Very nice jacket! I think the first name is August (Aug).

The family did not know.

Here is what i was able to find in the national archives in about 15 minutes. I types in his ASN but made sure to use a “zero” instead of an “O” (0270381).    it would appear your man was in the Quartermaster corps and soent some time in Sicily and Italy before returning to the states for a training assignment in May 1944  

I think I know where this sword's twin lives. It'll be Saturday before I can get over there, but I'll get pics when I do.

I did a search of his ASN in the national archives catalog search, and this was all that came up.  I was unable to get a hit on his serial number in NARA or wwii-enlistment.com. I tried entering his name and first 2 initials in findagrave.com as well, but didn’t find anything conclusive.   

Here’s a made-in-the-Philippines Masonic buckle:     First word should be “Depew” not “Dephew”. This lodge is located in Lancaster, NY.

Bodes, you are mostly correct.  According to the GREAT aznation, his service number 1079023.  It's difficult to read his writing. Thank you, Matt.  You are the best!!

I would think you will need to make one.  Best I remember they are pretty basic 3/4” wide cotton twill or HBT tape like “engineer tape”.

In other news, just caught a physical copy of TM 11-487F, the 1951 Directory of US Army Signal Corps Photographic Equipment.    Means I no longer need to dig out the PDF-copy I have, every time I need to look something up.  There was still a lot of WW2-period camera/darkroom equipment in the inventory by the 1950s, described in this manual. 

Does someone of you know what unit this is ? The seller described it as a "Repro" E Battery 19th Artillery , but I never saw this before. Thanks in advance for your help.