WW2 Cdn Army Repatriation

[David Dunlop]

I was looking into some family history this evening and ran across a possible relative that showed up in a 1946 US Immigration Record. When I checked it, I discovered it was a neatly typed 9 page document titled Canadian Army Military District No. 10 Repatriation Depot. It did not indicate where this depot was located, but the list was dated 04 February 1946. The names on the list were in A - Z order by Surname and included Service Number, Rank and Regiment and home residence, along with a couple of other notations. US Immigration had dated the list 20 February 1946 at the New York City Port of Entry and the ship was Queen Elizabeth.

I had always assumed repatriated Canadian Military personnel came back via a Canadian Port, but it looks like this group at least returned via New York City. No indication if they reboarded the Queen Elizabeth to travel by sea from New York to somewhere in Canada, or went by train from New York to Canada.

Thought I would pass this along in case anyone else was doing similar research.


David

[charlie fitton]

Kinda makes sense - the St Lawerence would have been mighty frozen by then and the train system from the East coast could have been working to it's limits.

Also - Why tie up a resource like The QE plodding up a river when it's best used in a straight line on the open ocean?

I knew a wounded officer that was headed back to UK through NY as the war ended.

Never thought about this much before - thanks..

[Mark W. Tonner]

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

. . . Canadian Army Military District No. 10 Repatriation Depot. It did not indicate where this depot was located, . . .

David;

Military District No. 10 Repatriation Depot, was co-located with No. 10 District Depot, in Winnipeg. As to why New York, the Queen Elizabeth carried both Canadian and American military personnel, on the same trip. Cheers

[Gordon Yeo]

My Mother was CWAC and went to the U.K. in 1944 in a convoy, on a small boat bobbing all over the North Atlantic for two weeks. Not a comfortable trip. When she came home in 1946 she was on the Queen Elizabeth and landed in New York. It seems that quite a few Canadians landed in New York and returned home to Canada by rail.

[David Dunlop]

I guess it would be best not to look at these kinds of documents late at night!

I went back to relocate it and discovered it is actually a 1,178 page tome, covering all arrivals 20 Feb 1946 and 21 Feb 1946 in the Port of New York. All Canadian Military personnel were either processed through No. 1 (not the '10' I originally thought) CDN REPATRIATION DEPOT, or NO. 4 CDN REPATRIATION DEPOT. All processing at these locations appears to have been done 08 Feb 1946. Still no location ID's for these depots.

On 20 Feb 1946, the following ships arrived at New York:

Queen Elizabeth - no departure port shown
Monarch of the Sea - Bordeaux
Mount Royal Park - Puerto la Cruz
Sea Triton - Cristobal
Silverteak - Dundee
Stevenson Taylor - Cardiff
Woodbridge Victoria - Le Havre
C. F. - T.D.L.
N.C. - 21758
N.C. - 28324
N.C. - 37468
N.C. - 45342
N.C. - 88838
N.C. - 88883
N.C. - 88886
N.C. - 88887

The numbered vessels (no idea what they would be) came from the following ports:

Paris
Lisbon
Hurn

On 21 February 1946 the following ships arrived at New York:

Bernard Carter - Bremerhaven
Cape Isabel - Bombay
Cecil N. Bean - Barry
Esso Raleigh - Aruba
George Washington - Le Havre

Included with the military personnel travelling on each ship was a crew manifest for each vessel. As previously mentioned, the military personnel were sorted by last name. Officers listed first, followed by other ranks. The additional notes I had initially seen turned out to be medical references, for those personnel repatriated for those reasons.

Gordon:

What was your Mum's full name at that time, I will take a look and see if she is listed, if you like.

David

[David Dunlop]

I have been playing with this file a little bit more.

21 ships carrying troops arrived in New York over this two day period. The crew manifests for each ship averaged two pages per ship. There were four lead in pages and two end pages for the entire volume. Factor out these 48 pages and you are left with 1,130 listing returning Canadian military personnel (Alien Immigrants).

Taking a random sample of 10 pages, that worked out to an average of 24 names per page (range was 2 - 36). That means 27,120 Canadian personnel arrived in New York in two days. Where would they all have been housed and how the heck would they have been moved from there to Canada? That is a lot of bodies for any rail system. The larger vessels may have made a return trip back to Europe with returning POW's, but some of the smaller ones must have been used to ferry many of the troops up the East Coast to various Canadian ports along with some rail transport.

Anyone know what those coded ships might have been all about? To the best of my limited sea going knowledge, all ships typically were referenced by name.


David

[Gordon Yeo]

David
I have sent a PM

[David Dunlop]

I should have seen this earlier, but did not recognize the data for what it actually was, because of the surrounding maritime data.

What I assumed to be mysterious 'numbered ships' are in fact Civil Aviation Registration Numbers for a Trans Canada Airlines Douglas Aircraft of some unknown model and a series of Colonial Aircraft from the United States all delivering passengers to La Guardia Airport in New York in the same time period as the previously mentioned ships arrived in port. All passenger processing was apparently done by the same local Immigration Office and merged for the day.

The aviation passengers all seem to be British, Polish, Czech, Russian, Canadian and American. None have any military ID, but all seem to have an 'Exempt' Customs Status. Most are travelling on some sort of business, although a 'housewife' does show up. Where they have to declare where they have been recently, odd places show up like Cairo, Egypt and Bogota Columbia. They all seem to know two or more languages.

David

[Grant Bowker]

You may already have checked this - in the Canadian Civil Aircraft Registration database http://wwwapps2.tc.gc.ca/Saf-Sec-Sur...en/history.asp CF-TDL does not show any records far enough back to be useful. My thoughts for type are that they are unlikely to have been using DC-3 for oceanic flight. and DC-6 first flew 1946 so I think DC-4 or C-54 is most likely. U.S. FAA registration database is at http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinqu...t_inquiry.aspx but on first glance only gives curent information, not historical.
I don't know enough about Customs rules to define "exempt" but wonder if they are people who would currently be classed "diplomatic".

[David Dunlop]

Hello Grant.

I had thought of those sites but not got around to having a look. Turns out Colonial Airlines was a Canadian operation initially, flying Fairchilds in Canada, but very quickly in the 1930's built up a fleet of DC-3's routing between Montreal, Ottawa, New York La Guardia and Washington DC. By war's end, they had added the Douglas C54 to their fleet. All these aircraft were registered in the USA for some reason. By 1946, Bermuda was added to their routes and shortly thereafter, they were merged with Eastern Airlines.

The only registration I could trace was for NC-88887. This was a Douglas C54E-DC Serial # 27289. The registration was cancelled 17 Jan. 1990.

David

[Wayne McGee]

My father returned in six days aboard the Aquitania on 04 (or 05?) JUN 1946 to Halifax under far superior conditions than his sixteen day trip over on the SS Volendam. The Aquitania had many war brides and their children on board