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My Father’s Trip to England in 1944 on a Luxury Liner
My father was made Master Sergeant, at age 19, while in the 959th Field Artillery Battalion of the 191st Field Artillery Regiment. He had joined the National Guard in Clinton, Tennessee after graduating High School in 1940. Yank Magazine had a “Diaper” contest for the youngest Master Sergeant and someone had entered him in the contest. He won a trip to the Hollywood Canteen where he danced with Hollywood starlets. One of these was Ava Gardner who had a horrible complexion, he remembered. Alas, Rita Hayworth was not there to make up for it. He hated dancing.
On April 18, 1944, he departed from New York on the Nieu Amsterdam for a voyage of seven days to Firth of Clyde, Greenock, Scotland. The trip was pure misery. (I saw recently that one of the National Review cruises was on a newer version of the Nieu Amsterdam.)
The ship had been a luxury liner but was stripped and fitted for troop transport. The dining room was now a large mess hall and the men slept in tightly spaced hammocks, Navy style. My father says the seas were high for almost the entire trip and most of the troops were violently seasick.
On the first evening, troops were ordered to the mess hall for their first meal, and the floor quickly became covered in vomit. As he was taking this in, one of the kitchen helpers pulled a side of beef over the floor toward the kitchen- right through the vomit. My father said he never set foot again in the mess hall and subsisted the entire week on the many Hershey bars he had brought with him.
Hah! Beautiful Downtown Camp Roberts! My home away from home for most of 25 years. Usually Main Garrison, although rarely in the cantonment area. Occasionally at East Garrison – East Garrison is the ‘burbs.”
Dad took a train from Camp Roberts to Hollywood, and they paid for his brother to go, too.
Love it. So, where was he on his 21st birthday?
Codford Wilts, England!
He spent the last two months of his European vacation in LeMans from July to September, 1945 with the luxury of German servants who shined their shoes and otherwise assisted them in their beach vacay.
According to the article, that would have been the day after D-Day. Had he gone across? Or been part of the planning?
Field Artillery did not cross right away as they needed room to maneuver. They worked behind our lines and shot over our boy’s heads. They crossed on June 24 to Omaha Beach from the Isle of Mann. Then it was go, go, go. He was in Germany by November.
Whoops. Should have seen that above. Thank you.
OMG. A wise move.
The new Nieuw Amsterdam‘s hallways have pictures of the old Nieuw Amsterdam, from the pre-war era. Everyone’s happy; champagne is flowing. No hints of the hell to come. The ship your father took would have been the second of the four to bear the name; it was regarded as the most beautiful ship of its era. Imagine this view, but stripped and full of seasick soldiers.
The history of the liners’ repurposing for troop transport is fascinating. The Olympic, a sister ship of the Titanic, was stripped and remade for shuttling soldiers about. The third sister, the Britannic, never saw civilian life; it was requisitioned as a hospital ship, and in 1916 it hit a mine and sank. Why there’s no big-screen Hollywood movie about the disaster I cannot imagine; it’s literally Titanic 2. With nurses!
I’m trying to imagine the mechanism by which a 19 year old becomes a master sergeant.
Service is not for the weak – especially service at sea. The ocean will try to kill you if you stay out long enough, never mind the damn enemy. Anyone who’s lived on a warship smaller than a battle wagon will remember the ride. It’s not the construction or the design that’s at fault; it’s that fighting ships don’t get to drive around heavy weather. Not even repurposed cruise liners.
Add in the necessary overcrowding of a troop transport and it must been a nightmare. We certainly wouldn’t subject illegal immigrants to that kind of treatment, but they’re special.
One can’t help but imagine Cap’n Billy Kristol packed into a troop carrier and sent to fight overseas at the head of a company of neocons. Heh heh. Hahahhah! Now that’s comic relief.