Army 'Book of Memories'

James Frank Alban Sr
1925-2008
143rd AAA Gun Battalion - WWII

About This Site

This website is based on a book that I found among my dad's possessions after his death June 1, 2008. Dad used the book to keep up with a lot of the men that he served with in Europe during WWII. He made a lot of notations in the margins. He also used the blank pages in the back of the book to record some of his own experiences in journal fashion.

The book itself is a hand-out created by the members of the 143rd and distributed after the war as a keepsake. It could possibly be the Year Book mentioned on Page 38. It was printed by a company in Esslingen, Germany, but I could find no copyright information within its pages.

Included in its 70 pages are historical accounts, told by the men of the 143rd, of their training in California, their important role in the Battle of the Bulge and their recreational activities after the war. The last 20 pages include the Address Book ( mentioned on Page 38 ) of all the men in the Battalion.

When I started the site my intention was simply to scan and post the pages of the book. Because of the poor quality of most of the scans, I enlisted the help of my wife and her typing skills and together we reconstructed the text.

I made very few editing corrections, adding them only when they made the meaning of the text more understandable. Those edits are placed in italic. I did add some extra paragraph breaks to make the text easier to read online.

The book survived two major floods, while we were living in a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland and there is some water damage. Page 15 was the only one damaged enough that we could not read all of the text.

Jim Damewood of Pennsylvania, whose dad , Pfc James R Damewood of Battery C and a Red Ball driver, was kind enough to send me a clean copy of that page.

This website is dedicated, not only to my dad, but to all of the brave men of the 143rd AAA Gun Battalion who were called to a foreign land to stand against the tide of tyranny.