Range Operations 57 



acters he had to work on — I'm telling you, they were pretty rough characters — 

 would be impossible to manage. 



I remember riding to Washington, shortly after arriving on Station, with a 

 couple of men who worked on the Plate Battery and who were living over in the 

 civilian dormitory. We went across the Potomac on a motor launch to where we 

 kept the car. Then we could drive on up to Washington. When we were halfway 

 up, they stopped somewhere to buy some "hooch." Lipnick and I were just two 

 young physicists, and we were to meet them down at the Gun Factory at 5 

 o'clock Monday morning. I remember coming back. Oh boy, they'd had the 

 most wonderful weekend you've ever heard of. They wrecked four beer joints, 

 beat up seven or eight guys, they'd been in a couple of fights that they hadn't 

 won but claimed they were real good ones. They had a great time. There were 

 quite a few of those characters working around Dahlgren at that time, so if they 

 say the foremen ran things, you had to let the foremen run things because they 

 had some pretty strange animals to get the work out of. 



You mentioned Roger Dement. He was in charge of the range crew there? 



He was Head of the Range Section. He also handled all the diplomatic 

 operations between the Proving Ground and the property owners down along 

 the river where we placed range stations. We didn't buy the land; we just 

 obtained permission to use the land. Sometimes we had complaints that our 

 range vehicles going in and out were tearing up the roads. Then maybe we'd 

 get a couple of loads of gravel to the owners or something of that sort. Also, we 

 had people who went down to man the range stations who would occasionally 

 do things that annoyed the property owner. These are the kinds of things 

 Roger took care of. 



What significant part did Mr. Benjamin Tubman play? 



Mr. Tubman was mainly the power out on the Main Range. We called it Main 

 and Broadside after the main battery of the big guns on a ship and the smaller 

 guns that participated when a broadside was fired. That whole group out there 

 was under Ben Tubman. He was a good foreman, and he kept things going 

 pretty well out there. 



Ammunition was a different outfit. Ammunition was under Ben Carpenter. 

 Of course. Public Works had in the early days a Navy person known as the 

 Construction Officer. He was normally a warrant officer, and then he had a 

 foreman at all times. I've forgotten who the foreman was. 



Melvin Reynolds? 



I think there were a couple of foremen in Public Works. Mel Reynolds was 

 electrical and plumbing. At that time, a man was an apprentice, and then he 



