| OCR Text |
Show Claude Mackelprang With Famed Wig Gun ! Unit In Geimany i 6th. Army Group, Germany The big 240-mm howiters cf the 697th Field Artillery Battalion, which fired their first round on i Italy's Cas.sino front ever a year n;.To, recently sent their 20,000th round representing 7.300.000 lbs of shell crashing into German positions posi-tions fronting U. S. Seventh Army troops in General Jacobs' 6th Army Group. , These 24?'s helped destroy the famous Sinserhoff fcrtereps, bas-, bas-, tion of the Miiglnot Line before Bitche, Franch. The battalion's ob-! ob-! server went forward with infantry I troops and was filed on by the for I tress's gunners while directing fire I from a position 1,000 yards away. ' Twelve direct hits reduced the 10-ft. concrete walls and brought the sur-j sur-j viving Germans running out to sur-I sur-I render. I The 697th is a descendant of Alexander Hamilton's Battery of the Revolutionary War and was the first 240-mm. howitzer unit in action ac-tion in Wrld War II It has put I 331 days in the line flnce the first shell fired on Jan. 30, 1914, in Italy. I Prime Minister Winston Churchill I fired one of its guns on German .position north cf Pisa, Italy. Cul. crude D Mackelprang, son I of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Mackelprang of Cedar City Is a member cf the j battalion. I Boyd Edwards, son of Mr. and j Mrs. Claude Edward, is home on furli.ugh this week. |
