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Chapter 9
Maps and Other Problems
There was a pause in the war for the 1944 World Series. I don't remember any
details of the games, played between the two St Louis teams, the Cardinals and the
Browns, but I do know that everyone in the battalion with access to a telephone was
listening at least part of the time. Someone in B Battery had a short-wave radio capable
of picking up either the broadcast from the States or a re-broadcast, possibly from
Communications Zone Headquarters in Paris. A wire from the radio fed the broadcast
into the Upstart switchboard, where all telephone lines could be plugged into it. Luckily,
the enemy did not choose to attack during any of the games, because it might have been
hard to unhitch enough lines to get a fire mission fired. Even those of us who didn't
normally follow baseball listened, and listening boosted our morale.
After the Series, we settled into a daily routine, starting about ten p.m. or, in
military terms, 2200. [There is a precedent for starting the day at night: the Jewish
sabbath starts at sunset Friday night.] By that time the liaison officers would have
reported in from their respective infantry battalions with requests for us to prepare
defensive barrages to be fired if they were needed to break up an enemy attack. Most of
them were never fired; the enemy never made a serious attack, day or night, during that
period, but it was well to be ready. After the defensive barrages were prepared, the S-3
and his assistant would work up a schedule of harassing and interdiction (H&I) firing to
be done at odd times during the night. Interdiction fire is fired along roads or streets,
generally at bridges, crossings or intersections, to keep the enemy from using them to
bring up supplies or reinforcements. Harassing fire is intended to keep the enemy awake
and nervous. Both harassing and interdiction fires are more effective if fired on an
irregular schedule, so the enemy won't know when to be ready for them.
Of course firing them also kept our own cannoneers awake, if not nervous, so
generally only one battery would fire each night, and the batteries took turns.
As soon as the schedule was made up and sent to the proper battery executive
officer, everyone would go to bed, except for the FDC duty officer and one FDC enlisted
man. There were five of us staff officers who rotated standing night duty: Major Swatosh,
the S-3; Major Myers, the Bn Exec; Capt Thomson, the Asst S-3; me, the S-2, and Lt Ray
Wright, the Survey Officer. And one of the six FDC enlisted men [see Essay One "The
Fire Direction Center"] would share the duty. If a fire mission came in, these two would
be enough to get started, and they could rouse more people if they were needed. And they
could take care of routine business - metro messages and the like. A metro message was a
whole block of numbers representing the latest weather situation. Every couple of hours
another one came in, and the duty officer had to do a lot of arithmetic to determine
changes to be made in the setting of the howitzers to allow for the new weather.
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