William Blauvelt Attwood (b. 3 May 1924 d.27 Sep 1994), son of Edward Allison Attwood and Grace Blauvelt (military records indicate the last name as Atwood) William, serial number 809-39-02 enlisted 23 Feb 1943 in the US Navy during World War II. He served on the USS General George O. Squier (AP130) as a Hospital Corpsman in the rank of HA1c. He left the service on 5 Feb 1946. The ship William was on saw a lot of action in the Pacific, Far Eas and European theaters. The USS General G. O. Squier made three round-trip, troop-carrying voyages out of San Francisco from 29 October 1943 to 30 March 1944 to Nouméa; Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Wallis Island, Samoa, Nouméa, and Honolulu, respectively. On 1 July the ship departed with 3,300 troops for Italy, and debarked them at Naples. Following that, the ship joined off Naples 13 August in preparation for Operation Dragoon, the amphibious invasion of Southern France. Arriving off Cap Camarat 15 August, she debarked her troops into waiting LCIs which put them ashore to become another deadly prong thrust deeply into Hitler’s Heartland. The next day she headed for Oran to bring nearly 3,000 troops back to the Cap Camarat beachhead on 30 August. General G. O. Squier returned to New York 26 September with casualties and prisoners of war embarked at Naples. From 14 October 1944 to 14 September 1945, she made 10 transatlantic, troop-carrying and rotation voyages: 7 from New York, 2 from Norfolk, and 1 from Boston, to ports in the United Kingdom (Plymouth, Southampton, and Avonmouth) and France (Le Havre and Marseilles). Between 20 September 1945 and 18 June 1946, six other round-trip, Magic-Carpet voyages out of New York at wars end brought home veterans from the Far East (Karachi, Calcutta, and Colombo) and Europe (Le Havre, Leghorn, and Bremerhaven). General G. O. Squier reached Norfolk 22 June and decommissioned 10 July 1946. Operation Dragoon. Operation Dragoon was the Allied invasion of southern France on 15 August 1944, during World War II. The invasion was initiated via a parachute drop by the 1st Airborne Task Force, followed by an amphibious assault by elements of the U.S. Seventh Army, followed a day later by a force made up primarily of the French First Army. The landing caused the German Army Group G to abandon southern France and to retreat under constant Allied attacks to the Vosges Mountains. Sources: Blauvelt Genealogical Website Ancestry Fold3 US Navy Source at navsource.org/archives/09/22/22130.htm William Breuer, Operation Dragoon: The Allied Invasion of the South of France, Presidio Press, 1996 Steven J. Zaloga, Operation Dragoon 1944: Frances other D-Day, Osprey Publishing Ltd, 2009
Posted on: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 21:03:56 +0000
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