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ALAN A. ATCHISON, JR.

            On the fifteenth of September, the SS Theodore Dwight Weld sailed from Liverpool, England, to join convoy ON-202 en route to New York.  Kings Point Cadet Alan A. Atchison, Jr. was aboard.  As the vessel proceeded in the convoy on station # 21, a U-238 (Hepp) fired a torpedo that struck the port side in the settling tanks opposite the #3 hold.  About twenty seconds later, the engine room exploded and broke the ship into two pieces just forward of the bridge.  The stern sank almost immediately, trapping men below and washing others out to sea.  The eight officers, thirty-four men, and twenty-eight armed guards on board had no time to launch any of the boats or tip the life rafts.  Three doughnut rafts managed to float free of the wreckage.  One of the armed guards remained on the ship’s bow and was later saved by the British rescue ship Rathlin.  Several men managed to cling to the rafts until their rescue.  The Rathlin saved two officers, twenty men, and fifteen of the armed guards.  The majority of those men who lived left the ship wearing a life jacket.  The survivors landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the 28 of September.  Atchison was killed.