Since The HAWK system was considered a day/night all weather system, it was imperative that we knew how to "close station and march order" (CSMO) under nighttime conditions. So during all of our monthly field trips the umpires (Evaluators) would sneak in a surprise move and then stand back and listen to the show (nobody could see anything). The trick to moving a military convoy under blackout conditions required a solid understanding of the rules of night movement.
Each vehicle, whether it be a jeep, deuce and a half, or towed radar or launcher, was equipped with a set of "cat eyes" as part of the rear lights assembly. These were the only objects emitting any light, and indeed it was minimal. You had to have good eyes and be very careful not to let these "cat eyes" hypnotize you. The rule of following a vehicle under blackout conditions was simple. The cat eyes looked like a set of quotation marks " " with about two inches in between each pair. If you could see one light, you were too far behind the vehicle in front of you. If you could see all four lights, you were too close, but if you could see two lights, you were at the correct distance.
Sounds pretty simple, but in fact it took some getting used to. Battery A quickly figured out that all 36 vehicles in the convoy had to be going at the exact same speed to accomplish this. And because it was dark, the slower the better. We weren't in any hurry to get to our new position, but we wanted to get there all in one piece. So all of the vehicles would gear down to "Low-Low", sometimes called "Grandma" and the grinding and moaning of the engines and transmissions could be heard from quite a distance away. (But you couldn't see us!)
Most of these movements were for a very short distance and stayed off the German roads, rather moving through empty fields. The last vehicle in any convoy was always the Wrecker - a heavy-duty tow truck, if you will. It was the wrecker's job to assist any stalled vehicles by towing them into the proper position. Having established that, you can almost guess that the first vehicle to need towing was the truck on which the BCC was mounted. If it was left behind there was no way we could become operational in our newly designated location.
The wrecker operator quickly hooked up the tow bar to the disabled truck and caught up quickly to the convoy. I don't have to remind any soldier reading this that the tow bar was rigid and separated the wrecker from the towee by about three feet, much to close for blackout driving rules.
As the Battery closed in on its new position, our Battery Commander, whom I shall call Jumping Jack (because that was the nickname we gave him) spotted the wrecker and noticed the BCC van was following much too close. He jumped up on the running board of the BCC Truck and shouted, "You're following too close, you're following too close!" This startled the driver who was taking advantage of the opportunity to take a short nap. So he was threatened on the spot with a court martial.
Once the BCC van was in position, the wrecker had to be disconnected and moved away. While that was happening, Jumping Jack hollered, "Get that G.. D... thing out of here. When he realized that the wrecker had been towing the most essential piece of the Battery equipment, he uttered a barely audible "Never mind." I found this to be one of the funniest things that ever happened in the Army. If this story didn't make you chuckle, well, I guess you just had to be there. And I was.
Frank Deutsch
