Statement of Charges.
An amusing incident, at least to me, was the Statement of Charges against Lt. Nathan White, a Regimental Staff Liaison Officer. White was older than the rest of us and had been a school teacher in civilian life in the state of Maine. He was a rather prissy individual and some thought him strange because he looked ridiculous in his circular stainless steel GI eyeglasses coupled with a large handlebar mustache, which he kept meticulously trimmed and waxed with the ends curled up. He was the junior officer on the Regimental Staff and the butt of jokes on those few occasions when jokes were acceptable. In addition to being a liaison officer, he became the Regimental Historian and edited the History of the Seventh Infantry in WWII.
During one of the training exercises for D Day Southern France, Lt. White was assigned as “loading officer†for a group of LCT.s taking aboard thirty-five ton Sherman tanks. The first LCT pulled up to the dock, bow first, and lowered its ramp onto the concrete at a twenty-degree angle. There was no convenient bollard to tie up to, so the Navy crew applied forward thrust to hold the LCT against the dock. Lt. White, in charge of loading, waved the first tank forward. When the tracks were half on the ramp and half on the dock, the climb proved too steep and the tank’s engine stalled. The driver restarted, shifted to a lower gear, raced the engine and let out the clutch. The thirty-five ton tank leaped forward, and with the rubber padded steel tracks gripping the concrete dock rather than the slick metal ramp, the tank pushed the LCT away from the dock, continued on, and sank in fifteen feet of water! Fortunately, all hatches were open and the tank crew members bobbed to the surface like so many corks.
The next day, Lt. White was served with a “Statement of Charges,†an Army form used to enforce the regulation which held a soldier personally responsible for the cost of any piece of government property lost, damaged or destroyed as a result of the soldier’s negligence or wilful neglect. The form read as follows: “Lt. White is held responsible, as loading officer, for the loss of one (1) Sherman tank due to his negligence during a loading exercise in the Bay of Naples, Italy. The tank is valued at $75,000. Lt White is hereby held liable for repayment of this sum to the government of the United States. Toward this end, 80% of all pay and allowances due or to become due will be withheld from said officer’s monthly pay until such time as this debt is satisfied.â€
Lt. White didn’t have to be a mathematical genius to figure out that eighty percent of $150 is $120 per month or $1440 per year and it would therefore take him 52 years to pay off this debt. Of course, he knew about Statements of Charges, but they were never used in combat. Soldiers routinely threw away government property; gas masks, ponchos, camouflage capes, mess kits, ammunition, leggings, helmet liners and none had ever been hit with a statement of charges in combat. But we weren’t in combat now! We were training in a rear area and high ranking sticklers for regulations routinely enforced chicken-shit rules in rear areas. Besides, this document was signed by the Regimental CO, a West Point full Colonel, a no-nonsense leader, fair but not known to make jokes or even to smile.
The story spread rapidly while Lt. White worried himself sick. After allowing a few days for the story to complete its rounds, the Colonel told White it was only a joke and the entire regiment had a morale boosting laugh at Lt. White’s expense! The butt of the joke was a member of the Regimental Staff, not a front line soldier, and he was an officer besides, which made the joke all the more enjoyable for the dogfaces. And the Colonel came out of it with recognition that he was a regular guy, a human being after all. The affair had a salutary effect on morale just when it was needed most, on the eve of a very dangerous amphibious assault landing.
Russ Cloer - 3_7_I_Recon
