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The Language of the Artillery &

the Language of Ludwig Wittgenstein


The United States Army refers to the Infantry as the Queen of Battle and the
Artillery as the King of Battle. Before the era of the aircraft carrier and its proclivity
to position jet fighters at strategic points, and the drone with its capacity to surgically
attack pinpointed targets, the Artillery reigned as King. General Patton said it won
World War II. The havoc it caused during World War I remains resolutely fixed even so
today in the consciousnesses and subconsciousnesses of the British (Poppy Day).
Might is Right. Artillery officers are referred to as redlegs in the US Army. While
there is no particular nickname for the Infantry itself, many soubriquets exist for
Infantry units: The First Division (The Big Red One) and the Fourth Division (The
Snowflake Division or the Ivy Division) to name just two.
Jean-Paul Sartre served in an artillery unit during World War I. In March 1916 Ludwig
Wittgenstein was assigned to the Russian front with the 7th Austrian army where he
served as an artillery forward observer sighting potential targets for the howitzer
emplacements in his rear. He was continuously targetted by enemy snipers but managed
to react efficiently, and so the headstrong LW was decorated for his bravery and calm
under fire. In January 1917, again at the Russian front, he was attached to a howitzer
unit in a rearward location. LW's erstwhile mentor at Cambridge University, Bertrand
Russell, observed that LW had become a changed man after his military service, and
thereafter possessed a deeply mystical and ascetic attitude. In August 1918 he
finished writing his most renowned work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicusa tome he
later repudiated. LW had taken many notes during his wartime experience having had
enough time to order and design the specious argumentation for the Tractatus.
Artillery is not necessarily a sought-after arms branch. In the old days the US Army
Artillery, for instance, was divided into two divisions: field artillery and rocketry and
missilry artillery. The cannon cockers of the FA, robust characters who heaved
projectiles (105mm, 155mm, 8-inch, and 175mm) into the breeches of howitzers to be
fired by pulling on a lanyard (Fire!), had to be an excessively well-trained team. On the
way, wait! was the command relayed when a projectile was discharged. The forward
observer (FO), who had hoped his map had been accurate enough not to cause a
massacre of his fellow soldiers caused by his ordering of artillery barrages, then checked
with the infantry company commander (CO) who would instruct him to make
adjustments left or right, up or down. The shouting between the two, over the firing of
rifles and hand-grenades going off, did not make the FO's task anymore easier, not to
mention the FO's object to calculate still another fire mission for the CO. Humping
with the infantry company, it was his responsibility to receive instructions from the CO
who might require artillery support not only during a contact with the enemy, but also
for defensive concentrations (DEFCONS) in the evening when his company had

