Headquarters batteries were generally pretty wild

 but in a different sort of way.

The firing batteries had a lot of basic cannoneers in them which means a lot of average guys. Headquarters batteries had a lot of specialists in them which meant that there was a higher percentage of the best and brightest assigned to it.

A Headquarters battery had surveyors and an Fire Direction Center in it. Along with a commo section and a few other odds and ends.

Surveyors are triangulators and the FDC guys are mathematicians. People that are not artillerymen really do not understand the calculations needed to put a round on target. The math involved is astronomical.

Things like bore wear of the guns themselves, the rotation and curvature of the earth and the gyroscopic motion of the projectile had to be taken into consideration. That's just a small part of it.
I'm not going to get into it here, maybe later.

Still, a headquarters battery tended to field the best and brightest young men that the artillery had.
It demanded the best and brightest officers the artillery had, too.

While the general get drunk and get into a fight downtown sort of thing was not as common in headquarters battery, one has to remember that we are still dealing with young men in their teens or earrly twenties. They were no different than any other group of young men. They raised hell every chance they got. The guys in HHB were a little more imaginative in the hell they raised.

Several years ago I met a German man that had been injured on the Russian front and had been ressigned as a guard at various Stalags. I asked him which duty was the most difficult. He immediately replied that shot down aviators were the most difficult because they were the best and brightest. They never stopped coming up with new angles and escape plans. He said they had to work overtime to keep ahead of them.
It was pretty much the same for HHB types.

When they raised cain it was a lot more imaginative than it was in the firing batteries.

I was going to post what a couple of the guys did one night down town but maybe I shouldn't. I don't know if the statute of limitations has passed.


To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY