270th Field Artillery Battalion

I have had the wonderful good fortune to be contacted by a family member of a 270th veteran and he shared a ton of photos with me.

John Carlson found this thread and is the Grandson of Bert Ballengee. Bert wrote a memoir of his time in the war and I was lucky to get a copy of it from Col Gabriel's (Bn CDR) Grandson. There are not a lot of copies of this memoir and I feel truly blessed that both of those gentlemen reached out and shared their collections with me.

Bert did a fantastic job of writing info on the back of each photo to ID who is in it and where they were at that time.

Photos span from their time at Camp Butner training as a new unit all the way thru France and even doing guard duty on the POWs. An amazing collection to say the least.

There is a clear photo of a L-4 Grasshopper assigned to the Battalion with the ground recognition number of 62 painted on it. A piece of information I have been struggling to find has now been found!

Hope to post some of the photos soon. Still sorting and what not

 

Found some nicknames for a couple of the howitzers too. Bob's Babe and Berlin Bound.

 

Gabriel may have been another howitzer name.

 

I have amassed 657 names of men who were assigned to the 270th at one time or another. Thru the help of many people, especially John Carlson, I have over 500 photos of people, places and things associated with the 270th. I have about another 2 gigs worth of typed info/data about the unit.

How in the world does a fella share that with folks? There is not a lot of people that give a crap about an obscure heavy artillery unit from WWII, but those who had grandfather, fathers, etc.. may want to see and read some of it.

 

Interesting. Bob's Babe and Berlin Bound follow the correct pattern in units for naming - they would both be in Battery B. However, there was no Battery G.

Never mind. It was obviously playing on Colonel Gabriel's name.

 

seems to be common with them. The captured German guns they used were part of the Butner Battery. Camp Butner NC was the place the unit was activated in 1943

 

Had the good luck to find an image of one of the A/C assigned to the 270th. Ground recognition number of 62 is a huge find for me. This has been something I struggled to figure out and now know that at least for a short time 62 was the number.

 

Ooops. Not sure if it was wind damaged or a bad landing. May even be the one involved in the fatal crash that killed LTs Anspach and Emberts.

 

Pilots who trained at Camp Butner NC

 

Photo of PVT Robert Lee Presser

 

Thanks to John for pointing out some info I had but was overlooking. Bob’s Babe is the gun on display at Fort Sill at the FA museum.

also the Call Sign used for radio calls were Codger.

 

If you have a Google account, I posted a good number of photos I was given access to on my blog. It was the only way I could figure out how to upload a bunch of pictures to share.
http://270fabn.blogspot.com
Then log isn’t fancy, but gets the job done.

 

@Nicelyb Have you found details about pre- and post-combat days yet? If not, try the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. Their morning reports cover both time periods. I was able to find morning reports for the 282nd Field Artillery Battalion from August 1943 (the battalion was activated in June 1943) through their deactivation in October 1945.

The morning reports include the battalions that each person was transferred to, so I was able to follow my Dad's history from October 1945 through when he was sent home in February 1946. Everything there was on microfilm. I gather that information quality and legibility can vary between units, but everything I was looking for was in great shape.

 

Thanks for the suggestion of the morning reports. I requested them from NPRC during the middle of COVID and I am pretty sure the request got lost or slipped thru the cracks. Honestly, kinda forgotten about it until I read your post. It may be time to fire up another request. I will say, that morning reports kinda concern me because of the shear quantity of them and the codes/acronyms used.

 

Battalion members that didn’t make it home and where they were laid to rest.

 

Courtesy of John Carlson
HHB 270th FA Bn circa 1944

 

Some happy Red Legs on their way home from the war on the ship Antioch Victor. Departed from La Havre enroute to New York. I would imagine the atmosphere aboard ship was more festive than the journey to Europe a few years earlier.

 

We were given a remotely similar booklet before deploying into Iraq and Afghanistan. Not so much about enemy tactics and organizations, but more along the lines of culture norms and geographical info. Not much use, but was an interesting read for a kid from the farm lands of the Midwest.