Armored

Camp Campbell had two story wooden army barracks which were luxurious compared to Camp Philips. The post is now Fort Campbell and still a major installation of the army. Part of the camp is in Tennessee and part in Kentucky and it lies between Clarksville, TN and Hopkinsville, KY.

Camp Philips on the other hand, faded away like a prairie flower after the war and veterans who have gone back there (who knows why) say there is nothing there at all.

At Campbell we were converted to an armored field artillery battalion. Our basic weapon was still the 105 MM Howitzer but instead of being towed by 2½ ton trucks they were mounted on the same chassis as an M-4 tank (Sherman, I think) and were called M-7s. Unlike the tank which has a turret the M-7 was open on top and had something like a pulpit on the right with a 30 caliber machine gun mounted. The number one cannoneer, whose job on the howitzer was to set elevation, doubles as machine gunner (although we were all trained to fire it). We only used it a couple of times in combat (but that is getting ahead of the story).

Each battery had six howitzers as compared to four with truck drawn artillery, so fire power was increased greatly. This meant that two more chief-of-sections and two more gunners would be needed for each battery. That was when my friend Barny Kestner was promoted into a howitzer section as chief. The new table of organization only called for four cannoneers instead of seven under truck drawn artillery so a battery was still about 100 men.

I feel a little uncomfortable that I will seldom mention anyone outside of A Battery but I simply knew very few of the men in the other batteries. I have met more of them at re-unions than I knew between '43 and '45.

Maybe it would be of interest to point out that an artillery battalion consisted of five batteries: three firing batteries; A, B, & C; headquarters battery, and service battery. Service battery mainly had to do with supplies and maintenance and they still had 2½ ton trucks. Each battery had about 100, men making a total of about 500 for the battalion. I'm not sure what headquarters battery did but I suppose they were the brains of the outfit.

For some reason I don't remember seeing many men from service battery at any of our re-unions. I have speculated that the nature of the service (mainly repairs and transportation) did not produce the same esprit de corps that a firing battery would have. They never shoved shells into a gun and fired rounds across the lines and then heard the response "mission accomplished." Again I am getting ahead of the story.

On pass most of the men seemed to like "Hoptown" better than Clarksville and I think it had something to do with the more liberal liquor laws of Kentucky. One time I was in a restaurant in Hopkinsville and a non-com from the 275th came in and ordered two cups of black coffee with cream & sugar in one and "gadget-gadget" in the other. He needed the coffee.

On February 6th Roy Agee and I went to chapel and took communion. It had been a while. We turned in our trucks on February 10th. It was a cold week with snow and wind.

When we became armored our side arms became carbines instead of .30 caliber rifles. We started practicing with them and on my first attempt I scored 174 out of 200, one point from expert.

On the 16th Richerson and I went to town and attended a revival (I think it was Baptist and Clarksville).

We were also doing machine gun practice in February. Dining Room orderly on the 18th and K.P. on the 19th. On the 20th the diary says I rode with Cole in a taxi but it doesn't say where we went. Remind me to ask him.

That month Cotton Cornelison and I worked out with barbells quite a few times.

We turned in our howitzers on Washington's birthday. I attended an NCO meeting that day so I must have been a PFC by then. It was tough to leave the ranks. It seems surprising that I didn't mention when I was promoted to PFC in my diary. I think it meant about six dollars a month more pay. No wonder I was able to lend money to other guys.

I must have been crazy, I boxed Jernigan again on February 27th, the same guy who knocked me out at Philips. I must have learned to back peddle better since the diary doesn't mention any disastrous results.

On the 28th I drove an M-7 for the first time. Tanks did not have steering wheels and were turned by braking one track or the other. The driver could not see very well so a man stood up in back of him and a hand on the left shoulder meant turn left; right, visa versa; and a push in the back meant speed up and pushing down on the helmet meant stop.

Once in Germany I was guiding Donald Elmore who was driving and I thought we were getting too far behind so I pushed on his back a time or two. When we rounded a corner we crashed into a bank building which had been bombed out. The wall seemed to sway for a bit but it didn't fall on us. After that everybody was wide awake and the regular driver Jack Jones took over and Barny Kestner did the guiding. Why do I keep getting ahead of the story?

It was furlough time again. Everyone could go home before going overseas. I changed trains in Cincinnati and arrived home at 1:30 AM on March 5th "and surprised everybody". I called up some old friends and went sleigh riding at 5AM. We got in around 8AM but still went to Sunday School and church. My brother Bob got home on leave also and I met Betty, a young lady who worked at the ration board. My mother worked there as a volunteer. It seems I saw Betty almost every day I was home and forgot about old N. J. Later I showed her picture to Billy Williamson who said something like, "That's a good looking girl, Schroed, you'll marry her." Billy didn't know, and neither did I, that the Lord had another girl in mind.

I mentioned my mother working at the ration board. My father, a World War I veteran, was an air raid warden and raised a victory garden.

The 16th of March came all too soon and I had to leave from Union Station. On the 17th I changed trains in Cincinnati again and had a layover. I saw the city from Carew Towers. That was before I developed a fear of high places. It's hard for me to believe that I have looked over the wall from the observation tower of the Empire State Building. Today I have to take oxygen on a five foot step ladder.

