FRITZLAR

My first assignment was as a surplus lieutenant in Co B.  Each reconnaissance platoon had an 81mm mortar squad which never got to do anything but ride along and pretend to fire during maneuvers. (By odd "coincidence," all the Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans were assigned to the mortar squads under Puerto Rican sergeants who spoke English.) The Company Commander, 1LT Bill Beach, gave me the mortars as a provisional platoon. I'd never even seen a mortar except at Ft Riley, but I boned up on the field manual. When my battalion went to a major training area in the winter of '50, the Colonel gave me all nine of the mortars for live-fire training.

With the Korean War in full swing, ammunition was in short supply. My solution was to have only one mortar actually fire each mission with the others tracking the fire commands and an experienced sergeant checking the lay of each piece before each round was fired. This, of course, meant a very slow rate of fire. One day  the Constabulary Commander, MG I.D. White, visited. He was in pinks and greens with low-quarter shoes and was a bit miffed at slogging through about three inches of snow to reach my observation post. After several minutes with only a couple of rounds fired he pontificated, "Lieutenant, this training stinks! They need to move, go into position, and shoot:  then move again and shoot." I replied, "Sir, they get to move all the time at home station, but they don't get to shoot. I'm teaching them to hit what they're shooting at when they get where they're going." His response was "Well, CAN they?" I said they could, and he said "Show me."    I knew he thought we had a pre-registered target with which to impress him, so he looked across the valley to the impact area and picked out a small patch of green grass sticking up through the melting snow. "Shoot at that" he commanded. I called a shift from the previous fire mission  to my sergeant at the fire direction center and let him know that my bar and his stripes were riding on the next round. It was a direct hit! The general turned on his heel and left

Some time later I was given a recon platoon. Our mission while in Fritzlar was to oppose the expected Soviet onslaught along the line of the Kassel-Frankfurt Autobahn. My platoon's assigned position was on a small hill adjacent to the Autobahn and blocking the road coming west out of Bad Hersfeld. Enroute to that position for the first time my Platoon Sergeant, David Patty, (who had apparently had previous lieutenants who couldn't read maps) left me to my own devices. When we reached the position, he exclaimed "Right on the goddamned nose!"

The platoon to my right, belonged to the 3rd Battalion and had the mission of blocking the Hersfeld Autobahn. We exchanged scout-squad patrols frequently and had agreed to warn each other of any intent to withdraw. Somehow this agreement did not work.  They pulled out leaving a large gap through which the "Aggressor" promptly swarmed.  My troops were somewhat concerned at this turn of events, but I calmed them with the observation that if the enemy was behind us, we were behind him. A short time later a large Aggressor supply convoy drove across our front. We eased our vehicles over the crest of the hill, locked the brakes, and literally slid down the hill to the Autobahn where we made several passes up and down the convoy with machineguns blazing (with blanks, of course) before moving out to rejoin our company.

Another important part of our wartime mission was to blow all the bridges in our sector. We calculated the required charge for each and loaded the explosives on platoon vehicles. (Rifle squads in those days rode on WWII M3 halftracks which were so loaded with gear and explosives that the front wheels almost left the ground, rendering steering a very careful affair indeed. During frequent maneuvers we were required actually to emplace the explosive charges on the bridges. Since the bridges had been built at fording sites where the early roads had crossed, this might have been considered an exercise in futility, but we  also mined the fords. Almost every bridge/ford site had given rise to a village, and the villagers were understandably nervous when we rolled into town to emplace our mines and explosives. For whatever good it might have done, they closed all their shutters. Rather than dangle precariously from the bridge itself, I decided to run our M24 tanks into the fords and stand on them to place the charges. This worked quite well untill I realized that I'd flooded the tanks' ammo compartments and ruined the basic load of 75mm shells. One more lesson in the education of a 2d lieutenant! There's an old Army saying that no one expects a shavetail to know the difference between his rectum and a hole in the ground. When he learns the difference, we make him a 1st Lt. (And that leads me to the origin of the term "shavetail." In horse-cavalry days,  the Quartermaster Corps was responsible for running "Remount Depots" for breeding replacement mounts. Horses were accounted for just like soldiers on the Morning Report for each company, troop, or battery. The
entry for a mare prepared for breeding was "Such-and-such a mare shaved tail and ready for service.")

At one point we were asked to send three 81mm mortars to Baumholder to test the Countermortar Radar Platoon of an artillery battalion taking its Army Training Test (ATT). I was chosen to lead this expedition. The Autobahn bridge over the Rhine had been blown during the war and not yet  repaired, so we had to cross on a railroad bridge at Worms. (Planks had
been laid beside and between the rails to make this possible.) At Baumholder we had a night's rest before heading for the range. I visited the officers' club and got hold of several bottles of Lowenbrau which turned out to be green. I was so sick I was afraid I wouldn't die! Next day we set up on the flank of the impact area so that the artillery could shoot at the impact point of our shells rather than at us. We were tied in by field telephone to the artillery observation post. I was on my knees repairing a break in the phone line when a short artillery round struck their own OP and sent fragments buzzing around me.

