John Campbell Moore

Private, U.S. Army Air Forces
11095722
Company B, 853rd Engineer Battalion, Aviation

Entered service from: Connecticut
Died: November 26, 1943
Mediterranean Sea

Missing in Action
Tablets of the Missing
North Africa American Cemetery
Carthage, Tunisia

Awards: Purple Heart

John Moore, a good woodsman and mechanic, applied for duty with the Corps of Engineers when he enlisted in the Army on September 23, 1942. He was assigned to Company B, 853rd Engineer Battalion and was stationed at Bradley Field, Windsor Locks, Connecticut, from September 1, 1942, until January 1943. Then he was transferred to the Dyersburg Army Air Field in Tennessee where he served until August 1943.

Moore went overseas about September 13. His battalion was attached to the Army Air Forces in the Mediterranean theater and had the task of taking over captured airfields and repairing them for the use of the American Army. Often his duty was performed in advance of other fighting troops. Moore met his death on November 26, 1943, while troops were being transported on board the H.M.S. Rohna. The Rohna was sunk off the coast of Africa near Bone, Algeria. Bomb damage from an air attack, heavy seas, and darkness hampered rescue work. More than half the 1,981 men aboard the ship died.

A person of unusual gentleness and kindness, devoted to his family and his friends, from early childhood sensitive, thoughtful and intelligent, John Moore, as he grew up, was, more often than most people of his age, puzzled and bewildered by the senseless avarice and violence that he perceived in the world into which he had been born…. Having chosen a strenuous and dangerous branch of the Army, he served with constancy and cheerfulness.

— Alumni Horae, St. Paul’s School

For information, visit the Rohna Survivors Memorial Association.