Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
With the Field Artillery in France
THE strain from being cooped up in the small and stuffy quarters of the H-24 was beginning to tell on me and the blind way in which we had to manœuver did not make me care for the life so I bethought me it would be a nice change to get into the flying game.
Moreover my arm had begun to pain me considerably at times and so I determined to get a disability discharge. This was not a hard thing to do for any one with a heart need not be told that a man with a game arm should not be made to continue in active service if he didn’t want to.
Consequently in February I received my discharge and after seeing my folks I concluded it would be best to have my arm operated on to remove the stiffness. This I did and after the plaster casts that had been around it for a month were removed I was once again the owner of two good, strong, healthy arms and in every way fit for service of any kind should I care to enlist again.
To get a commission as a lieutenant in the Flying Corps was not as easy as I thought it would be and I found the whole machinery of making an application so clogged with red-tape that the farthest I was able to get was to satisfy the insatiable curiosity of military authorities as to everything pertaining to myself, parents and even down to the dimensions of my great grandmother’s left ankle. I was simply out of luck!
The more I thought about it, though, the more I was determined to get to France where the big game was going on. So one bright May morning I went down to a recruiting station at 42nd Street and 6th Avenue, New York, with an entirely original idea and that was to enlist in the cavalry. I picked the cavalry because I thought the outdoor life would help to build me up and that riding a horse would not make my feet as sore as marching.
While I could have enlisted in the Signal Corps as a wireless operator I believed my chances for seeing red blooded life overseas were better if I joined one of the common or line branches of the service. Having eaten a salt mackerel for breakfast and washed it down with a bucket of water (I was a little underweight) I went down to the recruiting station. In a crowded downstairs room filled with a crew of other fellows waiting to enlist I filled out a card giving my age, residence and consent to be enlisted should I pass the physical examination which was held every couple of hours.
We were stripped of our clothes, lined up in a row and one by one we were examined by the recruiting officer who put us through eye, foot, breathing and other like tests. I had hard work to keep my game arm from failing me but I came through all right. Finally I was weighed in, cautioned against the extreme penalties of lying and then asked all about my past life. The officer in charge of the station was next called in and gave each of us a little physical inspection of his own, with the result that he threw out a few of the candidates as being unfit. Sixteen had been accepted and—oh, joy—I was one of them.
This done we dressed, signed a register which showed we had been accepted, were given sealed orders and transportation and told to report to Fort Slocum, on New York Harbor. After a long ride on the subway, trolley and government ferry I arrived at Fort Slocum. It is located on an island in the harbor and is formed chiefly of houses for the officers, regular barracks for the infantrymen, or doughboys as they are called, who are stationed there all the time, and a lot of wooden shacks and tents for the recruits who come in.
The examination I was given at the recruiting station wasn’t a marker to that which I received at Fort Slocum and as a result it was not until the night of the day after I got there that I was sworn in and duly became a recruit in the cavalry of the United States Army.
I stayed at Fort Slocum for the better part of two weeks waiting patiently for the time when I should hear my name called among the others of the daily outgoing list, and be one of the recruits to go away to be trained. I had hoped to be sent to Texas for my training but when at last I was on the outbound list it was for Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming.
After a four-day ride on a troop train we arrived at Fort Russell which is about three miles from Cheyenne. There our cars were switched onto a siding and we landed just as the sun was setting in the golden west. And say, man, as far as the eye could reach except in one direction, where there were mountains, the land was as level as the sea in a doldrum. Oh, why, oh, why, did I ever leave my happy berth on the H-24?
Up to the time of our arrival the Fort had not been occupied except by the officers and a few old service men from the Mexican border who were to act as non-commissioned officers while we were being trained. A few of the officers were at the post station and we—there were about 200 all told—were marched over to headquarters where the troop commanders were waiting for us.
Teamsters, horseshoers, clerks and recruits having other trades of a useful kind were picked from the bunch and assigned to troops. If I had wanted to I could have been a troop-clerk which carries with it a Corporal’s warrant but since I had enlisted I made up my mind to go in as a common trooper and get my share of riding and my fill of drilling—both of which I did—like the rest of them. So it came about I was assigned to M Troop, 315th Cavalry, U. S. A.