In due course the 4th (Ivy) and 28th (Bloody Bucket) Infantry Divisions and 2d (Hell on
Wheels) Armored Division were sent to reinforce the three Constabulary Regiments and the 1st (Big Red One) Infantry Division. Learning that our Cavalry Battalions lacked their authorized Howitzer Batteries, the 4th Div assigned a battery to support us. The battery commander came to coordinate with our battalion commander, LTC Landon G Cox, and asked "Where may I emplace my battery to best support you, Sir?" Col Cox waved his arm over his wall map and replied, "Anywhere along this 65-mile front will do."

Fortunately, we were never required to try stopping the Red Army along that front. The light tanks in our recon companies were M24's: a miserable excuse for a tank which had been built around the short-barrelled, low-velocity 75mm gun originally designed for the B25 bomber in the Pacific Theater of WWII. It was intended to sink Japanese trawlers, but the recoil very nearly shook the B25s apart. The M24 was designed to use the large supply of 75's the Air Force didn't want. We knew we hadn't the slightest chance of penetrating Soviet tank armor, so we carried white phosphorous rounds with which to blind the enemy or perhaps, if we were lucky, set him on fire. In either event, we hoped to escape into the nearest tree line.

Another shortcoming of the M24 was its power train: two V8 Cadillac engines, each hooked to its own transmission. The duo was supposed to be synchronized, but this almost never worked with the result that one engine/transmission moved the tank while the other loafed. I had an expensive personal experience with this problem. One of the two tanks in my platoon had an oil leak in one engine. I sent it to our supporting Ordnance repeatedly, but it didn't leak a large enough oil puddle overnight to meet their rebuild criteria so they sent it back to me. On a maneuver one day, I ran head-on into a medium tank (90mm gun) platoon and, not feeling suicidal, fled. The faulty engine burned up and, in spite of the fact that I had the work orders to Ordnance with their written "Drive it" replies, I was held liable. Actually, the surveying officer relieved me of liability, but the Regimental Commander reversed him. The Seventh Army Commander had written an article, "Maintenance: a Command Responsibility" which landed on top of my Report of Survey in the colonel's in-box. Reading it, the colonel vowed to make an example of the next officer with a maintenance-related survey.  Who said life was supposed to be fair?

FULDA

Upon the arrival of the 2d Armored Division, Seventh Army negotiated with the French to station them at Baumholder in exchange for our kaserne in Fritzlar. We moved, perforce, to Fulda where we were much better situated for our Border Patrol mission. By chance, mine was the lead platoon in the battalion column moving from Fritzlar to Fulda. As I arrived at the main gate of Ludendorf Kaserne (now Downs Barracks) I was confronted by an irate Lt Col (Subpost commander named Bishoff) shouting "Stop! You can't bring tanks onto this kaserne!" He had, of course, been accustomed to the M8 armored cars of the 24th Constabulary Squadron whom we were replacing. I replied, "Oh, come now Colonel, don't be ridiculous. I have an entire battalion on the road behind me with no place to go but here since we turned our Fritzlar kaserne over to the French this morning. He grudgingly allowed me to enter but directed that our tanks be parked on the parade ground: never to pass through the gate again. My battalion commander, Lt Col John Hopkins, solved that problem next day by sending our tanks through the perimeter fence: each tank making its own hole!

In 1952 our battalion was the opposing force against all of V Corps simulating a Russian attack through Hesse to the Rhine. In a race against time, we drove across their front and then turned to face them.  By a stroke of great good luck, I captured Brig Gen Hamilton Howze (later the father of the airmobile concept expemplified by the 1st Cav Div in Viet Nam). Seating him the the passenger's seat of my jeep, I sat on the radios in back as we fled from his would-be rescuers. Gen Howze complained that my driver was going too fast to which the driver replied, "You're a prsoner. Shut up!" Having delivered our prisoner to higher headquarters, my platoon was ordered to block the enemy's move to capture the city of Giessen. We got there just in time to accomplish that mission, and I became briefly Military Governor of Giessen with my Command Post (my jeep, driver, and me) taking shelter from a driving rain on the loading dock of a fertilizer warehouse (pungent, but dry).

