FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa. -- Field artillery is an amazing tool on today’s battlefields that gives a military force the ability to reach targets nearly 20 miles away, provides cover for friendly forces to move, and has an intense psychological effect on the enemy.
In a field artillery battery, each individual gun has several Marines that maintain different components of the weapon to ensure proper function during continual firing.
The base of any good field artillery unit is the Marines that maintain the ammunition that it fires. Should the rounds become damaged in any way, the weapon may cease to fire or malfunction.
Lance Cpl. Wayne Rohall, a field artilleryman with India Battery, 3rd Battalion, 14th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, maintains the ammunition on India Battery’s gun two. His job is to prepare the rounds for fire, load, then repeat. This job requires him to always be ready whenever the battery receives the order to fire.
When he is not wearing his uniform, Rohall receives different orders to fire. Rohall works in a steel mill in Pennsylvania where he has assisted in the fabrication of steel that constructs the barrels for the M777A2 Lightweight Howitzer cannon - the same weapon that he maintains ammunition for during his Marine Corps annual training periods.
“I work at a steel mill where we have actually made a few of the barrels for the Howitzers,” said Rohall. “So it’s a great feeling for me to think that I could have helped make one of these guns, and then actually get to come out and shoot it on weekends.”
Rohall describes the fabrication process that he undertakes with his crew to create portions of the howitzer cannons while working at a steel mill.
“I run hot steel through the mill and it takes about six guys to pull it through,” said Rohall. “The steel is heated to about 2,000 degrees and it’s our job to mold it to whatever shape the customer wants, and the six of us pass it back and forth until it is formed.”
In a steel mill, Rohall doesn’t have chance to see his completed product. Working in field artillery, the finished product is miles away after the weapon is fired, due to his different yet linked civilian job; Rohall gets to see his finished product from the mill in action in the field.
“Believing that one of these guns could be one that I helped create really makes me realize that what I do in the civilian world helps make a difference all over the world,” said Rohall. “This cannon is one big hunk of metal delivering peace to all those who need it.”
If the weapon successfully fires, Rohall gets the feeling that both of his jobs, fabrication at the mill and maintaing the weapon’s ammunition, were done correctly, giving him a sense of how hard work goes a long way. That hard work then transfers over to his performance in the field.
“I just picked up Lance Cpl. Rohall on my gun a couple of months ago,” said Sgt. Julian E. Gomez III, a section chief with India Btry., 3rd Bn., 14th Marines. “I have seen his hard work on the other gun and he quickly became one of the Marines I was interested in picking up for my gun. We have an actual draft every couple of months to change up the gun crews; it’s kind of like fantasy football. So we watch the other guns to see how they work and I have always noticed that he was a hard worker.”
Cpl. Michael Coogan, an assistant chief with India Btry., 3rd Bn., 14th Marines, explained the particulars of Rohall’s job on their Howitzer.
“His job is to carry the round up so the section chief can verify that the round is ok to fire,” said Coogan. “Then he places the round on the loading tray and rams it into position to load the weapon. That particular job can be considered the foundation of our military occupational specialty because you need ammo to shoot.”
Rohall loves what he does both in uniform and on the civilian side and says he wouldn’t have it any other way. He gets to see the efforts from both jobs in action.