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Friendly Fire
I'm sure the fines did not cover the amount the US government paid for the
moving expenses of the farmer's family.
Months later, near the conclusion of our California desert maneuvers, we had a
field exercise in which the infantry advanced, fighter-bombers strafed, and the artillery
fired at an imaginary enemy close in front of our own troops. It was the most nearly
realistic exercise we had prior to actual combat. And no friendly troops were hit, unless
you count the time a steel link from a belt of machine gun ammunition was dropped by a
strafing plane, right onto Major Hughes's helmet, with a resounding clang. I was standing
beside him at the time, and we were both shaken.
Things could easily have been worse, and almost were.
An infantry division is entitled to three general officers: the division commander,
the assistant division commander, and the Div Arty commander. The division and
division artillery commanders were out together observing the live fire exercise, and they
were standing about fifteen feet apart when a 155mm artillery shell plowed a neat groove
in the sand between them, ricocheted, and landed beyond without exploding. A dud. Had
it exploded, two-thirds of our generals would have been wiped out.
Lt Col Frank Norris, who commanded our 155 battalion, rushed back to his
battery positions, located the battery at fault, and placed the battery commander, the
battery executive, and himself all in arrest. When people came to investigate, they found
these three officers pacing up and down inside three circles drawn in the sand.
I never heard the outcome, not even the cause of the near-disaster. I expect it was
100 mil error in elevation [100 mils is less than 6 degrees of angle, but it can make a
good mile of difference in range]. None of the three officers arrested was courtmartialed,
but I presume that they were fined. [Frank Norris kept his command all during the war,
had a distinguished career afterward, and retired a major general.]
The first few weeks in combat, everyone was jumpy. The infantry was getting
incoming mail for the first time, and having trouble getting used to it. Because there was
quite a bit of heavy stuff - infantry mortar shells as well as artillery rounds - going by in
both directions a lot of the time, it was sometimes hard to sort out incoming from
outgoing mail. Consequently, when infantrymen came under fire while we were
conducting a fire mission of our own - often one they had requested - they tended to
suspect that fire they were getting from the enemy might be stray rounds of ours.
Obviously suspicions like that were unhealthy, even when we were sure they were
untrue, because they resulted in loss of the mutual confidence that we needed to work as
a team. If our infantry ever got to the point where they were afraid to let us fire for them,
we would be of no use.
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