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Upstarts
So I didn't. I put the firing batteries behind a ridge of hills, safe from ground
observation, but with no overhead cover. The CP was behind them, in a little woods well
away from any paved road. No point in looking for a building for us if we were only
going to be there a few hours, I told myself.
So we spent half of September and all of October in that position.
And while we were there, autumn rains made the rutted dirt trail to the CP nearly
impassable. It turned cold. Living in pup tents was miserable, so the men built little
shelters from ammunition boxes and used ingenious methods to heat them. I recall seeing
one where a sort of pipe made of tin cans had been laid under the dirt floor so that a
blow-torch flame could be played into the open end.
Next to the CP tent in the woods, a pyramidal tent was erected for us staff officers
to sleep in. It had the luxury of a barrel stove that kept at least the center of it warm.
Major Swatosh, however, built his own hut so he could safeguard his growing collection
of souvenirs. He specialized in projectiles: machine gun bullets. unexploded artillery
shells, and the like. I found out later that he had taken the fuze of a 20mm German anti-
aircraft shell apart to see how the little bits of sensitive explosives in them operated. [For
a description of a fuze, see p 25.]
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