bedded down in a circular formation with infantry guards watching over the Queen of
Battle's unit's perimeter. Cannon cockers obviously served in the rearguard areas
close to the Fire Direction Center (FDC) where firing data and computations (charge
sizes, meteorologic-atmospheric conditions, altitudes, propellant temperature, wind
readings, estimated distances, deflections, etc.) were worked up and then passed on to
the battery/batteries where the cannons had been lined up (laid) and in parallel
formation. And then, modifications to the cannons' instrumentation were made to
conform to the fire mission sent in by an FO or aerial observer (AOs earned an extra
$110.00 hazardous duty pay per month). A gripe of the forward observers was that
they were not entitled to receive the Combat Infantryman's Badge (recognition that an
infantryman had served in combat) because they were not de facto infantrymen even
though they humped with them as assignees to infantry units. Saint Barbara is the
patron saint of the Artilleryif you wish to pray for them!
The language of the Artillery is, by nature, concise. The Artillery is akin to a fast food
complex. It must Move, Shoot and Communicate. Time cannot be wasted because the
process must have rhythm and rhyme. Coordination. Fluidity. Simplicity. Artillery
language must be fast but accurate. This linguistic communication must be cut down to
its bare minimum. It is meant to save the lives of soldiers. HE = High Explosive. FFE
= Fire For Effect. Smoke = Smoke Projectiles. DIVARTY = Division Artillery. H&I
= Harassment & Interdiction. C&C = Command & Control. CA = Combat Assault.
NL = Night Location. DEFCON = Defensive Concentration. AO = Area of
Operations...et alia. When transmitted over radios, this lettering has to be translated into
Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike,
November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, Xray, Yankee, and/or Zulu. The language of the Artillery is telegraphic. It is meant to
skim across the airwaves connecting, most importantly, the FO with the FDC. The
faster data is processed, the quicker will be the reaction of the batteries and their
bombardmentsthe sounds of their poundings on the ground. Captain Harry S
Truman, artillery battery commander during World War I and 33 rd president of the
United States, had a penchant for using short, pithy statements one of which was this:
The Buck Stops Here! (Here buck does not refer to a dollar bill, but to one's
responsibility which might have been before passed on and then on and on finally
reaching an end point, in this case, President Truman's desk.)
The language of Ludwig Wittgenstein is, by nature, concise. Listen to these gems of
tightened-up language. Do not worry if they have no meaning for you. After all, LW
rejected what he had written in his Tractatus (perhaps because his post-traumatic stress
had abated):
1
1.2 The world divides into facts.
2
2.033 Form is the possibility of structure.
3
3.32 A sign is what can be perceived of a symbol.

4
4.462 Tautologies and contradictions are not pictures of reality.
5
5.453 There are no preeminent numbers.
6
6.13 Logic is transcendental.
7
7.0 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
*

It is a trait of human nature to speak on and on about what we know nothing about.
This is not a deservingness. George Carlin once remarked that most people do not
know what they are doingand they are pretty good at doing it! LW is absolutely
correct in wanting us to choose our words cautiously. It is a sign of being
epigrammatic. Meat and potatoes language. What is the sense of talking about
something we cannot comprehend? In what kind of a world would we be living in if all
that we uttered was strictly analyzed and clearly deliberated upon? It surely would be
less pursy. Less wasteful. Can we actually expect the world to be more reflective?
Certainly. But will it ever be? How? When?
Perhaps LW's tour de force is his straightforward debunking of traditional philosophy as
being excessively verboseeven confusing. For LW, the purpose of philosophy is to
seek the logical clarification of thoughts. That had been said before him. Philosophy,
according to LW, is an activity. That had been said before him. Contemporary
philosophy is sometimes even worse. What would LW have said if he had come across,
say, Mary Midgley's essay Deciding What is Right? Would he have called a fire mission to
zero her? LW was right in predicting that philosophy was on its way to extinction.
People are seeking images in our modern world. They are abandoning words more and
more. Minds are becoming atrophied with images.
In two books treating the life and thoughts of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Ludwig Wittgenstein
by Ray Monk and Wittgenstein: A Very Short Introduction by A C Grayling) many
interesting highlights in the life of LW have been presented to us. LW was a fascinating
individual even if, as Professor Grayling points out, his philosophical theories are, on
the whole, baseless. Ray Monk has dug deep into the personal life of this often
overbearing, tormented individual leaving us with the workable conclusion that LW's
forte might have derived from the privileged life he enjoyedalong with Cambridge
philosophy students and professors!being the son of one of the richest men in
Europe, that his sexuality conflicted ghoulishly with his religious predilections, and his
tenore di vita, his masochism, his domineering attitude as a celebrity, and, above all, his
terrifying experiences as an artillery forward observer, all contributed to the making of
this philosophical freak of Nature.

Let us close with what Bertrand Russelhe finally broke with Ludwig Wittgenstein
surmised when he commented on LW's penchant to abridge philosophical language:
BR hinted that LW said too much saying philosophy said too much!

Over and out!


Authored by Anthony St. John
29 January MMXV
Calenzano, Italy
www.scribd.com/thewordwarrior

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