Now Wyoming is different from the Amazon country in that there are no trees and the ground is covered with short, sunburned buffalo grass. From the post I could see the Rocky Mountains a hundred miles away and from this you may conclude that after Nature got tired of making all the other countries she made Wyoming—but not so, for Arizona came after.
To make up for whatever the scenery may have lacked the post was a marvel and neither money nor labor had been spared to make it comfortable. I’ve been in apartment houses on Riverside Drive that couldn’t hold a candle to it. There were large two story brick barracks with big squad rooms where we bunked and a big mess hall where we ate. In front of the barracks was the drill ground and there for an hour and a half every morning we did the dismounted drill of the cavalryman and then the rest of the morning was given over to equitation, which in every day American means riding.
Our horses were of the genuine western variety and—woe be me—most of them had never been ridden before except once or twice perhaps, by the wranglers of the remount stations. This being true the eastern recruits spent. the best part of the time between the horses’ backs, the air and finding a soft place to land. A fellow could lash himself to a stanchion in a submarine but never to the back of a bucking broncho.
Along about this time Cheyenne held its annual Frontier Day. This consists of gathering the best riders and ropers from all over the United States who compete for the glory there is in it though not overlooking the big purses offered. All through Frontier Day—or week, it should be called—Cheyenne slipped back half a century. The city was filled with booted and spurred cowpunchers from every ranching state in the Union. They wore sombreros and shirts of every color the rainbow affords. Then out at the race track at Frontier Park I saw such feats as squaw races, trick riding and fancy roping; roping, throwing and hog tying a steer in 23 seconds—the world’s record—and bull-dogging a steer. I pined for my old pal Bill Adams to see these landlubber stunts.
After four months of drill and riding, pistol and rifle practise on the target range, in fact just as we were beginning to consider ourselves old cavalrymen, we were given a sudden jolt by being told that no more cavalry would be sent overseas and that we would be changed to light field artillery. Now there are a couple of lines in an old army song that run like this:
The Artillery for slavery.”
We were a badly disappointed crew, but a good soldier is one who obeys orders no matter how tough they are and we were good soldiers. In due course of time we were shipped to West Point, Kentucky, where we were to receive our artillery training in seventy-two days and then go overseas.
Because I had been a wireless, or radio, operator as it is now more often called, and because wireless is an important part of artillery I was immediately picked to go to the radio-school. I laughed at the idea of my going to radio-school. What’s the use when I am already an expert operator and had been in the Navy? But I found out there were still a few things I could learn about wireless.
In the artillery the eyes of the army, which is the aviation section, provides the artillery with airplane and balloon service and in order to cooperate successfully with them the wireless operator must have a special training. For three weeks or so we did nothing but buzzer practise; that is a buzzer, which is an electric bell without the bell, is connected in circuit with a battery, a telegraph key and some twenty head-phones. The beginners put on the receivers and an instructor worked the key.
As I could easily take twenty words a minute I was made an instructor. Then there were lectures on the elements of electricity and magnetism and by the end of the first month the class was ready for the fundamentals of wireless telegraphy. All of that was old stuff for me and as they say in the army it was pickin’s.
The time came when we were introduced to the real wireless apparatus and although the sets were portable and of shorter range than any I had handled since I was a kid operator they were certainly beauties. There were three different types or wireless sets; each one was designed to cover a certain distance, and each sending set had its special receiving set. The range of the smallest set was about a mile, while that of the largest was about twenty-five miles. These are very short ranges but enough for army purposes where messages are sent from the trenches through one operator after another or relayed until they reach headquarters.
As I said before the purpose of the wireless stations is to cooperate with airplanes and balloons and aid in the control of artillery fire. So in the months that followed our work was to go out on the firing range with the batteries and to cooperate with the airplanes and balloons.
I had been warranted as Corporal in charge of the 2nd Battalion Radio Detail. You know, I suppose, that a regiment consists of two battalions, each battalion of three batteries, each battery of four guns and the complement of about 200 odd men necessary for their action. So my detail was responsible for coordinating the eyes, that is the airplanes and balloons of the three batteries in the second battalion, with the guns.
