Wow! That did sound like he was giving you the run-around.
Few Engineer Combat Battalions have extant records at company level
Well, you were requesting info on a Battalion; not a company. Gee whiz, guy. And I have the operational reports (not the After Action reports) for the 310th Engeerings, so that guy must be incompetant.
I am sort of surprised at their reply. I'm very interested the best way to go about this. I wonder if it would be cheaper to hire a local researcher to go copy the records I want?
I know a guy who was working on a site for the 88th Division and somehow and somewhere he quickly accumulated the records for his website.
A few months back, I contacted the Smithsonian Museum to ask them for the Serial Number of the German Me-109 that they have at their DC facility. I got a quick email reply that said they were passing my question on to another department and then I got another reply. But I never got an answer. Bummer.
I just wanted them to go out and read the serial number so that I could check it with an aircraft in a book "Air War in Italy; 1944-1945". The book said that an Me-109 that defected from Hungary to Italy was sent to US and ended up in the Smithsonian. That would be interesting to know if the book is right.
Steve