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Maps and Other Problems
After gasoline, ammunition, and, of course, food, perhaps the most critical item in
the supply line of our segment of WWII was maps. The infantry gave its orders for attack
partially in the form of a tracing paper overlay which, laid on a map and properly
positioned, would show the locations of objectives, command posts, supply points, and a
lot of other valuable information. In the absence of a map, it might be possible to describe
all these locations, but it would take pages of fine print to get the same amount of
information, and even then it would not be as clear, and it certainly would be harder to
digest.
Artillery is even more dependent on maps. A FO who can read a map well is able
to find a point on the map at or near the potential target and send the location back to the
FDC with a request for fire. When the firing batteries are situated on the same map, it is
easy enough to measure the range and deflection (horizontal direction) to the target and
shoot there. If it is a map with contour lines, which show the approximate elevation
above sea level of every point on it, then corrections can be made for the difference in
altitude between the guns and the target. Field Artillery can be fired without a map, but it
is a tedious and chancy process.
The maps of France we got were spectacularly accurate. Napoleon Bonaparte had
ordered the basic survey made about 150 years earlier, and the detail was brought up to
date by use of aerial photographs. We had maps on a scale of 1 to 25,000, which means
that four centimeters on the map equalled one kilometer on the ground. Or, in English
measurements, one inch equalled about four tenths of a mile. Anyhow, it was easy to see
and locate on the map any prominent feature on the ground, such as a road intersection, a
bridge, or a schoolhouse.
Maps of Germany were not as good. Most of our German maps were much less
detailed, being of smaller scale, with each kilometer represented by only one centimeter
instead of four, or one inch equaling 1.6 miles. There simply wasn't room on those maps
for as much detail or as precise locations.
One of my duties as S-2 was to obtain and distribute the maps the battalion
needed. I picked them up from the Div Arty S-2, who drew them from the Engineer
Battalion. When I got them back to our CP, I had to sort them out and collate them into
stacks, one for each of the people who needed them. That meant about fifty stacks of map
sheets about 20 x 30 inches in size, of heavy, high quality paper.
One to twenty-five thousand was a great scale for artillery, but it took a lot of
sheets of map to cover a comparatively small area on the ground. And we were issued
maps covering a bigger area than that we actually fought over, because no one knew
exactly where we might go, and changes of direction were fairly common. So we got
quite a few map sheets we didn't really need, and I kept them rather than overburden
people like FOs, who had no good place to store maps and would have trouble locating
the right one if they had too many to sort out.
Fortunately we had picked up an abandoned German army truck and repainted it
OD with white stars to identify it as American now, and I kept excess maps in it. The
truck was loaded almost to its full capacity with nothing but maps. Some of them were
pretty ridiculous, being of areas already passed over. And some were of areas like
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