Possibly you may wonder why it is necessary for airplanes to work with the batteries and here is the answer: the guns, or pieces as they are called, were American 75’s, that is, the bore of the gun is 75 millimeters in diameter, and as the range they are fired over is seldom less than two miles some one must spot the fire, that is see just where the shells hit around the target and then tell the gun crew so that they can point their guns more accurately, all of which is called directing the fire.
Now an airplane can do this to perfection but there must be some kind of communication established between it and the battery, and this is where we came in with our wireless. I had five men in my detail, there being two operators and three panelmen and of the latter and their work I will tell you later.
Our regular performance each day was like this: The batteries would go out to the range in the morning, place their guns and set up their B. C. stations, that is, Battery Commander stations where the Battery Commander would be located within a few feet of the pieces to work out any problems that might arise in aiming them.
With the detail and accompanied by a second lieutenant, who was the officer in charge, we would arrive at the range a few minutes before one o’clock which was the time the batteries were scheduled to fire. The operators and the panelmen would get busy setting up the aerial wire system. This consisted of two jointed masts about fifteen feet high and each one of which was made in five sections.
The masts would be set up about a hundred yards apart and a single aerial wire was stretched between them. The leading-in wire was then connected to a receiving set and the latter to the ground. This was formed of a pair of wires stretched on the ground directly under the aerial wire and to each of their free ends a copper mat was fixed with a little dirt thrown over it.
The whole equipment is so built that we used to set it up ready for work in from three to five minutes. The operators then adjusted their head-phones and were ready to tune-in the incoming signals from the airplane as soon as it should come in sight. You see, our detail on the ground only received wireless signals from the airplane while the operator in it, or observer as he is called, only sent wireless signals. This one sided arrangement had to be used because
This consists of a large piece of white cloth about twelve feet square spread out on the ground and three strips of white cloth twelve feet long and a couple of feet wide. These strips are laid in different positions relative to the square and each position has a number that means an order which the observer in the airplane also knows.
Further a small black square about eighteen inches on the side is placed on the big white square so that the observer can tell which battalion the outfit belongs to. The different positions of the strips and square are given numbers and the panelmen as well as the observer know what order each number means. As the panels can be arranged in twenty-seven different positions it is just about as hard to learn the panel code as it is the Morse alphabet.
Now as soon as the wireless apparatus has been set up the panelmen put out their big square and one strip at the end of it, and when the airplane comes close enough to see the panels he knows that we want him to designate, that is to name the target which the battery is to fire at. This he sends to us by wireless and our operators write it down.
While our detail was setting up the wireless apparatus, the telephone detail from our outfit had run a wire line from our B. C. station to the batteries which are several hundred yards ahead of us. When our operators get the target, or pin-point as it is called, from the observer in the airplane, he (the operator) phones it to the battery commander who orders the guns set for it.
The airplane then signals down to us in code and asks “is the battery ready?” The telephone man tells us that the battery is ready and the panelmen put out No. 5, which means “the battery is ready.” The airplane observer sends down “fire,” our operators yell the order to the telephone man who in turn shouts it into the mouthpiece of his ’phone; the ’phone operator at the battery end informs the Battery Commander and he gives the order when the guns are fired either by piece, that is one at a time, or by salvo, which is all at once.
We immediately put out No. 8 panels which mean that “the battery has fired.” Shrapnel is used during these trial shots as the observer in the airplane can easily see by the bursts just how far or close they come to the target and this is what he does. After having seen where the shots landed the observer flies back over our station and signals down to us the number of yards to the right or left of the target and short or over the shots landed.
The telephone man sends this to his Battery Commander, who computes the necessary correction in aiming the gun, and the performance of signaling and firing is repeated until every shot becomes a target, that is, hits squarely on the mark.
At intervals of half-an-hour the balloon station, that is, the captive balloon, sends out meteorological data, which means weather reports, chief of which are the barometer readings, by wireless and this we get and transmit to the B. C. station by telephone. At 4 p.m. the batteries cease firing, we take down and pack up our station and go back to camp.
