They went back to Lucky Strike for the remainder of their tour. As I mentioned in the first post, their duties at Lucky Strike were to process out bound soldiers. The letters home were filled with how busy they were trying to keep the soldiers moving through, wondering how much longer they would have until the points number dropped enough so they could go home, and whether they would be shipped to the Pacific Theater.
I'll post some photos of their training prior to going over seas. He was at Camp Callahan, CA where he was an artillery battery commander.
I am not familiar with these weapons - any help would be appreciated!
Edit: Juker identified these as the Browning M-1917 30. Cal. Water-Cooled Machine Gun
Edit 12/27/2011: The mysterious box on the tripod was identified as a "Director" - "The director could also be used to aim the AA gun in place of using hand cranks. It was a steel box full of gears, approximately four cubic feet. It sat on a tripod, which also had a leveling mechanism. There was a scope on each side, and the trackers stood on the ground looking through the scopes instead of sitting on the gun seats. The director was usually located about 15 feet from the gun. It had to be coordinated with the gun by sighting both of them on some distant object and then locking them together. The trackers had 6-inch diameter wheels located next to the scopes that were rotated to keep their cross hairs on a moving target. The gears in the box were supposed to build in a lead on a target so if you were tracking a plane, the projectile would be fired out early enough to allow lead-time to reach the plane." - Courtesy Bob Gallhager website:
http://www.gallagher.com/ww2/chapter3.html.