Battery "A" History, 137th AAA Gun Bn - Page 4

The History of Battery "A", 137 Anti-Aircraft Artillery Gun Bn.
with some Photos of the 608th Military Police Battalion, Leyte, Philippines 1945

 

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Updated
30 November 2016

 

FATHER "DUFFY" CLARK

To Chaplin Charles W. Clark went the distinction of being a real friend to every man in the battery. His loss to our unit was heartfelt; there was a lump in many a throat the day he said goodbye.

Father Clark at times looked forlorn -- his muted sighs were due in no small measure to his inability to get Jim Berry to walk the straight and narrow. It is said that he knocked at Satan's door once and said, in his hesitating tone, "Well, Lucifer, let's be reasonable about this. I was in a dice game with Zeis as a concession to you. Now I think it's high time that you let go of Jim Berry -- after all, he does belong to us, although I feared at times that you were right."

We extended his lessons on the perils of gambling to the officers by trimming them at cards on the jaunt from Davis to Haan. Many a furlough was run on the Clark Finance Company Plan. He was everybody's friend and teacher.

* * * * * *

DO YOU REMEMBER --

-- when "D" Battery marched-ordered its guns at Topsail and prepared to "take your battery back to camp"

By order of Major DANIELS

--the most famous telegram ever received by the battery commander?

WILL BE A LITTLE LATE MANGARELLI & DUNHAM

-- the battery parties, two at Edwards, the grand ball (with Lt Reinhalter's Marines) at Wilmington, and the last beer guzzling at Haan?

-- when the tractor drivers clattered over the North Carolina roads day and night getting the M4s in shape for our first readiness date?

-- the auctions conducted by Big Time Operators Stover and Conley to palm off Tappan's "corset" to the highest bidder?

* * * * * *

BATTLES & CAMPAIGNS

At one of the last parades in which the battery participated, the 95th AAA Gun Battalion was awarded battle honors. We do no mean to detract from whatever glory that outfit won in the Aleutians, but we do submit the following account of the Battles & Campaigns of Battery "A" as a superior record which can be stacked up against all comers:

During the Battle of MTP, which was actually a series of engagements lasting over five months, the battery also fought a number of skirmishes now know as the Cape Cod Campaigns. On paper these operations, all part of a great task force landing on Cape Cod Island, were defenses of hypothetical airfields and ammunition dumps. Group headquarters would cook these things up by the score. We'd move in after dark, be camouflaged and ready to fire by dawn. Then the tactical situation would change. The following morning instead of enemy planes, we would face the eyes of inspectors from all higher echelons. During this time our "friendly" troops would make great advances. Next day we'd have to move to protect new objectives.

The first of these Cape Cod Campaigns was a one-night stand, the first time the battery set up in a tactical position. It came off surprisingly well, as even General Harriman had to admit, considering the difference between a flat sunny gunpark and a dark woods.

This was just the curtain raiser for the Great December Field Problem, which took up most of the month. We moved out from camp twice and set up three times. We were now growing familiar with the little tricks of the game, like guiding a blacked-out convoy into position without running over Cisco. Our major problem was the cold. There's no way this side of Russia to duplicate the cheery feeling which comes after standing out on a gun platform all night with hands and feet half frozen. (When daylight comes around, it usually brings clouds and a nice chilling breeze.) And the digging, that was something we'd all rather forget.

The battery returned, eventually, and thawed out at Edwards. For a while we did our freezing in the gun park. Then Captain Ronayne and the AGF tests blew in, and the battery began the siege of the Albany-Buffany Line. This term was the special creation of Lt Moore, who filled us with hot poop until our ears overflowed. That was the first time we could "spit on the boat." It took eight hours of discouraging reconnaissance for the captain to find a spot on the mountainside big enough for the battery. Then, after dark and with snow settling over the scene, the battery rolled in -- that is, about four trucks. The rest of the convoy had been misled by some "C" Battery roadguard, and it wasn't until ahalf hour later that the other trucks stumbled into the area. Once there, however, every man in the battery pitched in with a vengeance. Working all night under a moon which fortunately came out, we set down, fortified, and camouflaged and then finished the fortifications during the following day. That was the field problem which everyone knew was a bang-up job.

The situation at Suffolk had been fairly well mopped up before we moved in, but local guerrilla activity and sabotage still cropped up. The Potato Patch Maneuvers occurred at this time, and they must be scored as a defeat, even though temporary. "Get your stuff out of my field. I'm going to plant potatoes there next week." No-one realized the treacherous character of this saboteur until, after moving the radar and guns from the crummy old lot, we noticed no planting of any kind. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but the other two battles fought from the Suffolk Base did a great deal to make up for that one setback.

The first of these battles was a little-known classic, the Crossing of Shinnecock Canal. As a feat of logistics and clever tactics it ranks with Washington's crossing of the Delaware. The only peculiar thing about the crossing was that while we laboriously manhandled guns and 584's across the shaky canal bridge, those 20-ton gasoline and mild trucks just went rolling along. Never in the history of warfare were so few commanded by so many. Everyone and his brother had a finger in the pie, except for Dooley and the half-ton truck. His mind was far away, occupied with better things.

This crossing of Shinnecock Canal was made four times as the battery advanced twice to take its part in the Battle of Easthampton Airfield. The first phase of this battle was spent in slowly building up our position, a bit too slowly. This no doubt represented the simulated casualties incurred on the way out when the battery column was repeatedly strafed and bombed by non-simulated TBF's. But when the second phase of the battle rolled around our casualties had apparently been replaced.