Later that year the Asian Flu jumped from Korea to Germany via rotating servicemen. Our battalion commander tried everything including head-to-toe sleeping and all barracks windows open with an offier on duty in each to see that they stayed open. It didn't work, so when we had just one able-bodied man per vehicle left, he ordered the battalion to the field in the snow. I was the only officer left on his feet in Charlie Company and so took the what was left of the company into the snow. (Had the Russians invaded, we couldn't have even formed up neatly on our parade ground to surrender.) I was blamed when one of my troopers stuck his toe out the side of his pup tent and got it frost bitten. We joked that whereas they couldn't cure the flu, they could cure frostbite. Even so, the number of new cases quickly dropped to zero. At the same time, an infantry regiment on maneuvers found things less than realistic without an opposing force, and I was sent to provide same. The infantry were flabbergasted when I: a. sent a platoon sergeant as my liaison officer and, b. closed on their position at the (to them) incredible speed of 15 mph.

On 5 March 53 I assumed command of B Company.  Our primary mission in Fulda was to patrol the border between the US and Soviet occupation zones. As mentioned earlier, our sector was 65 miles wide. We covered it with fixed observation posts (OPs) at especially sensitive points and a single scout squad (two jeeps, six men, one machine gun, and one radio) which drove the roads and trails nearest the actual border day and night. To avoid a fixed pattern which could easily
have been evaded by border crossers, we randomly varied the schedule:  starting one day in the north moving south, one day in the middle moving either north or south, and one day in the south moving north. The radios of the 1950's were no match for today's sets, so the OPs relayed the patrol's messages. One day I was called on the carpet before a Major in Regimental Headquarters. He read me a formal complaint from the Soviet delegation to the four-power Kommandatura in Berlin alleging that at a certain date and time I had held the Russian border guard east of Rassdorf at gun point, penetrated the Soviet Zone to a depth of 5 km, and spied upon a Soviet tank battalion in its motor park. (This was an obvious attempt to get me to stop patrolling the Border so closely.) I (truthfully) denied the charge and called upon my OP's radio log to establish the fact that I did not have time to commit the alleged actions and still be at designated check points on the patrol route at the times recorded. The Major's exasperated response was, "Allright, Battreall, we know you did it but we can't prove it. Get out of here!

The Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) , "Chevrolet Charlie" Wilson,visited us one day. We took him first to our fixed observation post on the road to Rasdorf. His entourage included Secretary of the Army Robert Ten-Brock Stevens, the Seventh Army and V Corps commanders, and my Regimental and Battalion commanders. I had a photographer waiting to get a picture of the entire chain of command from the SECDEF to the squad leader on the OP. Some civilian bureaucrat objected to the picture on the grounds it might disclose the OP's location. I snorted that the Russians damn-well knew where we were, and if they didn't all those shiny sedans parked on the highway would give them a clue. The picture was still forbidden. Later the Secretary asked to be taken to the actual Border, so we drove him to the patrol route on a trail south of Rasdorf.  There I was mildly surprised to find two platoons of the Red Army at "present arms" on their side of the Border. Mr Wilson wanted to get a picture of Mr Stevens and turned his back to the Border. Focusing his camera, he stepped slowly backward, and I saw the Red soldiers tense.   I managed to catch him just as he was about to step over the Border.

With the arrival of the 4th Infantry Division in Gelnhausen, halfway between Frankfurt and Fulda, our standard of living improved dramatically. (As an interesting sidelight, the 4th Div whose shoulder patch was a four-leafed ivy had a miscreant digging a 6x6x6 when he unearthed the standard of the 4th Roman Legion bearing a four-leafed ivy.) We moved our families to Gelnhausen where one of their regiments was stationed, and rather than the monthly three-day pass to Frankfurt we could now go home whenever our duty schedule permitted. We were, of course, still constrained by our two-hour alert requirement and the requirement that our wives have their own transportation to evacuate the theater should the balloon go up. This led to a bus leaving Fulda each evening carrying husbands whose cars were already with their wives. In
the event of an alert, this same bus would have to transport all of the husbands, including those who had driven their own cars, back to Fulda and get them there within the established two-hour time limit. I was driving the bus one evening when I noticed the Regimental Commander, COL Raymond W Curtis, watching as we passed his office window headed for the gate. I commented to my passengers that he probably was going to wait until we were just beyond hearing distance of the alert siren and call an alert. Our failure to proceed to Gelnhausen, pick up the husbands who had driven their own cars, and return to Fulda within two hours of the original alert would mean the end of nightly visits home.  I was proven correct when a Military Policeman stopped us about halfway home to tell us of the alert. I floorboarded the old Ford bus and almost flew into Gelnhausen where husbands were waiting to board and wives had sack lunches for those already on the bus. We hit about every third hilltop on the way back and pulled into the Regimental Command Post with two minutes to spare. One passenger complained about my speed, but the senior officer aboard, Regimental Adjutant MAJ Olin C "Doc" Harrison, told him to be still.

