Reply To: Artillery Observers
The real observer was an expert. Specially trained and normally doing nothing else. A spotter was just an ordinary man that had a base training in gun spotting. Every officer and NCO had that ability in the big armies. So the different rules are historically correct.
But armies tended to misuse specialists. Not just in desperate situations. Well mostly. My own father was in WW II an artillery observer. Following the destruction of the guns he was used as infantry. Badly wounded and POW.