601st AAA Gun Battalion (semi mobile)

New to the site and wanted to reach out to anyone whose father, grandfather, uncle or whomever might have served with either A, B, C, D or HQ Battery of the 601st. My Dad was with D Battery or Dog as he called it. I have accumulated a fair amount of information over the years and willing to share with anyone interested. Have scanned so can easily email if interested.

RH Holder

 

Welcome, RH Holder. I recommend sharing some stories of your Dad's service in this thread. The more active it is, the more likely someone interested in the 601st will find it. That is, of course, assuming that he talked about his service.

 

Dear RH Holder,

I work at Fort Fisher State Historic Site in Kure Beach, NC and I am interested in finding out more about the 601st AA AW Bn. Over the last year, I have started researching the role Fort Fisher played as a Anti-Aircraft Artillery firing point during the war. The 601st was one of 47 AAA units that trained here between late 1941 and early 1945. Currently, I have managed to put together some basic information on some of the units (mainly the 557th, 558th, and 559th AAA Aw Bns) that were here as well as information on the life of a soldier stationed at Fort Fisher.

I am looking to build information about the training and activities of the units after leaving Fort Fisher. I would be interested to share any information regarding what soldiers thought of Fort Fisher and some of the activities that were going on down here.

 

My grandfather is Private Laron Self. He served with the 601st AAA Company B. I would love to have a chronological order of towns the unit visited. After 73 years, my grandfather still has nightmares and doesn't talk about it too much. I do know he ate at a restaurant in Paris. He and his buddies ordered steak that turned out to be horse steak instead of beef steak. Also one of his buddies had family in Czech Republic, so they snuck into the country to check on the family. My grandfather had reddish hair which friends back home called him "Red". He also wore a rooster pin he purchased in France.

 

Laron Self would also write letters for those who couldn't write.

 

Good afternoon Misty. i have some information that you might like. over the years i collected a lot of 601st AAA Gun Battalion documents. I did a quick search and found a letter dated 13 June 1945 that named all the soldiers that were awarded the Good Conduct Medal. Found your grandfather's name, but one thing you might find interesting, is he is listed in Battery A. feel free to email me at Rhholder@sbcglobal.net and i will be happy to share this information with you. there is a lot including all the locations for each unit that i have been able to convert to latitudes and longitudes which you can input into Google Earth and see where there were located. RH Holder