111th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion Photo Album, WWII 212

[Item name or title], [Box Number], [Folder Numbers], 111th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion Photo Album, WWII 212, WWII Papers, Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C.

The collection is composed of materials removed from a photo album-including photographs, a pencil drawing, newspaper clippings, collectible postcards, and soldiers' signatures pages-kept by an unidentified U.S. Army artillery soldier during World War II. The soldier was assigned to serve in the 111th Coast Artillery (Anti-Aircraft) Battalion while it was stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, from 1942 to 1943. He would also serve in the renamed 111th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion when it was stationed at Camp Davis, N.C., from 1943 to 1944. The bulk of the collection is composed of 114 photographs taken while the unit was stationed at Fort Bliss and Camp Davis.

The majority of the photographs were taken while the 111th Coast Artillery Battalion was stationed at Fort Bliss and at a training ground in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The images feature scenes of U.S. Army camp life, antiaircraft artillery training, and scenes around the two military training locations. A number of photographs also feature the unit when it was renamed as the 111th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion and stationed at Camp Davis. The Camp Davis images feature life in the military barracks, training exercises, temporary field camps, operation of artillery guns, and life around the camp between 1943 and 1944. The photographs document the first two years of the 111th's formation and operations in the United States during WWII.

The collection also includes several pages of the names, home towns, ranks, and signatures, of U.S. Army soldiers from the 111th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion who were stationed at Camp Davis in artillery units as of February 4, 1944, before the 111th was reassigned to another duty station. The signatures pages document numerous Army soldiers who knew and served with the soldier keeping the photo album. Many of the soldiers were from the Wisconsin, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. There are two collectible postcards, with one from Camp Davis and one from Europe during the war.

Perhaps the most unique item in the collection is an original pencil drawing of Soviet Union Premier Joseph Stalin. The drawing was made by U.S. Army Pvt. Thom George of the Battery D, 139th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Gun Battalion, at Camp Davis, N.C., on December 30, 1943. The drawing also has his ward number written on it. The drawing was given to the unidentified soldier who owned the photo album.

The collection is arranged based on format of the materials in folders. The photographs are arranged in the order they were stored in the original photo album from which they were removed.

The 111th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion was originally formed as the 111th Coast Artillery (Anti-Aircraft) Battalion within the U.S. Army's Coast Artillery. The unit was stationed at the U.S. Army Coast Artillery's anti-aircraft training center at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, by 1942. The 111th AAA was composed of 1,400 men, and the unit operated 90mm three-inch cannons. The men of the 111th trained in New Mexico on an old Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Alamogordo, New Mexico, about 20 miles north of Fort Bliss. They trained there by firing at tow-targets over the desert in Alamogordo.

In July 1943, the 111th AAA Battalion was moved from Fort Bliss to Savannah, Georgia, for potential deployment to the North Africa Theater. However, during the train journey the unit was stopped in Louisiana, and redirected from their sister AAA units to be assigned to Camp Davis, N.C. At that time, Camp Davis was the Officer Candidate School (OCS) camp, and the 111th AAA Battalion became what was referred to in the U.S. Army as "school troops"-stationed only to an Army training school. The unit was renamed as the 111th Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA) Battalion by the time they were stationed at Camp Davis.

Sometime around late 1943 or in 1944, the 111th AAA Battalion was reassigned to Long Island, New York, to protect the U.S. Army Air Forces' Mitchel Field, and Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation's Grumman Airfield at their main facility on Long Island. Due to a manpower on duty problem that happened during an alert at Mitchel Field, the 111th was sent back down to Camp Davis as a school unit. They remained there for around two to three months, before being transferred to Camp Haan in Riverside County, California. The 111th AAA Battalion was broken down from a fully-mobile unit to a semi-mobile unit after some months spent at Camp Haan, as the war continued to progress and military needs of the U.S. Army changed. Little is known about the unit's deployment overseas during WWII.

The unidentified U.S. Army soldier who owned the photo album contained in this collection was serving in the 111th AAA throughout its entire tenure stationed at Fort Bliss and Camp Davis. The soldier ended up stationed in the European Theater by early 1945, having been stationed in France by February 1945. He would remain stationed in Europe on occupation duty with the U.S. Army after the end of WWII through at least February 1946. Neither his name, home town, rank, or service history in Europe are known beyond this information.

[Historical note based on information provided in an oral history interview with 111th AAA Battalion veteran Leonard Paul Turner of Maryland, conducted for the Library of Congress].

The collection was received by the Military Collection at the State Archives of North Carolina from a private donor in April 2020, with the donation completed in May 2020.