Armorer Donovan,

Wednesday, December 20, former Staff Sergeant George Brown, Cannon Company, 422 Infantry Regiment, 106th Inf. Div., passed from this vale. You know their story as you featured highlights of it last week.

If you have access to a 105, would you fire off a round for an old cannon cocker? He had his rifle salute and a real bugler but I would dearly have loved to touch off a round. If not, just raise a cup of kindness.

Thank you for the Castle. To you and yours, I wish a Happy New Year.

SC 256443 - Sheltered by a camouflage net, GIs of the Cannon Company, 9th Infantry, 2d Infantry Division, fire their howitzer on Brest. A German garrison has held out there for four weeks against the Allied attack. Piles of shell cases are in the foreground. 1944 (Photo courtesy US Army Center for Military History

A hi-res pic can be had here.

The soldiers of the 106th (Golden Lions) Infantry Division took it in the shorts during the Battle of the Bulge. A brand-new division, it had entered the lines for the first time 5 days before the Germans attacked.

They were smashed to flinders, the Division being virtually obliterated. But they went down fighting, every bit as hard as Prentiss went down at the Hornet's Nest at Shiloh. Like Prentiss, eventually surrendering, but buying the time Eisenhower and Montgomery needed, just as Prentiss bought Grant and Sherman the time they needed to rally the Union Army and finally beat the Southern troops back.

Field Marshall Montgomery of Alamein noted their courage:

The American soldiers of the... 106th Infantry Division stuck it out and put up a fine performance. By jove, they stuck it out, those chaps.

Staff Sergeant George Brown was a Golden Lion, and like lions they fought.

And this was his weapon.

A United States M3 Howitzer outside the Army Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. 5 October 2006 Photographer Max Smith (Photo courtesy of the photographer)

I don't have access to a shootable gun - but I will provide this sound of thunder.

[Update: I found this - a 21 gun salute to the Queen - but the guns are a more appropriate caliber...]

[sound of smashing shot glass]

Now is the time at Castle Argghhh! when we dance: In Memoriam.

Cannon Companies were unique to the WWII Infantry Regiment structure. The Cannon Company of a regiment was first equipped with two halftrack-mounted 105mm howitzers and six halftrack-mounted 75mm howitzers. Later in the war these were replaced with 6 of the M3 105mm towed howitzer, a short-barreled 105 mm gun. Literally short-barreled - the gun was the standard 105mm howitzer barrel, cut-off at the bearing ring, mounted on the recoil mechanism of the Pack 75, and mounted on a lighter mount similar to the 57mm anti-tank gun carriage. Truly a hybrid. The Cannon Companies were an attempt to balance the need for flexible fires with the need to mass fires for maximum effect. The general proposition is that artillery is most effective when fires are massed and controlled centrally - but that comes at the cost of responsiveness. The cannon companies were the product US industrial strength. We could give our forces artillery firepower in amounts everybody but the Russians (who also believed in artillery as the Red God of War) would envy. We allowed the regiments 6 M3 howitzers, while the Division Artillery had 36 M2 105mm howitzers and 12 M1 155mm howitzers.

In my time, focused as we were on the massive Slavic horde, centralization and control were the order of the day, and the heavy divisions were organized with 54 (later 72) 155mm howitzers and 12 (later 18) 8inch howitzers. While each brigade (the equivalent of the WWII regiment) had a battalion of guns in direct support, it didn't actually own the guns and the battalion was used for other purposes when a brigade was in reserve. The Cannon Companies were organic to the Regiment they had complete control.

The exception to this during my day (because the tension still existed between mass and responsiveness) were the Cavalry units, which had organic batteries of self-propelled 155mm cannon. Those were the plum jobs to get as a company-grade Redleg in Europe - command of a "HowBat", or howitzer battery.

The wheel has come full circle, with a twist. In the modular force, the way the Army is reconfiguring itself, the artillery once again belongs to the brigade commander. The Division Artillery is a rump of it's former self, but, via it's digital comms, still acts as the agency of massing fires and long range planning. And because artillery ammunition is heavy, we're rapidly pushing ourselves to carrying almost nothing but precision munitions - which, as we all know, kill quicker, cleaner, and with less collateral damage.

Because, again, we're never going to face a horde again.

Well, at least not in the short term. And if we do, the Air Force will be the provider of massed fires, in all weather, 24/7.

So, guys like me are a dying breed, mammoths all!

It strikes me - that if the Fort does a 21-gun salute for President Ford, I should try to get there with the video camera.