[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] passports/identity papers Nov 21

[BETTY LOU WILFERD]

Gary,
  I had looked for three years for my grandfather's  Ellis Island record.  I finally found him in The Baltimore Passenger List 1820-1918 Record.  He also gave his age as 18 (under draft age for the Russian Army) although he was near 28 at the time.  He arrived  Nov 1903, several years before my grandmother and child (Fred RODE, Jr.my father) went to South Dakota. He left from Bremen, Germany and coincidentally went on the same ship, the  Breslau as my grandmother took two years later.  
  My grandfather, Fred RODE Sr. used someone else's passport to get on the ship but used his own name when he arrived at Ellis Island.
  When I checked the history of the Breslau, I found it later was captured from the Germans  in 1917 WWI and became  the USS Bridgeport, transport service.  Was transferred to the US Navy in 1943 and remaned USS Larkspor Hospital service during WWII.
  This hospital ship could very well have docked at the Golden Gate in San Francisco with injured from the war. Donald RODE (Fred RODE Jr.'s son) was in the medical Corp in the Navy stationed in Oakland at that time and he could have seen and even boarded the Larkspor to help take the injured veterans off the ship. If so, this was the same ship his father, grandmother and grandfather took to U.S.
  Betty Lou RODE WILFERD