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Searching In Hopes

This website is in hopes of possibly finding friends of my father who served with him in the U.S. Army in 1943/45 and that may have known him or remember him in some small way.

My name is Richard Raymond Trudeau. I am the son of Sgt. Raymond J. Trudeau, who was from Burlington, Vermont, and was inducted into the Army around March or April, 1943, and was killed in action April 7, 1945 in Hamm-Rhynern Germany.

He served in the 95th Division, 378th Infantry, "I" Company. From one picture I have of him in uniform, he has a patch on the left shoulder that is a circle with red AA inside of it.

In my research, mostly through the internet, I finally found that my father is buried at Netherlands American Cemetery & Memorial Margraten, Netherlands. I did correspond with the cemetery and they sent a picture of his grave and a complete package of information on the cemetery.

I was also very fortunate in meeting a man on the internet by the name of Paul Kater as well as a couple by the name of Mr. and Mrs. Jan de Zwart that live in the Netherlands. After chatting with Paul and telling him that my father was buried at Margraten Cemetery, he made a special trip to the cemetery with his mother and sister; and took pictures and laid flowers on my fathers grave. I will be forever grateful to him and his family for doing this.

Jan de Zwart and his wonderful wife also have made many special trips to see my father and gave him flowers for his grave site and also sent many beautiful photos of this final resting place of so many. Their thoughts, compassion and understanding overwhelms me with emotion and I thank them so very much.

I will forever be grateful to these wonderful people for doing this for me and in hopes that my father knows he has not and never will be forgotten.

Thank you to Gerry Morenski from AWON for sending the aerial pictures of
Margraten National Cemetery.

Photos taken by & courtesy of Jan Saris

~ click on picture to see larger image ~

The photos seen below were taken by Mr. & Mrs. Jan de Zwart for whom I will be forever grateful.

Margraten National Cemetery, Netherlands
Plot K, Row 12, Grave 13

I was five months old when my father was killed in action in Europe so I never had the chance to know my father, but have always wondered "what if" and who he was.

Even though my mother remarried when I was five years old and I was raised by a great step father, my mother still gets upset even though it has been over 60 years and starts to cry whenever I ask about my father. So as not to upset her I just let it go.

Over the years I have been spurred on by old war movies such as the Longest Day and wonder if my father was at any of the locations the movies were about.

But never have I been as excited as I was when I watched the "Band of Brothers" on HBO. And that maybe…just maybe… I can learn about my father through some Army buddies, if I can only find them. During the interviews of the series "Band of Brothers" the members of the 102nd airborne they said that army buddies knew each other better than their families did. Hopefully this website will be that hope in finding anyone of his buddies that knew my father.

The one thing I would also like to learn about is his service record; from the time he was inducted into the Army and where did he go, from location to location, till his death in Germany....I have had a difficult time trying to get his service record since I found out in my research that all the military records were burned on July 12, 1973, in a fire that destroyed approximately 16-18 million at the National Personnel Records Center St. Louis, MO and that many if not all of the records were destroyed.

I have included a small picture gallery of some of my fathers pictures and a few buddies of his that may be of help. I do not know any names of his buddies in the pictures. From one of the pictures, he has a sweat shirt on with the name Fort Eustice on the front which I believe is in Virginia and must have been a training camp.

I realize that the time span of 62 years has passed and the chances of finding anyone is extremely small, but in this world of the internet, miracles have happened.

Meanwhile, if anyone reading this can help with any information, no matter how small please e-mail me at
richard@rtrudeau.com

Postscript

A special thank you to Richard Hunton and Richard E. Sieckman for responding to my search. Both, after seeing the web page have gone beyond my expectations and have provided valuable information that I have been searching for about my fathers location in Europe and the surrounding history of his company. Thank you so very much guys !

And also to the staff of the 95th Division Web Site, for which I am also truly grateful. The guest book entries provided me with the abilities to contact Richard Hunton and Richard Sieckman.