American Directed Barrage By Battery

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30952, 7 January 1966, Page 3

American Directed Barrage By Battery

(New Zealand Press Association) BAO TRAI, January 5.

New Zealand 161st Battery gunners are bitter over accusations levelled at them that they were responsible for shelling an American position this week, killing and wounding a number of infantrymen.

The gunners deny all blame for the incident. They said the fire had been requested by an American observation post officer who ranged in the guns and directed their fire.

“I don’t see how we can be to blame,” a gunner said at Bao Trai today. “We were only firing where the American observer told us. “If he didn’t know that his own men were in the target area, then what could we do about it? We’re not psychic.” The gunners also said there was no question of inaccuracy causing the incident. The guns, checked immediately afterward, were firing true. A New Zealand artillery officer, Lieutenant Graham Williams, had the howitzers fire on an area 8000 yards from the battery’s position.

From an aircraft he watched the shells hit

“They all fell within a 30yard square,” he said. The battery has an unequalled record for accuracy in Vietnam, where it has fired nearly 15,000 rounds without inflicting a casualty among friendly forces. The Australian infantry, whom the battery normally supports, swear by the New Zealanders. They talk about the occasions when the battery has dropped shells on targets as close as 50 yards from them. They say they prefer the

New Zealand battery’s support to any other. The battery’s forward officers said today the incident supported their belief that American artillery practices did not always match their own. which are modelled on British Army methods. The officers normally move with the infantry elements for which their battery provides close support.

But in this operation the New Zealand battery is on general support duties, which means it does not supply forward officers. Artillery observation is left to American forward observers. Unlike their New Zealand counterparts they are not all experienced officers with years of artillery study behind them. Most are senior N.C.O.s or junior officers, whose first duty after being commissioned is to direct artillery fire.

They cannot order artillery fire as their New Zealand equivalents do. They only request fire. The nature of the artillery support is decided by the American battery commander. And he stays at the battery’s position, which can be several thousand yards from the target. But the New Zealand forward officers order their battery’s support. They stipulate the quantity and nature of the fire, basing their decision on their observations. “The American forward men know how to range in guns all right—but that’s only part of the job,” a New Zealand officer said today. “They know little, for example, about the characteristics of gunfire in varying terrain and vegetation—and this is very important when the guns are giving infantry close support.”