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Fireman, Second Class, Ralph August Kirkwood, USNR, US Navy
Cutting from the Sioux City Journal,
Saturday, 12 August 1944.
Private, First Class,
3206 Quartermaster Service Company,
538th Quarter Master Battalion (Service),
1st Engineering Special Brigade, US Army

Richard Lee Chamberlain

Service No.: 37659310
Ship Assignment: USS LST531
ABMC Memorial Page: Click Here

Richard Lee Chamberlain was born in Sioux City, Iowa on 26 July 1923 to Edward Brooks Chamberlain and Ruth Elizabeth Chamberlain (nee McTaggart), and had an elder sister named Luella.

A few years later the family moved to Santa Monica in California, where Richard grew up.

Richard then moved back to Iowa between April 1940 and the summer of 1941, where he lived with his father, who had moved back to Sioux City in 1935.

After Pearl Harbor, Richard registered for the draft and enlisted in the U.S. Army at age 19. He was assigned to the 3206th Quarter Master Service Company of the 538th Quarter Master Battalion (Service) and was killed in the early hours of April 28, 1944, when LST 531 was hit by two torpedoes from a German E-boat and sank.

Private, First Class, Richard Chamberlain is memorialised on the Tablets of the Missing at the Cambridge American Cemetery, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

He was awarded a Purple Heart.

Images and information about Richard Chamberlain were kindly provided by Mark R. Terry.

For more information on Pfc Richard Lee Chamberlain, please see the full article by Mark R. Terry here .