Emerson Spears
Rank: Technician 4th Class, U.S. Army
Serial: 32367971
Unit: 31st Signal Construction Battalion
Entered service from: New Jersey
Died:
Burial: Missing in Action or Buried at Sea — Tablets of the Missing, North Africa American Cemetery, Carthage, Tunisia
Awards: Purple Heart
Technician Fourth Class Emerson Spears was born on August 23, 1922 to Norman and Margaret Raine Spears. One of eleven children, he had three brothers and seven sisters. He was killed, along with 1,014 other American servicemen, when the transport HMT Rohna was sunk by a German guided missile in November of 1943.
South Jersey Soldiers Dead and Wounded
Camden Courier-Post —
Two other South Jersey soldiers have been reported killed in action and two others wounded, one of them in the French invasion, while the son of a Merchantville school teacher, previously reported missing, now is listed as prisoner of the Romanians.
Dead: First Lieut. Peter C. Van Gemert, 25, of 2920 Federal street. Techn. 1-G Emerson Spears, 21, of 7 Walnut street, Pennsgrove. Pfc. Louis Howell, 26, of 1144 Louis street.
Wounded: Pfc. John W. O’Neill, 3rd, of Cinnaminson township. S-Sgt. Joseph Joie, of Walnut street, Williamstown.
Prisoner: Lieut. Edmund Cordery, 23, of 126 West Church street, Absecon.
Lieutenant Van Gemert was chosen for the honor guard for the King and Queen of England on their prewar visit to this country.
Spears, a member of the Signal Corps, entered the service a year ago while employed at the du Pont plant at Carneys Point. A notification to his wife, Dorothy, and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Norman Spears, received yesterday, stated he was reported missing Nov. 26 and then reported dead in the sinking of a troopship in the Mediterranean. He attended Pennsgrove High school for two years and is also survived by six sisters and two brothers.