|
|
 |
8th Mobile Radio Broadcast Company,
6th Radio Broadcast & Leaflet Group First Psyop Unit on Smoke Bomb Hill, Ft. Bragg, NC - 1952 by Alan Smith, Sgt., 8th MRB Don't quite know what to say about the 6th RB&L Group or, more specifically, my unit within it the 8th Mobile Radio Broadcast Company so forgive me if I ramble. Besides, I've enough trouble trying to remember what my wife asked me to do this morning so trying to recall events from nearly 50 years ago is a real stretch. O.K., so much for preambles.
We were activated in May of 1952 at Fort Riley Kansas the third PsyWar Group to be formed.> The 1st RB&L - and I believe it was the first - had been formed and sent to FECOM (Far East Command). The second - the 301st RB&L Group - had gone to Heidelberg and we sat, as a holding company (officially the Psychological Warfare Detachment, 5021 ASU), with nothing to do - and no equipment - waiting. During that "waiting" period we pulled a variety of details around Riley. They ranged from "interesting" to "crap" with occasional KP's thrown in for good measure. On the "interesting" side, for example, I was assigned for a while to the Post PIO with a beat which, among other places, included the WAC barracks. At the other extreme I remember our spending days with tiny manicure scissors cutting individual chevrons out of a freight car full of NCO chevrons. (Riley, at that time, was the home of the Aggressor Cadre - a permanent force with its own uniform, language (Esperanto), manual of arms, etc., etc. The chevrons we were making were for their uniforms.) Our stay at Riley was particularly unpleasant. Not only did we have no equipment (well, not exactly true we did send several midnight raiding parties up to the AFB in Topeka to steal some), but we were viewed with suspicion and resentment by the rest of the post. "Suspicion" because we were considered a "secret" outfit (tho' damned if I know what the secret was) and "resentment" because we were untouchable. Post levies came down almost daily for men to be shipped off to Korea, but we were frozen. Men could come into our unit, but none could be pulled out. I don't suppose I can really blame the others for their attitude toward our apparently favored position, but we did feel that many on the post went out of their way to make life unpleasant for us. In retribution, on the day we left for Bragg in fact, as we were leaving a light plane we'd hired plastered the post with polite farewell leaflets saying how much we'd enjoy our stay, etc. Must have taken them days to police the place up again and we loved every minute thinking about it. The 8th MRB, when activated, consisted of the following men: (I've a copy of our Activation Dinner menu listing the company's complement.)
The Group CO (the "battalion" nomenclature was adopted sometime after '53) was Lt. Col. Lester L. Holmes. Two of the other Group officers were: 1st Lt. Charles M. Johnson & 1st Lt. Nevin F. Price Nev Price, incidentally, was the greatest scrounge who ever lived. In the coming months, whenever we needed something that wasn't easily obtainable we'd turn to Nev. He never disappointed us and usually got us two or three times what we'd needed. To the best of my knowledge, we were the first Psywarriors to get to Bragg and I know that we were the first on Smoke Bomb Hill. No one, in fact, had been quartered on the The Hill for some time prior to our arrival and our first weeks were spent making the place livable. I particularly remember our spending days raking up all of the pine needles and carting them off into the woods. I also remember the Post Engineers coming around to inspect the clean-up, asking what had happened to the pine needles and then making us bring them all back because they prevented soil erosion. For a time, when we got to Bragg, the MRB basically sat on its hands. We had no equipment, nothing to do and were generally unhappy. The guys in HQS Co were busy monitoring foreign broadcasts on - I think - old Hallicrafters and sending daily translations to God-Only-Knows-Who; the guys in the 2nd L&L Co were busy printing an occasional PsyWar newspaper plus menus, etc. for various 82nd Airborne Div. & XVIII Airborne Corps events, but without broadcast equipment there wasn't much for an MRB Co to do. After what seemed like months - but was probably only weeks - we sent a team up to the Gates Radio Company in Quincy, Illinois to supervise the assembly of our mobile studio and transmitter. When completed, that same team then drove the equipment down to Bragg and we finally had something to do. I was put in charge of the broadcast station - probably because I'd come to the Army out of NBC and, prior to that, had also been with CBS Shortwave - and quickly discovered that "quality control" was apparently a completely foreign term to Gates Radio. My Control Operator - Pvt Henry Bullock who'd joined the unit in Bragg - and I spent days trying to figure out what it was that we really had. Documentation, where available, was often misleading or downright incorrect. Switches were often mislabeled or not labeled at all. Inputs, according to the factory-supplied schematic, were often actually outputs and vice-versa. Some jackfield sections shown on the schematics didn't exist in real life while others that did exist didn't appear anywhere on a schematic. Actually, and in retrospect, it was kind of fun. For a change we had something to do something to keep us usefully occupied. We remained at Bragg - at least during my time - as cadre. We became part of the aggressor force during maneuvers, provided daily broadcasts to various sections within the group via a so-called wired wireless lashup and worked with various other units on and off the post as required. Lt. Price and I spent a month in Chicago activating and training a PsyWar reserve unit at Chicago's Northtown Armory. In our early days at Fort Bragg, the unit reported directly to Signal Corps in Washington. This created no end of confusion whenever something was needed and requested through normal channels. Much of our broadcast equipment, for example, had never been given any military nomenclature had no line numbers and insofar as normal supply channels were concerned simply didn't exist. We were also a bit of an enigma to the other troops at Bragg. As the Psywar Headquarters began to develop - later to become Special Warfare when the 10th Special Forces was formed and joined us on Smoke Bomb - we seemed to attract a lot of high level- brass (1 & 2 star) visitations from Washington. Everyone on the post knew that something special was taking place on Smoke omb Hill, but they didn't know what and because we were classified as a secret outfit, we wouldn't tell them. Actually we could have told them - or anyone - without endangering anything or anybody, but it was much more fun to keep the rest of the post in the dark and listen to rumors. One event that always produced the greatest rumor flow was whenever we raised one of our two broadcast antennas. One was a 180' conventional steel antenna which, while I was there at least, was never erected. The other, however, was a slender wire - I don't recall how long - hauled aloft by something similar to a WWII barrage balloon. Because the balloon was filled with hydrogen, we had to take special precautions to avoid any potential spark threat whenever we inflated or deflated it. All metal was removed from the uniforms of anyone working near the balloon and only cotton fatigues could be worn to avoid the danger of static electricity. As a safety precautions, armed guards were stationed in a wide perimeter around the balloon with orders that no one regardless of rank was to be allowed through unless suitably clothed. Needless to say, the balloon attracted a fair amount of attention around the post and the rumors it always stirred up were a joy to hear. So much for my ramblings. I'm not sure if they're of any interest or were the sort of thing you had in mind when you asked for info about the unit. And, obviously, there are other aspects about which I can reminisce, but the bottom line is that we were lucky and our psywar military life was relatively dull at least in comparison to what our brethren in the 1st RB&L were doing in the far east. (I have no idea what the 301st was doing in Heidelberg.) 
Return to Library Main Page
|
