
Another source of transportation for the doughboys was our artillery ammunition
trucks. The infantry would gladly have used all our trucks, in spite of the fact that they
had short wheel base, suitable for carrying heavy ammunition but with less cargo space
for personnel than the long wheel base trucks of the QM Truck Companies. We managed
to convince them that we needed the kitchen trucks, the prime movers for the howitzers,
the CP truck, and the wrecker (tow truck), but we couldn't justify keeping the
Ammunition Train (Ammo Tn), especially since we didn't fire much ammunition when
moving fast enough to require entrucking the infantry.
I don't remember the number of trucks involved: I think it was twelve from
Service Battery, plus two from each of the firing batteries, for a total of eighteen, under
Lt. Nick Nobles, the Ammo Tn Commander. On occasion they "shuttled" infantry. That
means they dumped their load of ammunition somewhere, leaving a guard on it, picked
up a load of infantry instead, and took them where they needed to go. Sometimes, if the
distance wasn't excessive, they had to go back and pick up a second load of infantry.
Anyhow, when the shuttling day was over, they had to return to the ammunition, reload
it, and deliver it to the firing batteries. And sometimes they had to go back to the
Ammunition Supply Point, far to the rear, and pick up another load. In short, they were
doing two jobs - moonlighting.
It made a long day, with a long night tacked on. Nick Nobles was worried that his
drivers would become exhausted from lack of sleep and start having accidents.
I don't know who thought of the solution, but I expect it was someone in the
Ammunition Train. And it was amazingly simple: they just stopped dumping the
ammunition. The infantrymen were as happy to ride on the soft pine ammunition boxes
as on the hard folding benches of the truck bed. It was probably against peacetime safety
regulations, but our cannoneers always rode in trucks with ammunition, and smoked
cigarettes too.
Anyhow, artillery shells are very stable, specially when packed in fiber containers
inside crates. A direct hit from a heavy bomb would probably detonate them, but it would
kill all the passengers first anyhow. All in all, a soldier was much less likely to die from
riding on an ammunition truck than from machine gun fire in an attack.
Good soldiers have always been problem solvers.
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