A correction on the Ancestry.com record of the serial number for William J. Nicholas, S1/c, SS ROBERT LUCKENBACH, arriving New York 29 March 1945. The correct serial number is 610 33 73.

This is the same serial number as that assigned to a William John Nicholas, S1/c, arriving New York on 19 April 1943 aboard SS LAWTON B EVANS. This is irrelevant to your question except to confirm the middle name John. Note that there was another Armed Guard sailor named William Jesse Nicholas, who therefore could have also been identified as William J. Nicholas, and it is easily possible to mis-identify the two men and their records.

Therefore I will assume the full name of the author of the original message in this string is William John Nicholas, and that he served in ROBERT LUCKENBACH and possibly THOMAS WOLFE during the period December 1944 to June 1945. The Ancestry.com record for William J. Nicholas aboard THOMAS WOLFE does not include a serial number. Therefore we cannot be sure whether the William J. Nicholas in THOMAS WOLFE was William John or William Jesse Nicholas.

Other pages in the Ancestry.com record for THOMAS WOLFE, however, indicate the ship left Newport, Wales, on March 28, 1945, one day before ROBERT LUCKENBACH arrived in New York. Therefore it is unlikely that the William J. Nicholas aboard THOMAS WOLFE was William John Nicholas but more likely was William Jesse Nicholas.

My conclusion, unless the author of the original message is NOT named William John Nicholas, is that he served in ROBERT LUCKENBACH but NOT in THOMAS WOLFE.

Ron Carlson, Webmaster