Love the battery shots. Years ago, while doing some flight testing for TRW out of LAX, I ended up on TDY billeted at an Army base in San Pedro, Fort MacArthur. My quarters were near a large gun emplacement called Barlow - Saxton. Between filling out reports and doing a lot of statistics in the pre-Excel and Matlab days, when writer's block struck, I would walk out among the batteries and always wonder about this one.
http://www.ftmac.org/Barlow-Saxton.htm
What are these guys doing? Were they thinking of the next smoke break or some girl who lived on Gaffey Street?
Rather than be annoyed by the notion of employing eight 12" mortars in the WWI - early WWII era to defend the harbor, I often thought about who might have been the guys who manned these guns, did guard duty, and all of the things soldiers must do at this location. It's been on my mind ever since. Did they go into San Pedro on leave? Have fights in the bars (there were many) with longshoremen? Did some gorgeous Portuguese girl catch their eye (lots of old time fishing families in the area with beautiful girls guarded by protective brothers)? What hope would they have if the Japanese attacked San Pedro (of all things)? They were probably glad when their tour ended and they could leave. Old forts, batteries, airbases and these things make me wonder alot about the real people who actually endeavored there.
Oddly, the Army started to decommission the thing in 1943, shortly after the start of WWII (at least for the USA).
San