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Essay Four
March Order
Shortly after VJ Day, I found myself in a hospital in Regensburg, sent ostensibly
for a few clinical tests to find why my eyes hurt (they still do). The hospital wasn't fully
equipped yet, so they held me until all their machinery arrived - about a month. I shared a
room with an officer who had been diagnosed as a case of combat fatigue. This puzzled
me, because he was a Doctor of Dental Surgery, assigned as dentist to a Field Artillery
Group (the command headquarters for several FA Bns not belonging to a Division). This
didn't sound like an assignment, which would bring him into many dangerous situations:
his job was even safer than mine.
Finally he confided his problem to me. Every time his unit went into a new
position, he would set up his dentist's chair, field drilling machine, and ancillary
equipment; make up a list of appointments; and sterilize his instruments.
Then, about the time his first patient had climbed into the chair, some idiot would
shout "March Order," and he would have to find a good place to stop whatever he was
doing to the man's teeth and re-pack all his gear to move elsewhere. "They wouldn't let
me do my job!" he said, with tears in his eyes.
This was a revelation to me. To an old cannon-cocker, there is no more popular
command than March Order, with the possible exception of Mail Call. It even ranks
ahead of Chow or Fire Mission. It means "Get ready to move, fast," and implies that we
are doing so well that we must now move forward to stay within range. [Of course it
would also be used if we were moving backward, but such occasions were negligible
during our war.]
The maximum effective range of a 105 howitzer, the cannon used by the 915th
and other WW II direct support artillery, is about 12,000 yards, perhaps a little more with
a good tail wind, or about seven miles. We tried to keep our battalion at least a mile
behind the infantry front line or line of departure. This, like everything else, varied with
the situation.
For example, for the first attack the 90th made as a unified Division, in the
Normandy beachhead, we occupied positions right on the line of departure. (There wasn't
much room on the beachhead.) In fact C Battery, in moving into position, drove right by
the 2nd Bn, 359th Inf, who were advancing in column along the shoulders of the road to
the attack. Major Dull of the infantry yelled at Lt Smith of the artillery, "Are you sure
you know where you're going?"
However usually we kept a little space between us and the advanced positions as a
buffer in case the enemy should break through. This was particularly important when we
were in a defensive, as opposed to an attack, situation. In a retreat, or withdrawal, there
were other considerations about positions and moving, but since we were lucky enough to
be moving forward or at least standing still almost all of the time in our campaigns, I will
confine this discussion to advancing.
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