Throwback Thursday - The Notebooks

To clear up some confusion, the Notebook passages posted on Throwback Thursday were written by my father and found by me after he passed away. They were his attempt to tell the family history. He was in his late 80s or early 90s when he wrote them. Today's chapter:

On the mailing tube he wrote to my mother:
#97 The handsome G.I belongs to you.

A lot of the young men in the town were called up. And they welcomed our battalion, 1,000 plus men. We were sent to this place to do one thing. To help write the book from the ground up as air defense. The idea being that when the enemy showed up we would put a light on him and our aircraft would be able to get a good shot on the enemy. Or our anti-aircraft artillery could bring the enemy down.

Every night we would turn out and our aircraft would fly back and forth as we held them in the light while the ground and artillery would be able to shoot it down if it were enemy. We did this for months. The in coming aircraft would do everything they could to get out of our light beams. Eventually the book was written. We did not see it nor how our defense was good or bad.

On the first night we were out, I was first to spot the alleged enemy. Many a night I beat the others. I learned how to follow the sound of the aircraft and where it was coming from and lead it like I was on the ground hunting. The animal would always be running and you shot a little ahead of the animal so that the round would hit when it met the animal. Same thing. It was not difficult to do.

By Alf van Beem [CC0], from Wikimedia Commons