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Upstarts
I frowned. This was the first time he had made any kind of complaint, and I still
didn't understand what he was trying to tell me. "You don't like working for me?"
"Well, it's not you. I like you fine. But when I was chief computor, I knew what I
was doing, and now I don't. "
I looked at his earnest face. He wasn't joking: for that matter, he wasn't the joking
type. "Why Sergeant Johnson," I said, "I thought you were doing fine!"
"Well, that's when you are around. But you're gone so much of the time, and I
don't know how to make all those marks on the map, and the officers are too busy to
show me."
And then I finally saw what the problem was. The symbols one drew on the map
were standard ones, uniform throughout the army. I had known all of them so long that I
had forgotten there was a time when I had to learn them. And no one, especially me, had
thought to make sure that our operations sergeant knew about them.
"Sergeant Johnson, let's not be too hasty. We both can spare some time this week
and next. We'll have a little school, just you and me, and learn about those marks on the
map. After that, if you still want to be busted, we can talk about it again.”
We had the school. I tutored him a couple of hours a day, explaining that a
rectangular box indicated a unit, that if it had a dot in the middle, it was an artillery unit, a
diagonal line from corner to corner meant a cavalry unit, and two diagonals crossing in
the middle meant infantry.
Then I stopped and asked, "Do you understand?"
"Yeah."
"You mean 'Yes, sir.'" "Oh. Yeah, I guess I do."
I went on and told him that one short vertical line sticking up on top of the box
indicated a company or battery, two lines a battalion, and three a regiment. And so on. I
marveled at how much there was to know.
I also marveled at how quickly he picked it all up. He was such a fast learner that
for a while I pushed my luck and tried again to teach him to say "Sir," but to no avail. So
I gave up on that. As long as he understood my orders and obeyed them cheerfully and
promptly, I had better quit while I was ahead.
No more was ever said about his reverting to the FDC. Now that he knew how to
make the marks on the map, his self-confidence improved every day in the field, and by
the time we landed in Normandy, he was as competent at keeping a situation map as I
was. And considerably faster.
I'm not sure he could visualize what was going on on the ground from looking at
the map and the symbols, but even I had trouble doing that. Trouble despite the fact that I
could and did go out and look at the ground and the people on it, secure in knowing that
he was home with the map and things were being taken care of.
As they always were.
If only he could have learned to say "Sir"!
120
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