Lawrence P. Belmont (left) with battery-mate James Ryan atop an SCR-268 gun-laying radar set on the former Luftwaffe airfield at Unter Biberg, just south of Munich, Germany, August 1, 1945.“I used to carry everything in my pockets.” Lawrence in front of the hunting lodge in the woods bordering the airfield at Unter Biberg, Germany, July 1945. Another Skylighter, Frank Mercurio, seriously injured himself fooling around with a German bazooka (a “panzerfaust”)he’d found inside. Lawrence picked him up and carried him a mile down a forest road to an aid station.Lawrence with one of the battalion’s prime movers during the time they were holed up in a quarry near an airfield outside of Etain, France, late Fall 1944. “That place was a real mudhole when it rained, and it seemed to rain all the time.”Lawrence at the former Nazi recreation area on the shores of the Cheimsee, Bavaria, July 1945. Note the tour boat partially visible at left. He would return to this same spot 19 years later.Lawrence in the barracks area, Camp Davis, North Carolina, 1943.Enlisted men of A Battery on bivouac in the swamps near Burgaw, North Carolina, July 1943. Such training was designed to get the men ready for duty in the Pacific, but it was their destiny to serve in the ETO instead. Pictured kneeling (left to right) are Jim Convey, John Maher, and George Kenny. Pictured standing (left to right) are Patrick V. Geehan, Julius Markel, Lawrence P. Belmont (holding paper and pointing), unknown (behind mess table), Joe L. Simone, unknown (wearing hat), and Francis J. Caputo (hand on hip next to tree).Two of Lawrence’s battery-mates adjusting the carbon rods inside a searchlight, one of a total of 36 operated by the battalion.
