THE PILGRIM
Member
The best Pearl Harbor I ever heard first hand was told to me by a then Army 2nd Lieut. Anti-aircraft machine gun platoon leader. It was a another lazy Sunday morning in Hawaii. He was married and living off base but had Sunday Duty Officer . So he stopped to eat breakfast at a coffee shop near the beach as he headed on down to Scofield Barracks. He could see the ocean as he ate and he noticed a close in Navy Destroyer. And it was dropping depth charges! As he watched he thought 'What the heck are those Navy guys doing?' I better get on down to the base. He stopped at a red light as two planes zoomed over low and fast. Meatballs on the tails! Japanese planes. So he sped up to to Scofield. When he arrived it was mass confusion. People running in all directions.
In the days of old Army units had their weapons locked in unit gun rooms. The Duty Officer/Duty NCO who usually wore an armband and a 45 had access to all the keys including the gun room. This unit had guns but no ammo. The ammo was locked up in an arsenal off post. This unit had just returned from a field deployment where they did have live ammo. One of the guys had failed to turn in a belt of 30 cal used in their water cooled Brownings on AAA mount. His Platoon Leader took that belt and put it in his foot locker in the nearby BOQ. They went and got that one belt, set up a machine gun on the parade grounds and fired away. Then they were done. They had sent for ammo but none of it arrived before the attack was over.
But they were ready the next day! Deployed, sand bagged, plenty of ammo, field telephones. Shot at every thing that moved! The Nippers had deployed floatplanes from a nearby atoll. They continued harassment bombing for several days until the Navy figured out where they were coming from.
In the days of old Army units had their weapons locked in unit gun rooms. The Duty Officer/Duty NCO who usually wore an armband and a 45 had access to all the keys including the gun room. This unit had guns but no ammo. The ammo was locked up in an arsenal off post. This unit had just returned from a field deployment where they did have live ammo. One of the guys had failed to turn in a belt of 30 cal used in their water cooled Brownings on AAA mount. His Platoon Leader took that belt and put it in his foot locker in the nearby BOQ. They went and got that one belt, set up a machine gun on the parade grounds and fired away. Then they were done. They had sent for ammo but none of it arrived before the attack was over.
But they were ready the next day! Deployed, sand bagged, plenty of ammo, field telephones. Shot at every thing that moved! The Nippers had deployed floatplanes from a nearby atoll. They continued harassment bombing for several days until the Navy figured out where they were coming from.