I almost missed the train in Cincinnati because the trains were on one time and the city on another. It is a helpless feeling in a cab tied up in traffic and only a few minutes to get to the station.

On the 18th I was back at Campbell doing calisthenics, going to the motor park, practicing with the .30 caliber machine gun, and doing care of materiel. This should sound familiar to 275th veterans. The next day (Sunday) I was on K.P.

On the 23rd we practiced direct laying. Ordinarily howitzers are fired up and over and the crews never see their target. They can be fired directly by looking through the sights at the target. I'm happy to say we never had to do it in combat.

The diary says I made corporal on March 24th and sewed on my stripes the next day. I don't know what I was doing in an NCO meeting before except that I had been a gunner from about the first month of basic and that calls for a corporal's rank. I think the army owes me some money.

On the 26th I fired the sub-machine gun and scored 62 (Sad Sack). I wish I had a tape recording of the sex lecture we had on the 29th. Of course I don't remember it but I would be very curious to hear what was said in view of the changes in standards between then and now.

On April 1 the diary says "Tuff week". My spelling was as bad then as it is now. On April 2nd three future ministers went to church together; Cpl. Brooks Davidson, Sgt. Richerson and me. Davidson, Richerson and two other men used to sing gospel music together and really sounded good. I think one of the men was Shad Wallace. Richerson still has a fine voice today.

"Penn went to hospital" on April 4. He was my chief-of-section at the time. On the 10th we threw hand grenades. We were taking battalion tests in April, at least three of them.

On the 17th of April I was recorder for Lt. Dofflemeyer. The recorders job was to keep track of the deflections of all six howitzers for the battery executive. Deflection means how the guns were aimed left and right as contrasted to elevation which means up and down. Each howitzer would have a base deflection based on 6400 mils in a circle. Was it left, add and right, subtract or was it the other way around. At the time we all knew.

The mortars in the infantry were aimed using a system based on degrees, minutes, and seconds; but the artillery had been on the metric system since before WWII. Probably by now it is all computerized.

Later the same week we went through the gas chamber for gas mask drill and the inspector general came around.

May 1st I was pay roll guard and my take home pay was $50.72. I think I had a war bond taken out every month or so. Actually I saved quite a bit of money when I was in the service. Before I went overseas I had a $30 a month allotment taken out of my pay so my spending money must have been not much more than $20.00 per month.

Cornelison and I got a pass to go to Nashville on May 13th. We had a date with two girls that he knew and somehow we called camp and got an extension of our passes. After our dates we caught the late bus for Chattanooga and ate breakfast at Cotton's house. We even wore civilian clothes around town which was strictly "verboten". They say you could be charged with desertion for wearing civilian clothes. It was all Cotton's idea. How did he ever find clothes to fit me? Come to think of it we weren't supposed to go to Chattanooga either. We were back to camp Monday morning and nobody found out officially.

Pepsi-Cola was sponsoring recordings so that a soldier could make a record and send it home. Jake Arnold and I sang "Down By The Old Mill Stream" and sent it to my folks. I think I still have it. I sang tenor. It was fun.

A high school friend of mine was also at Camp Campbell and he looked me up and we went to a show on May 16th. His name was Clarence Schatz and he later became a dentist.

On the weekend of May 20 and 21 I went to Huntingburg, Indiana to visit my brother Bob and his bride to be Opal. On Monday I made reveille by 45 minutes. It seems to me now that we crammed a lot of life into a few hours in those days.

May 29th I got a letter from home telling about Sport's death. Sport was our family dog and the news hit me pretty hard. I didn't want the other guys in the barracks to see me cry so I did my best to conceal my grief. My mother thought that the dog grieved himself to death after her three boys went into the service. He had some age on him but seemed o.k. when I was home in March. Sport's body is buried in a pet cemetery somewhere in Washington but I have never seen his grave.

June 6th was called "Invasion Day" in my diary. Later it became known as "D Day" and Hollywood called it "The Longest Day". We were still at Campbell but in 90 days we would be on the same beaches. That same day we were practicing with carbines and an accidental round almost hit me.

We packed our duffel bags on the 16th of June but didn't actually leave until the 22nd. Remember, "hurry up and wait"? We were ready to go around 9AM but the train didn't move until about 7PM. The train made its way through Clarksville, Nashville, Bridgeport (AL) Chattanooga, Cleveland, Athens, Sweetwater, Knoxville, Jefferson City, Greenville, Johnson City (Where Betty came from) Bristol, Roanoke, Lynchburg, Charlottesville, Manasas, Alexandria, Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Trenton, Bayonne, New York City and Camp Shanks (our port of embarkation).

I remember when the train went around Chattanooga Sgt. Kestner said something like "Is that Lookout Mountain? We have hills that big all around Pittsburgh."

DeLoyd Cooper is the Historian for the 275th Armored Field Artillery Battalion Association.
Copyright © 1999 DeLoyd Cooper. All rights reserved.
Revised: November 4, 2004