in high gear. Many a British lassie gave her heart to one of the boys. And some of the boys paw their hearts to British lassies too. Reading was quite a popular place with Oxford and Stoke Row running a close second. There were plenty of passes to London too that were taken advantage of.
Seems as though everyone in the 440th had had a date at Rainbow Corner at some time or other. Invariably she was the sweetest little thing this side of heaven or at least so the story generally goes.
All the time in Checkendon wasn't spent in seeing how much fun we could have, no indeed. "A" Battery was living in a tent city at the lower end of camp and had to go to no end of work in order that the place might be habitable. It took a lot of work but they made it in fine shape. That's still a touchy subject with Able today.
Out at Mount Farms a few miles north of camp there was a very cooperative bunch of Air Corps pilots. So we got our first crack at real fast tracking. The way those pilots came buzzing down from the clouds and skipping over our guns was something to talk about. Some of the pilots came over to the guns one fine day wondering if the American AA could hit the broad side of a barn door. After watching the 40's in action and trying the M-51's themselves they went away convinced that AW was a mighty potent weapon. With reference to an M-51 a P 51 pilot was heard to remark, ''I may have eight guns and they may fire faster than those but I'm not just about to tangle with one. I want to be sure to go home."
During our stay at Checkendon we were under the 12th AAA Group. But not for long. For training we had a number of practice convoy moves all around England. Two of them were of particular interest to us. One was to the Assault Training Center and the other to Wales where we had target practice on a British firing range. They had plenty of targets knocked down the short time we were there. Some of those training aids they had were outstanding. That big dome-like affair with simulated targets was especially good. It almost seemed as though you were firing at a real plane. Some-thing else that was well remembered by us was the abundance of scotch and beer in the nearby town of
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