Ships
- USS Bobolink (AM-20) Lieutenant, 5 December 1943 – 30 August 1944
Elmar Louis Alfred Rau, a lieutenant, commanded Bobolink from 5 December 1943 to 30 August 1944. NavSource spells all three given names and gives both dates.
Birth, home, and family were not found.
No academy class and no earlier ship are on the line. He relieved Ensign Fulton Glen Reed.
He took a ship that was still towing in the South Pacific. Her history says that work, from Guadalcanal, Espiritu Santo, and Noumea, lasted until February 1944. She reached Long Beach on 4 March 1944 for overhaul and was back at Pearl Harbor on 29 June. On 15 May 1944, while he is the captain NavSource lists, she was reclassified an old fleet tug, AT(O)-131 in NavSource's form and ATO-131 in a Wikipedia rendering of her history. The DANFS interim entry does not mention that reclassification. After 29 June she served in Hawaiian waters. His tour ended on 30 August 1944, when Reed returned as a lieutenant (junior grade). The history's phrase "until the fall of 1945" runs well past Rau.
No later command or date of death was found.