Military Memories III

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This is the third set of military memories.

What is a 13F Fire Support Specialist (FIST)?

Contrary to the days of Napoleonic warfare, when the artillery fired directly at what it could see in front of themselves, with modern communications such as radio and telephone, the artillery almost never shoots at what the guns can see. Modern artillery sits well behind the main line of battle and shoots over its own troops at the enemy, as directed by men at the front. The man at the front telling the artillery what to shoot at is called a "forward observer" or FO.

The FO stands most frequently right where the infantrymen stand, and are subject to direct combat with them. They use binoculars, compass, and maps to pass information about where the artillery needs to shoot. And the artillery battery fire direction center then uses plotting boards or computers to tell the guns which direction to shoot, how much propellent to use, and elevation to raise the gun barrels to. The FO then tells the battery if they've hit the right spot, or if they need to adjust fire to take the target out.

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.

Sometimes Lieutenants Can't Read Maps

Not long after I became a FIST, our battalion (the 1st Bn 11th FA) went out to the Yakima Firing Center for some training shooting our lovely M102 105mm Howitzers.

The Yakima Firing Center (now called Yakima Training Center) is a huge military reservation way out in the high desert of Eastern Washington. It's not far from the city of Yakima. And it has a huge impact area for artillery to shoot into. You can see the character of the terrain in this photo.

Yakima Training Center

So there we were, up on a mild ridge overlooking the artillery impact area. The battalion FIST chief, a 1st Lieutenant, had identified our location on the map for the purpose of adjusting fire. And so the various batteries started taking turns firing at the selected targets. My B Battery FIST team wasn't involved in the first firings, as it was A battery on the line, as it were. But we were watching. And it wasn't going well. After the first round impacted, the designated FO gave adjustment directions. This would have been something like "Add 200, left 300," in meters, of course. But the adjustments were not working. Each time the FO gave the adjustment, the result got worse and worse. What on earth was the problem?

Now, I had come from the infantry, where map reading and land navigation were extremely important. And when my FIST team leader, a 2nd lieutenant, had passed the Chief's location coordinates on to me, I knew something was not right. A quick map reconnaissance showed me that we were nowhere near where the FIST Chief had indicated. I tried to tell my lieutenant that we were not where we had been told we were. And while he was sympathetic, he said that he was not about to try to tell the FIST Chief he was wrong. Not without some way to prove it. So I got out my map and compass.

Behind us, to the southeast, were some higher hills that I could identify on the map. Two of them were far enough apart that I could get a compass bearing on each of them to pinpoint our actual location. So that's what I did. What I found was that the bearings intersected on the map about 1 kilometer east of where the FIST Chief thought we were. And that would explain why our fire adjustments were failing. After verifying my compass bearings a few times, I took the result to my team leader, and he finally believed me. Upon passing the information to the Chief (who took some convincing, apparently), the fire adjustment problem was solved.

Why Were the Adjustments Going Wrong?

When the Forward Observer passes along the information for a fire mission, he must tell the Fire Direction Center (FDC) either where he is physically located, or give the FDC the position of a point relative to which the adjustments will be sent. And so, when the FO says "Add 200, Left 300" the FDC knows which line on the map the adjustments need to be made relative to. If the FO gives the wrong observation position, the FDC will not be able to adjust the gun's direction of fire properly. And the adjusting gun will never be able to be adjusted onto the target.

So when the FDC thought we were adjusting from Point A, we were actually calling in adjustments from Point B. And the rounds were falling nowhere near where we were expecting to see them fall. And each successive round would go worse and worse.

How Did This Happen?

This happened in 1979, and the Global Positioning System (GPS) was yet to come. So we were still using maps and compasses to determine our location.

It happened that the FIST Chief identified our position according to what he could see in regards to the dirt roads out in front of us. And he compared the position of the roads to the map. What he had apparently never been told is that roads, especially in open terrain like at Yakima, can be impermanent. And when new dirt roads are constructed, they are not immediately reproduced on the map. When I asked my lieutenant how the Chief had determined our position, that's exactly how he said the Chief figured it. Unfortunately, the maps we were using were about 20 years old, and in the meantime some roads had changed.

What our FIST Chief should have been doing was comparing the permanent land features, such as hills and valleys, with the map. That's how I did it in my initial assessment after being told where we weren't.

Alas, they never gave me a medal for saving our fire missions that day! I could have used an Army Achievement Medal! Sigh.

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!

Hey, Short Round!

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 have heard about it. But we didn't.

This is the third set of Military Memories

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