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
• Back to Military Service

How I Became a Forward Observer

In 1978 I had reached the point in my service when I was becoming eligible for promotion from Specialist 4 (pay grade E-4) to Sergeant (E-5). As part of preparation for attending any promotion board, one normally reviews one's official military personnel records file -- since the board will use the information in that file to help evaluate promotion candidates. So, I visited Division Personnel Records in order to inspect my file, to ensure its completeness and correctness. After identifying myself to the records clerk, I was handed a folder containing my military personnel history. I took it to a desk and sat down to go over it.

The first thing I noticed was a yellow sheet of paper stapled to the outside. I had seen my records folder before, and it had never had anything stapled on the outside, and as I read the paper I became horrified! It started out with something like: "Servicemember has volunteered for the FIST program and will be re-classified to 13F…," giving a time frame of the then current month! What!? I "volunteered"? I had never volunteered for such a thing. And I think I would know if I had!

Just to explain, and not to get into a detailed explanation of what was going on, the Army was changing how mortar and artillery forward observing was being done. This consolidated them into this new artillery MOS, Thirteen Foxtrot (13F). They had been seeking volunteers from both infantry mortar and artillery branches to populate the new MOS. I knew all about this, of course, but...

But how had I ended up in this new FIST (Fire Support Team) program? At that moment, however, it didn't matter. One thing I knew darned good and well, and that was that my promotion to sergeant would fall right into the "round file" if the promotion board saw that sheet of paper attached to my file. Why would they want to waste an E-5 slot on someone who was going to be moving to the field artillery quite soon thereafter? So I tore the sheet off my file and removed the staple, and then made sure that no other mention of FIST could be found in the file. Technically we were not permitted to make changes to our files; the records specialists were supposed to do that. But I wasn't about to risk my hoped-for promotion by allowing that sheet to be seen by the promotion board. After checking the file for any other things that needed "correcting" (there wasn't anything), I handed the file back and went my way. Of course, the clerk didn't notice the missing sheet.

Still wondering how I had "volunteered" to be FIST, I tried to figure out what was going on with this reclassification. It wasn't long before I remembered having considered volunteering for the program, and there had been a phone number to call about it, which I had used, though all I had done was to “request information." I remembered that I had given my name and unit, and upon request, my service number, to the person to whom I spoke, and he said he would have information sent to me. I waited for a few weeks for the promised information but it had never arrived. As my curiosity with respect to FIST had been mainly "just" curiosity, I decided to just forget about it. But apparently my request for information had been taken as a request to volunteer -- or, rather, the person I spoke with chose to take it that way.

In the end the promotion board recommended me for promotion, and in the course of time I did receive the promotion. However, and this was quite an odd thing, my promotion was to the new MOS 13F, not my original 11C. Nobody except me noticed right away, however. So there I was, a "Red Leg" assigned to a "Grunt Infantry" unit.

It took a few months before someone finally did notice (I don't know who) and I got transferred to the 1st Battalion, 11th Field Artillery Regiment.

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.

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This is the third set of Military Memories

• For the first set, see Military Memories
• For the second set, see Military Memories II
• Back to Military Service