110th AAA: Driving Hitler's Crawlin' Coffin

About the Book

“Hitler’s Crawlin’ Coffin” was an eighteen-ton M-4 high-speed artillery tractor that crept up out of the surf onto Dog-Green Omaha Beach hauling a 90mm anti-aircraft gun and its crew for the 110th AAA Battalion during the D-Day invasion of Europe. Landing on the beach with elements of the 29th Infantry Division and later supporting the 30th Infantry Division in the breakout of St. Lo, the 110th AAA would become the FIRST 90mm Gun Battalion to shoot down a German plane on French soil, the first American AA unit to enter Paris, chosen to guard First Army Headquarters at Spa, Belgium, and then go on to distinction during the Battle of the Bulge and, later, in the protection of the Remagen Bridge. Although Driving Hitler’s Crawlin Coffin begins with the induction of one person into the 110th AAA, it illustrates how his situation was typical of all its members and then goes on to chronicle the entire history of the battalion from its inception at Camp Edwards on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in April 1943, through its combat history of WWII, to its deactivation in Germany in October 1945, all based on many first-hand accounts from interviews of the veterans, themselves, and a wide range of additional primary sources and previously unpublished material such as military records and archives, morning reports, individual, battery, and battalion awards and commendations and soldiers’ letters, diaries, and memoirs.(323 pp, 40 photos, battalion roster, notes, bibliography, index)

About the Author

Lonnie R. Speer is an author and historian with dozens of newspaper and magazine articles and three books to his credit – A Brief History of Meacham Park (St. Louis, MO: pvt. pub., 1995), Portals to Hell, The Military Prisons of the Civil War (Stackpole Books, HB, 410 pp., 1997), and War of Vengeance, Acts of Retaliation Against Civil War POWs (Stackpole Books, HB, 190 pp., 2002). The two latter were chosen as Alternate Choices for the History Book Club.