Understanding Dad's information

Thanks for posting. I liked the picture. I fixed it up a bit.

 

You sure do a good job at that andrwoo!

 

I'm learning. Sadly I am color blind so it makes it hard sometimes.

 

Great job, but think that must be as difficult as being a one legged place kicker.
The patch in the original is colored--what happened to the rest of the picture?

 

Wow! Thank you, Andrwoo. Very nice, indeed. I think that was a picture of a picture only because you can see in the copy I posted some blemishes that aren't on the surface of the print I have. It looked like the real original might have had some dust or scratches on it and they got picked up in the copy. The print has a smooth slightly glossy surface with no physical blemishes. I noticed that someone apparently colorized the COMZ patch but didn't do a very careful job of it. Would an Army photographer have done that or was that likely done afterwards with a colored marker? Regardless, thank YOU for cleaning up the picture and giving Dad some color.

Ray

 

If you can do a good scan of your print. Have your scanner on high resolution. Save it as a .tif file. I can play around with it some more. Do a clean black and white version and even try and colorize the whole thing. From what you are saying I would think someone tried to colorize the patch with marker. A photographer wouldn't have done that.

 

Here is a black and white. I replaced the background. Like I said. The better the scan the better it can look.

 

After many more hours of Googling and reading, I've found more information for my puzzle.

My son had a copy of a diary that my father got for him for a school project 20 or so years ago from another 549th AAA Battalion veteran. I'd forgotten about him having that. It covers leaving NY on September 28, 1944 aboard the Highland Monarch, BTW, through August 14, 1945 while they were still in Europe. Unfortunately, it says it's a history of Battery A. Dad was in Battery D. Were they traveling together? I don't know. So some of the details may not relate to my dad. It does say that beginning July 24, many men were being reassigned. That may be when my father was transferred to the Communication Zone.

Adambhoy, what does "according to Stanton" mean? Reason I ask is that the diary says they (549 Btry A) arrived in Bristol England on October 11, Dad's papers (Btry D) say October 10 and you mentioned October 9. Very close. Probably not worth worrying about, but it is curious. Is Stanton a place, a book, a web site?

 

You really are good at that, andrwoo. I've tried editing pictures and changing backgrounds and it always looks like I cut the subject out with dull scissors. My original picture post was of the print scanned on my Canon printer. It scans at 4800 x 9600 in color or b&w. Here's a b&w scan:



I don't know if that's any better than the one you did.

 

Any idea if this is significant? On this page, under Attachments, it lists 549th AAA AW Bn (Mbl) (- Btry D)

Only a couple of entries have minus signs and I know that at least Battery A was attached to the 87th ID so I wonder if that means "549th AAA AW Battalion EXCEPT Battery D"??? In which case, where was Battery D? Argh!

 

That's what I'm guessing about the organization entry.

I see his books now on Amazon. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

I take it then that 549 Battery D was never attached to the 87th ID since that seems to be a list of units that were ever attached them. Was that common? Split a unit, give them both the same Battalion designation, and assign part here and part there? Now I'm even more anxious to see the records of the 549th Battery D at the records center.

I can see where this is going. There was no Battery D. It was a cover for a secret CIA operation and that's why Dad never wanted to talk much about it.

 

Do you know what color his hair and eyes are?

 

I have an appointment at the Records Center here in St. Louis for next Friday. Should be interesting.

 

His docs say blue and brown but I recall more gray (maybe slightly blue?) eyes and black or very dark brown hair.