On my first tour as Staff Duty Officer I was apparently the only one in quite some time to read the instructions which called, among other things, for playing bugle calls on a phonograph at stated times. I found the dusty turntable and records and, thirty minutes before "Taps," played "Tattoo." The troops thought that signalled an alert, and half the battalion was out the gate before we could stop them. One of the prerogatives of Company Command was quarters in Fulda, so Nancy joined me.

At about this time my battalion commander, Lt Col De Witt C Armstrong III (whom we irreverently called "DC3" after the civilian version of the C47 transport plane) called me to his office to advise that President Truman had ordered the integration of the armed forces and we would be swapping troopers with the 26th Heavy Tank Battalion and the 373d Armored Infantry Battalion. The latter was one of the units involved in the racial confrontation at Tony's during my last tour as Officer of the Day. I expressed concern for rape, murder, and pillage in the barracks if this was done, and Col Armstrong replied, "Very well, Lieutenant. Whom do you recommend to take command of your company who will carry out his orders?" I saluted, about faced, and fled.

I've always wished I could have been a mouse in the corner listening to those black First Sergeants briefing their troops for the exchange. It must have been something like, "Don't you dare go over there and say 'Nha, nha, Honkey, look what we've done!' Go over there and say, 'Thank you, Sir, for the opportunity to show that I can soldier as well as the next man," for that's exactly what they did. A week later my company was in a snowy bivouac area north of Fulda when I saw two troopers sharing a blanket to watch a movie being projected on a white sheet spread over the side of a truck: one was black and the other a white from Tennessee. I knew then that integration had worked, and I've never since judged a man by the color of his skin.

In May of '53, at the same point east of Rasdorf where I'd been accused of holding up the Russian border guard, a much more serious incident transpired. No one was ever permitted on the E-W German Border with less than a full scout squad. When I went out to inspect my OP's and patrols, I made a point of taking junior enlisted men from my headquarters as members of my own patrol so they could see what they were working so hard to support. On this particular day one of my cook's helpers was manning the machinegun in my patrol. We intercepted and inspected the regular patrol and were about five minutes on our way home when the patrol leader reported contact with Russians. We spun around and raced back to find him dismounted in a potato field directly on the Border facing two platoons of Soviet Infantry. We dismounted beside him, and I noted that the Russians had arrived on the scene in two WWII Lend-Lease GMC 2 1/2-ton trucks which were parked on the ridge behind  them overwatching the scene with ring-mounted US Cal .50 machineguns.   The Infantry also had a cart-mounted Maxim 7.62mm water-cooled  machinegun. It developed that some 75 E-German men, women, and children
had fled around the Border fence (Actually two 10-ft-high chain-link  fences separated by a 10-meter-wide plowed strip sewn with anti-personnel mines.) which was being built across the sector. I asked my cook's helper- cum- machine gunner if he'd checked the headspace (the space between the face of the bolt and the chamber of the gun to accommodate the rim of the chambered cartridge: if it was either too tight or too loose, the gun would jam). He replied, "Sir, what's headspace?"   Apparently it was OK, for we traded a few (deliberately high) bursts with the Russians before they withdrew. I've been a stickler for detail ever since, but I'm very proud that 75 East Germans lived free in the West because my two squads happened to be at the right place at the right time. This was, by the way, the last firefight (at least so far) between the US and Russian Armies.

While all this was going on, I alerted my company to be ready to come to the rescue. When I returned to their bivouac area I found the men mounted in their vehicles with engines running. My exec explained he'd seen no point in awakening them so they could go back to sleep. Just then the radio announced a Seventh Army readiness test. We woke the company and attached tank platoon and set the all-time record of seven minutes to clear a recon company on alert. (Seven minutes is the time-length of a recon company with attached tank platoon moving at 15 miles per hour.)

There was a great supply-economy drive, and toilet paper was targeted for conservation because we had been using huge quantities of it to mark bridges which had been "destroyed" on maneuvers. As a company commander I was required to certify on each toilet-paper requisition that the quantity requested plus that on hand would not exceed the allowance of five squares per man per day. I always wondered about that since I thought everyone used two squares at a time. At any rate, I received a call at home one Sunday from the battalion S4 who wanted to know if I was interested in trading my M24 tanks for new, more powerful M41s. Of COURSE I was interested, and it didn't take long to assemble a detail to pack all the OVM (On-Vehicle Materiel) on the M24s and drive them to the railhead where the M41s awaited us. We drove the new tanks off the flatcars, loaded the old ones, and returned to our barracks without ever having signed so much as a piece of scrap paper! The old M24s went first to rebuild and then to the French who sent them to a place I'd never heard of:
Viet Nam.