143rd AAA Gun Battalion - Page 38

 

Battery A

The Public Relations Office of our battery is, perhaps, the newest of the battery departments but at the same time, one of the busiest. In order to have the proper means to do our work, Capt. Napier, our BC, provided us with an office that adjoins the main battery offices containing two desks, two typewriters and several filing cabinets for our records.

Helping Sgt. Jacinto in the office are: T/3 Mike Winston, Pvt. Fitzgerald and Pfc. Rudy Vazmina. In the same room with us, is the I and E Dept. headed by T/4 John Davison assisted by Sgt. Eldred Edgar who furnish the information about the Armys educational program and advise interested men about the various schools, courses and books available.

The chief work of the Public Relations Dept. is to publicize our organizations as much as possible with whatever means we are able to do this. Our first assignment was to write news stories of each member of our unit which appear in their home town publications in the states. Our next task was accomplished on July 10, 1945 when, with the aid of the Special Service Dept., we were able to publish a small address book containing the names of all of our men dedicated to the 2nd anniversary of our activation.

We are able to further publicize the organization with our column that appears in The Periscope, a weekly Mosbach publication for all Army organizations of this area.

At the present time, we are very much occupied gathering material that we will incorporate into a battery Year Book that will include: The history of the battery, stories and photos of each section, Sports, Special Activities, the Air Disarmament work, plus cartoons drawn by Mr. Raihofer. If the means are available, we also hope to include the photo of every man in the battery. In order to have complete coverage of the entire battery, each section has been assigned a reporter who is responsible for the material from his section for the Year Book and also for the publicity of his men that appears in the Periscope. The final editing is done by our staff.

Perfect cooperation between officers and enlisted men is the chief reason that athletics have played such an important part in the health, morale, and entertainment of the fellows in our battery. Each man has a certain ability in which he excells and it was the problem of the Special Service non-coms and the officers to find out means to provide opportunities for the men to practice and improve their talents.