As I have said we repeated this performance for a month until we were letter perfect in co-operating with the airplanes. And then one morning almost without a word of warning we were told to pack up our personal equipment. We turned over the wireless apparatus to the supply officer of the company and by evening we were on our way to Camp Mead, Maryland, which was one of the ports of embarkation for overseas men. We spent ten glorious days at Camp Mead without a tap of work to do.
On the morning of the eleventh day we boarded a big three stack troop-ship, weighed anchor and by noon we were off for France. To most of the men aboard, many of whom had never seen the ocean before, and some of them were never to see it after, the voyage was a great joy or a big sorrow according to the states of their stomachs, but to me it was a long and tiresome trip. The ship had been altered from a floating palace into a purveyance which would earry the greatest number of men it was possible to crowd into her.
On the morning of the eighth day after we had embarked we landed at Liverpool and were given a royal reception by the enthusiastic Britons. The way they warmed up to us was a revelation to me for I had no more idea that an Englishman could change his attitude toward an American than that a jaguar could change his spots. The miracle had come to pass nevertheless.
From Liverpool we went on to London riding in first class compartment coaches as if we owned the railroad. We were in Lunnon, old dear, for a week in which time we paraded, and were dined and petted as if each man-jack of the whole bloomin’ outfit was a Beau Brummel, a Count D’Orsay, a Lord Byron, or some other dandy of a century before. I forgot entirely that a world-war was going on across the Channel and that we were over there to fight monsters of the kind that bayoneted babies, instead of living like dukes.
Then one night we were slipped in darkness from Folkestone across the English Channel to Calais. If the joy of the British in seeing us two thousand strong was great it wasn’t a marker to that of the French who cheered us as we marched through the streets of Paris, and later when the batteries had been dismissed they opened their arms to us—especially the demoiselles. Talk about morale, why I could have licked a dozen boches with my left arm tied back of me. That was the kind of fighting men the Hindenburg line had to go up against.
A couple of weeks later we were joined by our 75’s and horses which had been shipped across on a different boat. From that time on we moved by forced marches until we were only twenty miles back of the fighting line. For a month we were held in reserve and each day we would go out, as did numberless other batteries, set up our station and work with our airplane as we had done at West Point.
We were getting pretty tired of it for we wanted to see action and there right ahead of us was the big adventure where there was action a-plenty. At last one day came the call we had looked forward to so long and we marched under cover of the night to our position somewhere between the Argonne foothills and Chateau Thierry.
When daylight broke a most amazing sight spread out before us for there was a string of 75’s stretching on either side of our battery as far as the eye could reach and forming an almost solid wall. There was no trench fighting going on here, just open warfare between artillery, that’s all.
only to be mowed down by us at point blank range.
Talk about fire and brimstone of the infernal regions, it is a feeble place of punishment as against the hades let loose in our sector that morning. Shells were screaming through the air and bursting all around us but for every one the boches sent we put over two or three. Our men were dropping but we kept the guns going as if they were fed and fired by machinery.
A shell had put our wireless equipment out of action, killed a couple of our men, wounded a couple more and stunned me for a few minutes. When I came to I went over to the battery and was giving the gunners a hand. Planes were darting back and forth over us and every little while terrific battles took place between our fliers and the boches for the supremacy of the air. Suddenly I saw the airplane attached to our battery fighting half a dozen enemy planes, which was often the case for the Germans had four or five times as many airplanes as we had at that time.
Our airplane had caught on fire and she fell within 300 yards of our lines. I saw one of our airmen crawl from her and then fall over on the ground. I crept out in a rain of bursting shells to where our machine lay and managed to extricate Flight Lieutenant Ross from the débris and as good luck would have it he was not much hurt. Then I lifted Observer Gilfillan onto my back and we started for our line. When we were within a hundred feet of it a sliver from an exploding shell struck me in the leg and shivered it. I crawled back and another man brought Gilfillan the rest of the way. After being treated at the field hospital we were removed to the base hospital where I was decorated. Soon after I was sent to Paris and since it was clear I could no longer be of service I was returned home and discharged, and—here I am. That’s the thumb-nail sketch of how I did my bit for Uncle Sam.