Congrats on choosing Artillery. After being commissioned 2LT at A&M in '60, I was assigned to a 155mm battery of the 16th Arty (155mm, 8" and Honest John) of the 2AD (Hell on Wheels) at Fort Hood. Was fire direction officer. Although I served only two years active and five years in the 49th AD of the Texas National Guard, I still value the experience. I remember an instructor at Fort Sill saying something like this: "Artillery adds dignity to what otherwise would be a vulgar brawl." (:-

Trench55 said:

---

Aggie 118, as an old Redleg from the days of aiming circles, paper firing charts. range-deflection protractors and slide rules, congratulations on getting assigned to Field Artillery. While I was in Vietnam we received the first Field Artillery computer - a monster about the size of a footlocker - called FADAC. It had enough memory to hold the firing data for only two calibers of weapons, and we could actually compute the initial firing data faster manually that it could. It was much faster with computing corrections, however. Just a bit of useless history.

---

I'm an old Redleg too. FA OBC April-July 1971. Had a group of Marines in my OBC, They referred to FADAC as
**** Around During Artillery Course.

For the OP .Learn the words to the Caisson Song, The Army stole our song.

Col Kurtz said:

---

I'm a 13A Captain who just got out of Battery command. While I've been in both cannon and rocket units (and have enjoyed both), I really don't know where the MLRS / HIMARS hate is coming from. It is absolutely the future of the field artillery, and please dont let it affect your decision making.

---

Just a medic here, but watching telephone poles get launched in anger is absolutely amazing.

Quote:

---

I'm an old Redleg too. FA OBC April-July 1971. Had a group of Marines in my OBC, They referred to FADAC as

**** Around During Artillery Course.

---

I don't have fond memories of FADAC. We never fired a round unless we doubled checked FADAC data with our manual computations. Don't ever remember it computing "bad" data, except for the time we were given a Met Message with some bad data. That caused a huge error. Glad we double checked on that fire mission.

When I was an instructor in the Artillery School at Fort Sill, after I returned from Vietnam, we had a Marine in our instructor group. He was a fine officer and a good instructor.

Aggie118 said:

---

Thanks for the insight! I talked to our Army ROTC Cadre and they told me that they have seen quite a few young marriages fall apart or the spouse return back to the states when doing an overseas posting.

My top 5 as of right now (preference sheet is due tomorrow) are:

1. FT. Carson, CO
2. JLM, WA
3. Hawaii
4. Germany
5. FT. Hood

---

I've been at Carson since 2003 off and on. I was at Bragg for a few years. Carson is great. I just retired and I plan on staying here. I've also done some training at JLM and it's nice up there too, but it's dreary for most of the year. You'll train a lot in Yakima so you'll get away from the clouds.

Germany is great too. I've had buddies that had marriages that made and those that didn't. It depends on your wife and how strong your marriage is. I suspect the ones that didn't make it would have failed no matter where they were stationed. Being a military spouse takes a special kind of woman. If your wife is down for the cause then it won't matter where you're at. My wife followed me all over the country. Fayetteville, NC sucks. She stayed with me through that.

Gordon isn't a bad option. It's close-ish to Savannah so you can visit there regularly and it's a fun city. Campbell isn't bad either. It's close to Nashville.

Good luck with your career.