From time to time over the past eight decades, Bill Eiserman has stopped by Langendorf Park in Barrington, reliving the day he and his older brother witnessed what is now called the "Battle of Barrington," an intense shootout between FBI agents and notorious gangster Baby Face Nelson.

Although he was just 6 at the time, Eiserman, now 87, can vividly recount the terrifying sights and sounds he witnessed just a few hundred feet from the gunfight that left two agents and Nelson dead.

"We got down there fairly close, and some officer or adult of some kind said, 'You kids better get the hell out of here,'" recalls Eiserman, who now lives in Lake Villa. "We were scared to death. We didn't know what the heck was going on.'"

Eiserman and his then 10-year-old brother, Bob, wandered upon the real event Nov. 27, 1934, while delivering magazines to businesses along what was then Route 12, now Route 14. The two young boys had to work because Eiserman's father died two years earlier, leaving the family without a breadwinner during the Great Depression.

The pair spotted a Barrington police officer standing in the middle of the road and firing a machine gun into the air trying to stop traffic.

"Being kids, we wanted to find out what was going on. We thought maybe it was an automobile accident," Eiserman said.

"We got partway down (the road) and saw what looked like fireworks going on and we thought, 'Why would there be fireworks going on?'."

Those fireworks were the gunshots between Baby Face Nelson, then 25 years old and considered Public Enemy No. 1, John Paul Chase, a member of his gang, and FBI agents Samuel P. Cowley and Herman E. Hollis.

According to an FBI account, agents on a stakeout earlier that afternoon had spotted Nelson, his wife and Chase driving in Wisconsin. About 3:15 p.m., Cowley and Hollis caught up with the criminals in Barrington.

Nelson pulled off the roadway at the entrance to the park, and he and Chase opened fire as the agents stopped their car about 150 feet away, according to the FBI account. During the ensuing gunfight, Chase, Cowley and Nelson all suffered fatal gunshot wounds, though Baby Face managed to drive away from the scene with his wife and Chase.

Eiserman said he and his brother were crawling in a ditch on the side of the road, toward where they could see the flashes of gunfire, when they saw Baby Face's getaway car speed off. Nelson would die later that night and was dumped in a ditch near a cemetery, according to the FBI.

Herman E Hollis