270th Field Artillery Battalion

My late father Donald Edward Carter was a member of the Headquarters Battery of the 270th FA Battalion in the ETO. He went by Don and he lived in Clayton NM. We hosted the outfit reunion in Clayton on two separate occasions. I have a file that has quite a bit of information like Aftee Action Reports, Deployment Information etc.

 

Roy
Thanks for reaching out. I shot you a PM / IM or what ever they are called. I’m slowly piecing things together. Having guys reach out in this forum has been a big help. Opening up doors Of information that I did not know even existed.
What was your fathers MOS / job?

 

Does anyone know much about the "Butner Battery"? Supposedly it was captured Axis howitzers used by the Allies (the 270th being one of the units). Google searches do not produce many results and it seems that it was used primarily during the gas and ammo rationing period. I have ran across a couple entries in AARs with round counts for that period, but nothing more.

 

Ran across an interesting bit of info today. Over on another site, I saw mention of an Advanced Detachment of the 270th staying at Bewdley Worcestershire England on/about April '44. Did a little more digging and saw that a large number of units called this place home for a little while. I assume Bewdley was a staging base.

 

Yes and somewhere else I also answered the question regarding the "Butner Battery". They refer to Brigadier General Henry Wolfe Butner who died in 1937 after a distinguished career in the Field Artillery. Camp Butner, where many of the 240mm H battalions were reorganized and retrained from their role as 105mm H battalions, was named after him. Many battalions formed "Butner Batteries" using captured German and ex-German-captured French pieces. One FA battalion, the 244th IIRC, was even temporarily re-rolled to entirely man captured weapons and was referred to as a "Butner Battalion" or "Captured Weapons Battalion". Such ad hoc batteries were especially found in late October and then in November 1944, when the 12th Army Group was experiencing limited shipments of artillery ammunition, especially the 105mm round, and was forced to implement strict rationing in firing.

Bewdley was one of the main FUSA FA depots and staging areas for the new arrivals. Peover was the same for TUSA. The Advance Detachment (now referred to as an ADVON or Advance Echelon) were key personnel sent in advance of the main body of a unit to a new base area that would familiarize themselves with routes, housing, local conditions, and commanding headquarters SOP.

 

Thanks for the feedback. There was no mention of an ADVON in the AARs I read for the unit. Be interested in seeing who was in the ADVON party. Another small tidbit of info to add to my notes.

 

Sorry, you misunderstood. ADVON is the modern term and is the same as "Adv Det" or "Advance Detachment", which is the term used in WW II.

 

No worries. I understand ADVON is a “modern” term. 28 years of active duty in the Army taught me that the military loves to make changes. The AARs I got from the NARA For the unit cover 1943 very briefly (1.5 pages) and do not start back up until Aug of 1944 when they arrived D+48. A gap from Jan until July of ‘44. There had to be a lot going on preparing to deploy overseas, etc.., but no official AAR is weird.

 

The Army mindset. The "AAR", properly Reports, After Action, were not required until, well, "after action". They had no action to report after until August. The regulations for record keeping non-after action were pretty loose. Typically if anythiny was retained it was the GOs and SOs pertaining to the unit, but often not much else was retained. On top of that the records you see at NARA are those retired to the Adjutant General's office for storage...and then raided regularly by OCMH for reference when writing various histories, raided by general officers because, well, they were general officers. A fairly extensive set of copies of RG 407 Entry 427 were going to be discarded in the 1960s to "make room" in the Pentagon (I got a better plan for making room there), but they were snapped up by the Eisenhower Presidential Library.

So a lot of records of non-after action events were simply disposed of to make room in various documents facilities.

 

Once again, thanks for the reply and the insight. I am learning a lot about researching and digging up info as I go down this researching rabbit hole. I was in a conversation with a gentlemen a while ago and he asked me how far I wanted to go down the rabbit hole ( how deep I wanted to dig to find info). I still don’t know the answer to that question, but it’s been over 2 years of off and on researching. I feel there is more info out there, just have to find it.

I did reach out to the Eisenhower Library early on when I first started to research the unit and they sent me what they had.

do you think the library at the CGSC / War College would have anything available to the public?

 

Doubt it. They have yet another file copy of the Adjutant General's reports. A better bet would be the Morris Swett Library at Fort Sill and the office of the Historian there at the FA School and Museum. Unfortunately, many records there were also destroyed to "make room", including all the unit firing records from WW II.

 

Received a few photos from a daughter of 270th Medic. This one is PFC Saenz in front of a German POW holding area. PFC Saenz was her father.

 

This one is of CPT Michel

 

Infante and Valadez

 

You guys have been a great help thru this journey researching my Grandfathers WWII unit and I have once again ran into a roadblock I hope someone can help with. I have 2 gaps in the history of the Bn I can not find out about.

1st period: being June of '44. Nothing in the official AARs or anywhere I have found mentions this time period. I am sure there was a lot going on with their deployment into theatre imminent. May '44 they were in England, but did not land on/near Utah Beach until D+48 (24 July)

The 2nd period: Apr '45 to Oct '45. Official AARs stop in Mar '45 and they did not sail home until Oct '45. They were pulling some sort of duties (Guarding POWs?)

 

As of 30 June they were still at Packington in Warwickshire. Given they landed 24 July, they moved to one of the "Sausage Camps" probably c. 14 July, where they would have waterproofed their vehicles and equipment. Loading onto LST would have been around 48 to 72 hours before landing.

As of 1 April 1945, the 270th FA Bn, along with various other units, was attached to the TUSA Provost Marshal as lines-of-communications and security troops. AFAIK, they continued to do so until they returned to the Z/I.

 

Once again I am amazed at the depth of knowledge this community has and once again, I thank you Rich for the info.

 

Pablo Infante was a friend of my dad. Infante was in Battery A. My dad was in Battery C. Both were from Brownsville TX. Mr Infante became. a Department of Public Safety officer of Texas and was stationed here in Brownsville until his passing a few years ago. My dad Gilberto Pineda passed away in 1994.

 

There are a few more photos I received when I got these. I will post more of the photos as I get time. Please share any photos or information your dad may have passed down. V/R ~Brian

 

A couple photos with unknown subjects. some of these photos came for the daughter of Saenz, who was a medic in the Battalion.