Harold R. Heath, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Winston P. Erickson, May 30, 2000: Saving the legacy tape no. 29 and 30

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A OLDR.HEAT to infantry. WIN: And where was that? HAR: The 90th Chemical was training at Fort Bragg. WIN: Fort Bragg, North Carolina. HAR: The chemical mortar was just one of the tools of chemical warfare. It really had not been exploited very much, although it was an excellent artillery piece actually. The barrel was rifled, and the shell, instead of being teardrop shaped like your infantry mortar shells were with fins on, it had a diaphragm on the rear of the shell that collapsed when the charge fired, and that engaged the rifling, and gave the projectile a spin as it left the tube. I don't know at what point they recognized that we had all the capabilities of field artillery. But there was a field artillery officer attached to our battalion sometime during the summer, and we started acting like field artillery. The field artillery training that I had as an instrument operator and as a gunner put me in good stead, although the jobs had already been assigned. But, because I did have a driver license and could drive, I ended up in the motor pool to begin with. I ended up as one of the lieutenant's drivers. As we progressed into the conversion of the chemical warfare, all chemical war methods, each mortar operated more or less independently. The mortar crew would fire like infantry mortar. We ended up being organized like a field artillery battalion. Actually, each company was, in terms of firepower, equivalent of a field artillery battalion. We had three platoons, and each platoon had four squads and four mortars, so that would be 20