Just Out of Curiosity

Then we got a new battery commander. He was what they call a ring-knocker, a West Point graduate. He was one of those people, my impression was he definitely knew he was the battery commander and in a superior situation, but the way he over reacted to it made me think he wasn’t all that sure of himself. He was one of those people that wanted to be “with it.” He played his guitar to try to fit in, but he did not know how to communicate with people in general. He was not generally liked as I recall.

He was all about impressing important people. Some brass were coming into the battery and he wanted to make sure they were impressed with is administrative and military and disciplinary skill sets. He made sure everything was super cleaned up. We had to get used to not being so slovenly. We had to have much more spit and polish, and that kind of irritated everybody. He also had us make all these charts of ammunition usage, missions, and that kind of stuff. We had all these useless charts plastered all over the walls in FDC.

But the funny thing was, he was going to put on a tour for the brass. So for two days he would drive around in that jeep pointing to things. He was going through his presentation, but in the process he was driving around talking to himself. It was really a strange watching this guy. That’s how driven he was. He wanted to make sure he was down to the gnat’s ass.

I’m a pretty easygoing guy and try to get along with everyone, but for some reason I got a case of the ass about this guy. I decided I was going to push him a little bit. Looking back I realize it was both immature and not professional. But anyway, I knew how he was really big on military discipline, courtesy, formalities and all that. I heard him coming and I was operating the radio. I intentionally loosened my shirt up and turned around and put my feet up on the desk when he walked in. I was presenting an attitude of total casualness, and probably borderline disrespect.

In comes the captain, sees me sitting there and just blows up. He says, “Martin, sit up. You’re a disgrace to the military and to this battery.” He goes on and on reading into me. Then he storms out. We had a new Fire Direction Officer, a mild mannered nice guy, who was standing there along with two other people. Everyone was just jaws hanging down, they couldn’t believe it. It was so bad the new FDO said to me, “Look, I’m really sorry that took place. None of us feel that way. You do a good job.” Of course I put the captain up to it by doing what I did, just because I wanted to see what he would do. He was entertaining to me. You needed something to keep your mind entertained, and he was what you’d call a real trip.

I will say this for him, my last week at Sherry we all had to get a talk to encourage us to re-enlist and make a career of the Army. When I got called to the captain’s hooch I thought I was in trouble again, but he just wanted to give me the “re-up talk.” He was very professional about it and did a very nice job of it, even though I suspected he did not care for me.

Metro Marty

Here is how Kim picked up the nickname Metro Marty.

 From Seven In A Jeep, A Memoir of the Vietnam War, by Ed Gaydos:

A computer the size of a baby rhino was another piece of advanced technology from the Pentagon. It was a Field Artillery Digital Automated Computer, or Freddie FADAC as we called it. In theory Freddie would compute firing data more quickly and accurately than our manual slide rulers, protractors and charts. But it needed a lot of attention, beginning with its own dedicated generator. With the flip of the power toggle it wheezed as it turned itself on, and when fully awake it let out a low, steady groan. If a computer could be constipated, that is how it would sound. The thing breathed out heat and made the FDC hooch even more oppressive. 

Freddie doubled our work, because everyday we had to type in weather data, along with six-digit map coordinates for friendly nighttime positions and over a hundred fixed targets. For all the information in its circuitry, Freddie sometimes gave out crazy results. And it was slow, particularly when we had to run out to fire up the generator and wait for its blinking lights and digital readouts to come to life. We came to calling it that “Fucking Freddie FADAC” and wanted to haul it to the trash dump.

That’s when Charlie Snider in FDC stepped in saying, “We got orders to use it and somebody’s going to notice if it’s in the trash dump. We at least have to turn it on during fire missions. Top comes in here during a mission, it better be on. And as long as it’s on, we may as well try to make it work.” So Charlie spent half his career feeding numbers into Freddie. He had help from Kim Martin, a quiet guy who acquired the name Metro Marty for his patience with putting in the mountain of meteorological numbers of wind, temperature and humidity for every 50 yards of elevation up to the moon.

In the end we shot computer numbers when they were close to our manual calculations, and ignored them when Freddie gave out wild data or when the infantry was screaming for rounds in the air and Freddie sat blinking at us.

We took data from meteorological reports and we just entered the data in the right fields in the computer. I don’t remember it being particularly anguishing. I think I did it to give me something to do in a way that contributed.

Corporal Patterson

This story involves a rather resourceful young corporal who as I recall was from Detroit, Michigan by the name of Patterson. I can’t remember his first name. We just called him Patterson. He was a very friendly guy who was one of those people that seemed to get along with everyone and befriended many. He also seemed to always be wearing sun glasses.

Patterson just managed to build his hootch next to the bunker where the battery flatbed truck was parked (a large five ton vehicle). They shared a common wall. The truck as I remember played an important role to transport supplies from our army supply post near Phan Thiet out to our battery. Now Corporal Patterson was very much into music, or jams as he called them, and managed to secure a phonograph. Every night he would mellow out listening to his music for many enjoyable hours. There is one very important item that needs to be known at this particular point in my story. There was no electricity available to our hootches. This came later. Only the FDC bunker and the mess hall had electricity then, and that was provided by two large diesel engine generators positioned behind the mess hall.

This however did not hinder the inventive Patterson. He was the only person at the time I recall who could play records, and that was a pretty big deal. So how did he do it? Actually the scheme was very basic. He simply ran wires from inside his hooch through the common wall, into the adjacent truck bunker, going up the front of the truck, and feeding into the truck battery. The system worked great. In the morning after getting up, he would just remove the wires.

Patterson continued this escapade for quite some time without being found out. The mechanic that took care of the truck could not figure out why the truck’s electrical system kept draining the truck battery every night. Funny thing is that when Patterson left to go back to the World, the problem disappeared.

I often wonder whatever happened to Corporal Patterson. He was one of those colorful characters that helped to make a very long year entertaining and endurable. I am glad he had been assigned to our battery.

Wrinkles

We called this little dog in the battery Wrinkles because every time she would look up at you she got this expression on her face that would cause her forehead to wrinkle up. Mike Leino is the one who named her Wrinkles. She would spend the night in different hooches, and every now and then she would spend the night in our hooch with Mike and me. Many nights Wrinkles would come in and curl up next to Mike’s bed. He really liked that dog and tried to take her home with him, but was not able to get that done. He had to leave her there and I guess it really tore him up because he was so attached to her.