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Sergeant Rogers
I don't know exactly how Rogers ducked the bullet this time. I think Munson had a soft
spot for the man. Anyhow, he again kept his rank, but it was months before he was he was
allowed to use his Class A Pass again.
By that time I was no longer in C Battery, and neither was Merton Munson. He and I
were brought up to the battalion staff, where he was promoted to major and I to captain. But we
were not far from C Battery, and we did not completely lose track of Sgt Rogers. For one thing,
we frequently saw the new officers of C Battery at meals, and sometimes discussed problems and
solutions.
I also walked through the battery area occasionally as I inspected the mess halls of all five
batteries. Mess halls were an interesting study. The C Battery kitchen was usually in the worst
shape. That was certainly not because its mess sergeant was lazy: I would frequently come in to
find him in a dirty white cook's uniform, on his knees scrubbing out the bottom of the ice box,
with all the KPs standing around admiring his work.
The B Battery kitchen was quite the opposite. The mess sergeant would be standing in the
middle of the kitchen in his dress uniform with his hands in his pockets, and all the KPs would
be scurrying around making the equipment gleam.
Any former battery commander will tell you that at least fifty percent of the
temperamental problems in a battery of 120 men will be found among the half dozen cooks. In
the Headquarters Battery kitchen, for example, there was constant conflict between John
Koutroulis* and Henry Zieleskiewicz (everyone called him "Hank"). They took turns being mess
sergeant and first cook, and neither was willing to take orders from the other.
The problem was exacerbated by a change in the table of organization which raised the
mess sergeant's rank from that of "Buck" Sergeant (3 stripes) to that of Staff Sergeant (three
stripes and a rocker) with more prestige and more pay. From then on, the conflict became open
war.
Another provision of the same change was that one, and only one, of the howitzer section
chiefs in each firing battery would be promoted from Buck Sergeant to Staff Sergeant and given
the title of Chief of Firing Battery, although his actual duties remained about the same as those of
any other chief of section.
The two senior chiefs of section in C Battery were Sgt Rogers and a Sgt Peterson. Both
ran good gun crews and were in constant competition in matters of speed and accuracy. As I
recall, Peterson's tended to be more precisely accurate but Rogers's was a shade faster. Peterson
was a neater soldier, and he had no black marks on his disciplinary record. He got the job.
All hell broke loose. Until then the four sections had gotten along well together and
competition had been good-humored. But now the third section became uncooperative, almost
mutinous. Conversations between S/Sgt Peterson and Sgt Rogers were acrimonious and
eventually took place only through intermediaries.
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