I was in the outfit for about 3 weeks when I was assigned A3. The FDC section had 2 vehicles, a jeep and a 3/4 ton truck. At first A3 and I did not get along too well. I was supposed to spend an hour or so on it every afternoon on its maintenance.
Our battery had a good size motor pool with about 5 mechanics and a motor sergeant. We had about 25 vehicles plus the 4 guns.We also had a gun mechanic. Every driver had to do some maintenance. I was not much of a mechanic. My first job was to repack the rear bearings. I took the wheel off, pulled the ring of bearings out and begun to wash them with solvent. The roller bearings fell out of the ring. After cleaning them I couldn't get them to stay in the ring. I was sure I had destroyed something. Of course you first pack the ring with grease then the bearings will stay in.My next battle with A3 was the day before an inspection from corps. I was sent down to the river to wash my jeep. Others had been doing it all day. It was late when I got there because I had been on duty in the bunker. As I started to wash A3 it was getting colder. Soon it was covered with muddy ice. When I took it back to the motor pool the sergeant shook his head and said he would thaw it out over night and early in the morning it would be send out on a trip. The trip consisted of loading the jeep with many things that should not be in the battery area, then drive down to Chunchon, pick up something and come back in the evening. They used to send a 2 1/2 ton truck on the same mission. The truck would come by our tent in the morning and we loaded up anything that would not pass the inspection. Saturday evening the truck would be unloaded and we got our stuff back.
After a few months A3 and I became good friends. It was used sometimes to charge the radio batteries in the bunker. We would park it on the hill above the bunker and attached cables to it. Two or three times a night we would start up the jeep to recharge the large batteries in the bunker. We also had a line from the bunker down to our tent so when the battalion generator shut down at 10 p.m. we still would have lights in the tent. The light switch consisted of two wires hanging from above which you hooked together to turn on two headlights hanging there. After about a week of using the jeep this way I would have to drive it up into the hills to burn the carbon out.