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Upstarts
much older than my son Bill, who was eight at the time. I suppose the lad was actually
about twelve. But although they were small, when one of them fired a rifle or panzerfaust
it was just as lethal as if it had been used by a giant.
Gen Bixby, the Div Arty commander, had come to observe the fire-fight, and a
sniper from inside the town cut loose with his rifle and came uncomfortably close to
hitting him. Bixby, for all his fearsome facade, was never noted for personal courage
under fire. He retreated to his jeep and drove to the relative safety of our CP.
Just as he arrived, a request for fire came in over the radio. The FO wanted to
blast the edge of the village, where the boys were shooting machine guns and rifles from
the houses. A routine fire mission.
I called for battalion three volleys to be fired for effect and was proceeding with
the fire for adjustment when the general interrupted. "Make that five volleys!"
Five volleys (60 rounds without the Cannon Company, which was off on another
mission) seemed excessive, but it was not unheard of, so I changed the command. and
when we fired for effect we gave the target a real pounding. I was about to order, "Cease
firing, end of mission; report number of rounds fired," when the radio said, "Repeat fire
for effect. "
Coming from an observer, this was a request, not a command, and it was a fairly
common one. The people up front always want more artillery fire. And it was getting
late: The Ammunition Train Commander, Lt Nick Nobles, would soon report in, and I
wanted to have the requisition for ammunition ready when he arrived. It would have to
be updated now: we had already fired half a truckload on this one mission.
I was about to say no, meaning let the infantry try again and call for a new
mission after you find out if they really need more, when I was interrupted.
"Do it!" said Bixby. "Repeat fire for effect.
We fired another half truckload of high explosive. When the radio again said,
"Repeat fire for effect," I began to worry about our ammunition supply. How much did
we have at the battery positions? But Bixby fixed me with his eye and nodded.
We repeated fire for effect six more times. Somewhere in the procedure the
general's attention wandered enough to let me give the computors covert orders to reduce
it to three volleys and eventually to two. Bixby left, whistling, and I was able to get a
count on the number of rounds fired and calculate our ammunition situation. The total
expenditure for the day wasn't a record, but the total for a single mission was.
Nick Nobles arrived just as I had completed the count and was making out the
requisition. "It'll be a big run tonight," I told him.
"Yeah. I've been listening on the radio. All I could hear was, 'Repeat fire for
effect; screw Nobles! Repeat fire for effect; screw Nobles! Repeat. '"
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