Maybe he did ony complete third grade. You sure wouldn't know it, though. He was the FDC section chief, a Sergeant First Class.
Now FDC stands for Fire Direction Control and in the field artillery it's not really the kind of job given to an illiterate. Depending on one's major a lot of college graduates would be totally lost. It's all higher mathematics.
To accurately put steel on target the amount of math and physics is incredible. There are all sorts of factors to be dealt with. From the charge used to propel the round to air density to the effect of the rifling on the projectile. The number of factors is mind boggling.
Yet here was a guy that claimed to have a third grade education running the whole show.
Today it's all done by computer but back in the day one filled out form and added, subtracted, multiplied or divided as necessary. Some but by no means the majority came from various tables.
Now this guy could figure out a fire mission on a blank piece of paper and if he had to he could do most of the calculations to make his own tables for some of the requirements. In short he was a professor of sorts.
He was incredible and sometimes hilarious when he'd put on his dumb hillbilly act and explain that he only had a third grade education.
(Meanwhile he was doing quadratic equations in his head)
Back in the day there were a number of people like that in the army. I once had a First Sergeant that barely finished grammar school. He once confessed he had one of the college kids teach him to read. The kid in question was a draftee that had opted to do his 2 years instead becoming an officer and serving 4 years. There were a number of those in the service during the draft.
Top was a voracious reader. He had a seldom used dictionary close at hand at all times.
Another guy I knew early in my seagoing career was a tug skipper that couldn't read. Basic math he could do. Very shortly after I met him the day we were getting off he handed the chief engineer a bottle of fine whisky and $100 and announced the chief was going to teach him to read. The $100 was for school supplies.
Back in the day the Coasties would give oral exams to the illiterate.
Anyway, the man was a very well respected skipper so the entire crew pitched in. I asked one of the guys about it and he laughed. He said for quite a while it was like trying to teach a brick but one day something in his head went click and he took off like the Bell X-1!
He's another one that became a voracious reader.
There are really any number of people out there that have done well with a very limited formal education.
What often cracks me up is when someone with a useless degree like puppetry that is working at someplace like Starbucks looks down their nose at them.
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