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Pops Martin
Corporal Martin was the ration clerk for the 915th FA Bn. I don't remember his
first name, but the men called him "Pops," because, being in his early 60's, he was the
oldest man in the battalion. He sported a full set of dental plates and was a benign father
figure for the soldiers, most of them 40 years his junior. Born in Austria, he still had a
middleweight German accent, though he had done one prior hitch in the US army - in
World War I. Someone once asked how he felt about fighting against his fatherland, and
he replied, "Vell, ve hot to do it before; now ve haf to do it again. "
Although only a corporal, he had a key job as ration clerk: he saw that we got
food. Each morning he took his truck to the quartermaster ration distribution point,
picked up all the day's rations, drove back to the battalion, and issued to each battery
kitchen its proper share based on its morning report strength (actual number of warm
bodies to be fed). He soon developed a reputation for scrupulous integrity, for he had to
satisfy five jealously suspicious mess sergeants, each determined that any errors made
should be in his own favor.
The job was routine while we were in garrison. Corporal Martin and his truck
driver knew exactly where the ration distribution point was, and where the battery mess
halls were. Since none of them moved, the truck itself probably would have gotten from
one to the other with little guidance. But in the field, on maneuvers, it was not so simple.
The quartermaster didn't move his facilities very often, but field artillery units displace
frequently, either forward to keep a retreating enemy within range, or backward, to keep
a safe cushion of infantry between them and an advancing enemy. Sometimes we moved
twice or even three times in a single day: The record was four times in 24 hours; however
we didn't have time to do much shooting that day.
So when the ration truck went after the chow every morning, Corporal Martin had
no way of knowing where the batteries would be when he returned. And it was up to him
to find them, or face the wrath of 500-odd hungry soldiers. This was especially hard
during war games on the California-Arizona Desert Maneuver Area, where thousands of
vehicles spread out over the trackless desert, leaving hundreds of new tracks and trails
every day (and doubtless doing irreparable damage to the fragile desert ecology).
Nevertheless, every day (except one) he tracked us down, so we were able to eat.
"Corporal Martin," I once asked him, "how do you manage to find us wherever
we are?"
"Sir, I think it iss vat you call. . . intuition. "
Of course it was more than that. It was the open-space equivalent of street smarts.
I developed some of that myself when out looking for other units: the eye for bumper
markings that showed the unit a vehicle belonged to; the presence of telephone wire left
behind on the ground when the unit moved, which usually meant that wire truck would be
coming back to pick it up for future use; the instinct for which of the soldiers standing by
the road might be able to answer a question. Anyhow, call it what you will, Corporal
Martin had it.
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