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It was early in September 1944 when we fired this mission
that I am about to describe. At the time, I was the Battery Executive
Officer of Btry A, 67th Armored Field Artillery Battalion.
As we moved through Belgium, we were in rather hilly terrain
on a narrow two-lane road, somewhere west of Liege. One of our
M7's was out of service with a bad magneto and was being towed
by our maintenance T2 that left us with five guns to fire instead
of our usual six. As we went along, a call came to me over the
radio, "Fire Mission". It was our Battalion Commander
himself on the radio with map coordinates of a target he wanted
to bring under fire. Whenever we were on the road I kept track
of our location on the map as we moved along. A suitable firing
position was quickly located and we moved into position with
the five guns that were available. Our location and the target
location were quickly plotted on the map and an azimuth to the
target was given to our Instrument Corporal who quickly set up
his Aiming Circle and began to get the five guns pointed in the
right direction. (The Colonel was waiting for us to start shooting.)
Firing data was calculated (things like deflection, elevation,
charge, fuse setting, etc.), ammunition was being readied, aiming
stakes set out, telephone lines laid between me and each gun
as I prepared and gave the necessary firing data to the guns.
All this took maybe five or ten minutes.
Let me stop a minute to explain some of the artillery language
that may not be familiar to some. First, M7 was the designation
of our 105mm Howitzer, a self-propelled cannon mounted on a medium
tank chassis, a full-tracked 25 to 30-ton vehicle. The T2 was
an older model medium tank that had been modified with the addition
of a crane to be essentially an armored wrecker and assigned
to the Maintenance Section.
Next, our Battalion Commander, Lt. Col. Berry, was often close
to the front lines where he could be available to the units (tanks
and infantry) that we were supporting, and acting as another
Forward Observer when necessary.
The last term that may be unfamiliar is the Aiming Circle.
This was a very essential tripod-mounted instrument that measured
horizontal angles and was equipped with a magnetic needle allowing
it to be oriented in relation to magnetic north and used in aiming
the guns.
The Colonel, who was the Observer conducting the fire mission,
immediately called for "Fire for Effect". This was
the only mission we ever fired that the Observer started out
firing for effect, which meant you fired all the guns at once.
Normally you fire one gun, one round at a time with the Observer
making corrections between each round to put the fire on the
target while the other guns followed the firing commands so all
the guns were aimed at the target. We fired three volleys (each
of the guns firing three rounds) and the Colonel ordered "Add
100", which meant change the elevation so the rounds would
land 100 yards further. That was pretty amazing in itself to
be that close, especially on a hasty occupation of position.
We began firing volleys, being interrupted now and then with
a small change in elevation or deflection from the Colonel. This
was obviously a rather large target, and he was walking the fire
around it.
While we were firing we began to draw quite a crowd of the
local farmers who heard all the shooting and came to watch. It
turned out that the things they were after were the brass cartridge
cases that were piling up by each gun. Those just fired, empty
cartridge cases could be handled with bare hands if you grabbed
them by their base, The end that the projectile had been in got
very hot upon firing and some pretty fancy juggling could be
seen when one of the Belgian farmers got hold of the wrong end.
The ammunition we used was called "semi-fixed" in that
the cartridge case was not crimped onto the projectile. In the
cartridge case were seven powder bags. We normally fired with
three, four, or five bags per round depending on the range to
the target, so in preparing each round, the projectile would
have to be removed so there were the proper number of bags of
powder left when the round was reassembled and ready for firing.
At one point I saw one of the cannoneers, who was preparing rounds,
run after a Belgian who had grabbed the cartridge case of the
round he was preparing. He chased him down and got the cartridge
case back. That one wasn't quite ready to be a souvenir.
Across the road from our position area was a farmhouse, a
two-story brick home with a concrete patio in front almost the
width of the house. As an artillery piece is fired, there is
what we called a "muzzle-blast" - the expanding gasses
that are released from the gun barrel as the projectile leaves
the muzzle. That excess ring of hot gasses, sometimes seen as
a smoke ring, create a vacuum as they move. As it happened, that
farmhouse was just in the path of that created vacuum, which
we called the "back-blast". The back-blast was pulling
the window glass out of the windows. I saw this woman from the
farmhouse come out apparently because she heard glass breaking
as it hit the concrete patio. She went back into the house, came
back with a broom and dustpan and swept up the broken glass as
soon as another window broke. While she stood there with her
broom and dustpan waiting for the next window to be broken, she
was waving to the troops as they went by on the road.
We fired almost 700 rounds in a little less than forty-five
minutes with five guns. The barrels on those 105's were so hot
you couldn't hold your hand on them. We found out later that
we had fired on a German anti-aircraft concentration that had
been giving our pilots a rough time. The Colonel had been on
the road when he came over a hill and there was the German gun
position. We were told we had knocked out twelve 88mm anti-aircraft
guns, about twenty 40mm guns and numerous machine-guns.
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