No-one will forget the high spot of that second Suffolk field problem, when we smashed an attack from the air by 250 men of a parachute infantry regiment. Every weapon in the battery blasted away at the paratroops, who couldn't see our camouflaged position from the air and jumped from low-flying C47's into a nearby field. The umpires, like angels of mercy, scurried around waking the "dead" so they could continue with the ground attack required by the lesson plan. We beat that off, too.

The two field exercises at Davis were merely rehashes of earlier problems. They kept us in trim and provided opportunities for pulling guns out of roadside ditches and emplacing in "quicksand" (by Cpl Warhol and gun four). Those were our last battle honors.

* * * * * *

DO YOU REMEMBER --

-- how every time Dwyre and McKenna would set off on an S-2 reconnaissance, enemy trials always led to the Service Club?

-- how Alberico sent everyone under the bed and nearly hacked down the barracks wall with his nightly bayonet drill?

-- FIRE ONE ROUND -- Waldron?

-- Lou Martin's hobo camp just outside our position in Suffolk? One morning when we were short on rations, "Burn-'em-up" Barnes sent out a detail to Lou's hangout for enough eggs to feed the battery. They got 'em.

* * * * * *

NOTES ON MATERIAL

Battery "A" has always thought seriously about the problems of developing new and better equipment for AA and, no less important, utilization of surplus AA material after the war. Dozens of ingenious suggestions have come in to the battery commanders, many of which were sent on to higher headquarters for approval. Naturally, only a few of these suggestions can be revealed at this time as part of the Battery History.

Our first BC, Captain Kendall, was also the first to realize that human evolution would soon make much of our present equipment obsolete. The original inkling of what the future will bring came to the Captain as he was looking over the range at Wellfleet, with the battery preparing to shoot its first calibration fire. His eyes settled on Cpl Waters, who was just about to take off for O2 with his precious BC scope in a jeep.

"Mark my words, Papageorge, our children will never need those BC scopes. They're on the way out." Captain Kendall then explained how, as the natural result of evolution, future generations would produce certain children with mil scales on their eyeballs. FM 44-172, when published, will contain drill instructions like this:

SERVICE OF THE SOLDIER, SPOTTING, TWO-EYED, MIL-SCALED, M1 (complete w/head & body):

1. For spotting bursts in AA trial fire the following commands will be used: (The soldier is first brought to attention and oriented by bore-sighting or other convenient method.)

a. Right 3240 mils--FACE. b. Head 672 mils--RAISE. c. Eyelids--OPEN.

2. The soldier is now ready to spot bursts at the designated trial shot point. Should the TSP be changed, the soldier will be reoriented and reaimed as prescribed in paragraph 1 above.

Two other pieces of range equipment which will be surplus at the war's end are the SCR 268 and the director M7. The range section has made adequate plans for converting both these items to vital civilian uses.

The SCR 268, that bastard windmill, requires but a slight modification to adapt it for profitable post-war purposes. With a small electric motor geared to the azimuth handwheel, the mount becomes a highly compact, mobile, power-driven clothes dryer.

By the addition of a simple coin box, the M7 director is converted into the most fascinating slot machine ever devised. For a dime, any would-be director operator will be allowed five minutes to run a check problem through the works. It he comes out within tolerance, a gong sounds, and the lucky fellow collects either ten free games or ten dollars, depending on who is mayor of New York.

All this primarily affects the range section. But the battery's greatest contribution to ordnance design will benefit every man in future AA outfits. This idea, the greatest advance since muzzle loaders were discarded, led to the development of the helium-filled sandbag, which will shortly be available for issue.

The helium-filled sandbag (or Bag, fortification, helium-filled, M1, as it is technically described) eliminates almost all the backbreaking labor of fortifying AA positions. Made of a rubberized burlap, the bag is inflated and sealed at the arsenal and issued with each piece of equipment ready for use. The helium gas in each bag overcomes almost all the weight of the outer covering, leaving a net weight of about 1 pound per bag.

The only serious disadvantage of this bag was overcome after tests at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, which disclosed that the bags did not survive heavy bullets and shell fragments. The M1A1 helium-filled sandbag was designed to meet this objection. A layer of self-sealing rubber now lines the inside of each bag. Later tests showed these epoch-making sandbags to be serviceable after more that 200 cal. .50 bullets passed through them at close range.

As noted earlier in this section, these are only a few of the many ingenious ideas on AA material to spring from the fertile minds in "a" Battery. The others must still be secret, not only in the interests of military security, but for the benefit of future section eight boards: they like to hear new ones, too.

* * * * * *

DO YOU REMEMBER

--How Wilson and Green always took top honors in the motor pool, chiefly because "I take such and interest in my work" and incidentally because their trucks seldom left the ramp? 

 

POSTSCRIPT

In the preceding pages we have tried to set down a few of the more obvious lines in the history of Battery "A". The subject is not completely covered, as we haven't bothered with trivialities like the theory of AA gunnery or the fiscal features of battery life. These and the other gaps in our chronicle will be forgiven and filled, we trust, by the men of the battery in future bull-sessions.

For over a year Battery "A" was trained as part of an AAA Gun Battalion to be ready for overseas duty at short notice. We were among the reserve units ready to go into any theater to task force should the need arise. The fact that the threat of enemy planes was lessened by the work of the air forces and other AA units does not dim our own contribution, though it may leave us with discouraged hearts as we look back on the months of hard work now heaped up on the great wasteheap of war. As this is written, our fate is still uncertain. We may be shifted according to any one of a dozen rumors, but whatever happens, the departure of forty-odd men to the infantry on 5 December will close the first volume of our history. The battery will never be quite the same.

MARCH ORDER

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