Military Memories III

This is the third set of military memories.

• For the first set, see Military Memories
• For the second set, see Military Memories II
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Why the Radio Call "Repeat" Can Be Dangerous

In US Army radio procedures, especially in regard to directing artillery fire, there is one particular word that has special meaning. And as a matter of safety, we avoid using even when it doesn't involve artillery calls for fire. That word is "repeat." If you didn't understand what was just transmitted over the radio, you never, ever, say "repeat." You say "Say again." "Repeat" has a special meaning.

While adjusting artillery during a fire mission, if the forward observer does not see the impact from the artillery round (called the "splash"), he needs to ask the firing battery to shoot the shot again. To request this he uses the command "repeat," as in the following example:

"Bravo Delta Three, this is Tango Alpha Four. Repeat. Over"

The firing battery would then fire the adjusting gun once more, using the same gun direction, elevation, and charge. Of course they will make sure that the gun has been correctly set -- one reason why the previous shot was not observed might be because the gun crew loaded too few charges, and the shot went short. Short rounds can be especially dangerous because the shot might land amongst friendly troops! In fact that happened to my infantry battalion once during a CALFEX at the Yakima Firing Center in 1978. A short artillery round injured a few troops during the exercise.

In fact, just such a short round landed near me and one of my team members during a range exercise in 1979!

At the time I was attached to B Battery, 11th Field Artillery Regiment, as part of the battery's fire support team. This was at Fort Lewis, Washington. We were directing our battery's fire from an observation bunker overlooking the post's artillery impact area. This bunker still exists, and if one is interested, it can be found on Google Earth at 47° 1'37.58"N 122°36'56.90"W. Or using Google Maps using this link.

During the course of the morning, our team members took turns directing fire missions. At one point I was standing outside the bunker's door when I heard an unexpected sound: an artillery impact behind the bunker, not in front of it! I turned in that direction and saw a plume of smoke off in the trees not far from the trail leading to where we had set up our radio antenna (an AN/PRC 292, in case you were interested). One my guys (I wish I remember his name) was walking calmly towards the bunker on that trail, as if he hadn't noticed. I shouted at him:

"Was that an impact?"
"Yes, it was," he replied unperturbedly.

It was at this point, for curiosity I suppose, like an idiot I ran over to where the smoke was still evident. The impact point was about 150 meters due north of the bunker. When I arrived I stood marveling at the fumes, the scrambled dirt, and torn up tree branches (from the shrapnel). Then it suddenly occurred to me that some other Forward Observer had not seen the "splash" of this shot, and might end up calling in a "repeat." And there I was, standing where the repeat would impact. Upon realizing this I definitely unassed that spot "most rickey-tick."

As it turned out someone had noticed the short round already, and called a checkfire on the range safety net. So all was well, but still, I remember that sudden realization of being at ground zero. The checkfire put a stop to range usage for some time, but eventually it was lifted and we could resume firing.

Who fired the short? I never heard anything about it, but it was definitely not our battery. If it had been we would definitely had heard about it. But we didn't.