As you are aware, this incident was discussed earlier on the Armed Guard message board, beginning with a message dated August 25, 2009, from Howard A. Monical, Sr., who was one of your late uncle's shipmates. See http://members.boardhost.com/armedguard/msg/1251252525.html. That message thread includes a message from you dated today. It also includes a message from me, also from 2009, in which I listed all of the Armed Guard crew aboard CHRISTOPHER GADSDEN upon her return to New York from Antwerp, following the V2 rocket attack of the theater in which your uncle was killed. Mr. Monical was included in that list.
On the Armed Guard crew list, three names were crossed out, without explanation. The three names were that of your uncle, George Joseph Conners, another was a William Freeman Hagerty, Jr., who was also killed in the same incident (as confirmed by another message in the thread referenced above), and the third was Charles William Leng (or Long) who may also have been killed in the attack.
It is possible that Mr. Monicle is still living. His e-mail address as of the 2009 message thread was hamsr@mchsi.com. For a current street address and telephone number for a person with the same name, see http://www.switchboard.com/name/Howard-A-Monical-Sr/Fisher-IL/8xk14w1. Other than Mr. Monical and one other possible surviving crewman noted in my 2009 message, I do not know whether other men from the Armed Guard crew list are still living, nor do I have contact information for any of the men on the list.
The crew list comes from a search of the subscription website Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com). Ancestry.com is more commonly used for genealogical research but I have found that it contains databases on the names of crew and passengers that arrived at U.S. ports of entry over many years aboard ships having made a foreign voyage. There is particularly extensive information for the port of New York through about 1957. If you are interested, Ancestry.com occasionally offers a two-week free trial subscription. You have to enter a credit card number to create an account but if you do the same search I did and cancel your account within 14 days, you would be able to get all of the same information I saw and examine it in greater detail, for free. You could also search for your uncle’s name from earlier voyages, since he may have served in other ships. Subscription details are available on the Ancestry.com home page. It appears that the trial subscription is not currently available (maybe Ancestry.com has been trying to encourage purchase of paid subscriptions as holiday gifts); a regular one-month subscription is $20. So either wait for the trial subscription offer to appear again or pay the $20. Or not.
Good luck.
Ron Carlson, Webmaster
Armed Guard / Merchant Marine website
www.armed-guard.com
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