For what it's worth, this is a list of the Armed Guard crew aboard SS HENRY H RICHARDSON on its arrival in New York City on 18 January 1945, having sailed from Cardiff, Wales, on 3 January, and from Cherbourg, France, on or about 23 December 1944. There were also 42 civilian merchant marine sailors and officers aboard, whom I have not listed.
The Armed Guard crew included John Kauten, whom I presume is your father. The men were between the ages of 18 and 42 (Ralph Owen was the oldest); most were between 18 and 21. John Kauten was age 20, a seaman 1st class, he had a year of sea time behind him, he was supposedly of Scandinavian descent but a U.S. citizen, and he was 5'10" and 155 lbs. The Armed Guard crew had joined the ship in Philadelphia on 10 November 1944, with the merchant crew arriving on various dates about the same time.
The ship subsequently left New York on or about 2 February, arrived in Norfolk, Virginia, on 4 February, and was scheduled to sail on an unspecified date for an unspecified destination later in February. Convoys departing Norfolk often sailed to the Mediterranean, so it may have been on that voyage that your father ended up on a camel.
Indeed, the ConvoyWeb website (http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/ugs/index.html ) shows that HENRY H RICHARDSON was one of 55 merchant ships with six warship escorts in convoy UGS-75, which departed Hampton Roads (i.e., Norfolk) on 17 February and arrived Gibraltar on 4 March. UGS convoys typically continued on to Port Said, Egypt.
HENRY H RICHARDSON later appears in convoy GUS-79, Oran, Algeria, to Hampton Roads, 23 March to 9 April, 1945 (http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/gus/index.html).
Below are the names of his ship mates. You may want to see if you can locate any of them, since I have no contact information on them, nor do I even know which ones are still living if any. You may want to check the more unusual names first against the Social Security Death Index (http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/) to see if you can identify any who have died. Any you cannot find in the Social Security Death Index, check against an online telephone directory like White Pages (http://www.whitepages.com/) to look for current contact information. The more common names you will not be able to trace definitively.
Arthur arrette
Nick Biangamano
Elwood De Weese
Donald Garlock
Ard Gwinner, ENS, Armed Guard commanding officer
George Hasek
Everett Hatt
George Jones
Frank Justison
Fred Kasperson
John Kauten
James Kay
John Kearney
Lester Kidd
James King
Aza Morris Lake Jr.
James Lamonica
Joseph Lee
John Malvey
William Nagle
Donald Neumann
Ralph Owen
Dominisk Rossi
Forrest Sanxter
Charles Shultz
Thomas Thornton
John Lowry, 2nd LT, US Army, Cargo security officer
Good luck.
Ron Carlson, Webmaster
Armed Guard / Merchant Marine website
www.armed-guard.com
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