This is the 4th squad (my squad), the mortar squad. The mortar squad was made up of the driver and the squad leader, two gunners, two ammo bearers, and two riflemen. I was usually a rifleman. In this picture we are somewhere in Bavaria going to occupation duty. Upper left is Peoples, Laflin and Robertson, who were all new to our squad. Allendoerfer is sitting at the left, Colunga appears at the far right, and I'm standing on the hood on the right. There is still a water cooled 30 ca. machine gun mounted on the half track. Soon after this picture, or maybe just prior to this, the Army took all of our ammo and weapons. I can recall still being terrified when they took our ammo as there were still reportedly German troops in the area.
I'm laying on the grass in Germany during training. We were training for the invasion of Japan and I recall that no one I knew celebrated when the Germans surrendered in May 1945, because this probably meant we would be shipped to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan. This isn't a helmet, just a helmet line, I think they even took our helmets.
This shows Sergeant Urbaniak leaning against our half track. He became a Lieutenant near the end of the war, and died in 1990 or so. He was a good guy and strict, one of the best officers I knew.
This is a 60 mm mortar. Our squad had one of these. Theoretically you could fire this twice and on the third round drop the shell on a blanket. It had fair accuracy at 1900 yards, if I remember right, but we usually fired them just a couple hundred yards.