Between the Covers

Softcover. Small oblong quarto. Measuring 10" x 6". String-tied stiff black paper. Contains 237 black and white or sepia toned gelatin silver photographs measuring between 1½" x 1½" and 5" x 7," with some captions as well as some newspaper clippings and postcards. Front board lacking, page wear, fair only with chips, tears, and loose pages, with near fine photographs.

A photo album kept by an unidentified soldier with the 115th and 134th Anti-Aircraft Battalions, often referred to as AAA, during World War II. The album begins with basic training in 1943 showing photographs of the recruits at Camp Davis posing around the barracks in uniform and smiling at the camera, then at Fort Bragg, North Carolina for anti-aircraft gun training. Men are seen working in a sandbag trench with large anti-aircraft guns and tanks, along with a few images of planes and aerial views. 1943 saw the United States move to form a “number of high-tech mobile antiaircraft artillery” in response to the Luftwaffe’s continued aerial assault throughout Europe. The new units, such as the one seen throughout this album, now combined large 90mm guns along with radar and electronic fire control computers for a more effective offensive.

During the last year of the war the battalion was sent to Belgium and Germany, which included the cities of Aachen, Stolberg, Kassel, Gotha, Bonn, Wetzlar, Heilbronn, Magdenburg, and Laudenbach. These photos show the ruins of cities, men posing around foreign barracks, a soldier holding the hand of a young child (possibly a refugee), an Army jeep parked next to a newly dug grave, and a man standing in the ruins of Helsa, Germany, a hamlet near Kassel. The group made their way to Nice, France where they stayed at the U.S.R.R.A. - "United States Riviera Rest Area." The rest stations had been set up along the French Riviera using the luxury hotels that had been abandoned due to hostilities to host weary soldiers. The U.S.R.R.A. was often referred to as "heaven" by the various G.I.s and was called the best thing the U.S. Army ever did. These pictures show the men pictures with young women and by beaches and palm trees. Included is cocktail menu from one of the Army sanctioned lounges simply named “Riveria.”

The end of the war was marked with an “Organization Day,” the program for it is tipped into this album. Held in Wetzlar, Germany on June 11, 1945 it celebrated the 134th AAA Gun Battalion’s efforts during the war. The program lists units, actions, and commendations. Also includes is a copy of the commendation sent out by General Timberlake which praised the “performance of duty in the Ardennes, Rhine, and Central German Campaigns.”

The final pages show a strange collection of German snapshots, which included uniformed German soldiers, most likely collected in various sites around Germany. There are several anti-German articles and poems most likely from the *Stars and Stripes*, as well as numerous postage stamps with Hitler on them. A group of these are used to make a “V” shape. One article reads, “All Germans Guilty,” and under a photo of a young German boy it says, “he must be shown.”

An interesting collection of late World War II photography and articles from a unit that saw considerable action in France and Germany.

Item #402301