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The Glamour War
We were happy when we heard that we were getting an AAA Btry to protect us
from air attacks, and when they came in and made a circle around us with their 40 mm
Bofors AA guns and quad .50 caliber machine guns, we felt more secure.
But very early in the invasion, the allies got such clear air superiority that only
rarely did any hostile aircraft came over, except "Bedcheck Charlie" who flew at night
when the AAA couldn't see to shoot. So Btry D, whose telephone name was Undo Dog
["Dog" was the phonetic word for "D"], didn't have much to do. And we, not being used
to having them with us, tended to forget about them when we got ready to move, and all
too often we neglected to include them with our reconnaissance.
This was pretty hard on them, because positioning AAA weapons is a difficult
and technical problem. Ideally, they are evenly spaced on the perimeter of a perfect circle
of such size as to insure no gaps in their area of fire. So you can see how their battery
commander would feel when he saw us suddenly pull out for an unknown (to him)
destination where his unit would be supposed to encircle and protect us.
Eventually he learned to watch us carefully for signs of a recon party forming up,
so he could phone in and ask, "Are you folks planning to displace?" And after while we
got so we would remember to call him along with our own people when we prepared to
move.
During the first few months, each of the four field artillery battalions in the
Division had its own AAA Battery for protection, but then someone decided that the
Division arid Division Artillery CPs and perhaps a few other key installations needed the
same protection, so we lost half our battery and kept only one firing platoon. And their
telephone name changed from Undo to Mayfair. So when we called them, we would get
the reply, "Mayfair First Dog." Not "Mayfair Pup. "
*****
Now to get back to our problem with grenades in the dark. The "Undo Dogs"
were particularly susceptible to these sneak attacks, because each of their weapons and
crews was isolated. Aside from that, they were bored, because there were no enemy
aircraft to shoot at. So one of their soldiers gathered up a few friends and they started
through the woods on foot, kicking the underbrush as they went. On the first day they
flushed out and captured about a dozen Germans, whom they brought us to truck in to the
Division PW cage. After that, they went out every day, until they had captured more than
fifty in the woods the, I&R squad had certified to be free of enemy soldiers.
Long afterward, a staff officer of the 359th Infantry made the shamefaced
admission, "At one point, the 915th FA Bn had actually captured more PsW than the
359th Inf Rgt." He was right, except that it was not the 915th, but D of the 537th. But, of
course, we were willing to take the credit.
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