The Long Voyage Home

There are some event that are fixed in my memory as if they happened yesterday while others seem to have gradually faded. I'm convinced that events, especially those that were "life-threatening", were permanently imprinted in my memory and will probably never fade. Those experiences which I have related in this web site were of that nature and mostly involved flying into battle over enemy territory.
This story is about an experience that was every bit as terrifying as fighting enemy aircraft or dodging flak but is an experience that occurred after my 30 mission tour was completed.

I had completed my final mission on March 23, 1945 and spent the next few weeks taking it easy on the base and sightseeing in England while awaiting orders to return home. I was the first of our crew to complete a tour and thus the first to leave Glatton. I had great difficulty bidding farewell to those men to whom I had become so closely attached over the past eighteen months, some of whom still had missions to fly to complete their tour. There was a strong feeling that fate would prevent me from ever seeing some of them again.....a feeling that was to become a reality. Since that day of parting in 1945, and until 1997, I have seen or talked to only five of our former crew of ten. We all survived the war but five of our crew have died of natural causes since.
My orders finally arrived sometime in mid April for transport from the ETO to the USA.
From Glatton, I proceeded by train to a camp in the center of Britain called "Stone" - somewhere between Oxford and London. I can't account for that name but it sort'a describes the place......it was a huge camp of wood dormatory-style buildings where thousands of military personnel were collected together to await the formation of a convoy of ships to cross the Atlantic. While at Stone we were not allowed off base and the boredom of doing nothing soon began to take it's toll.
The wait in this camp seemed interminable. I remember that one of the things I was assigned to do while at Stone was to censor v-mail letters that were going from England to the USA. Reading someone else's mail seemed voyeuristic to me and I never got any pleasure out of it. It did help to put in time, however. After a couple boring weeks at Stone we finally received notice that we would ship out the following day. The better part of the next day was spent in a military truck convoy making our way to the city of Southampton, our port of embarkation.
From a dock loaded with hundreds of military personnel, we quickly boarded a very depressing looking transport that obviously had made many Atlantic crossings. This type of vessel was called a "Liberty" ship, made primarily for cargo and turned out by the hundreds in shipyards in the US. It was not good news to hear the rumor that this ship had been fully constructed and launched at the Philadelphia Navy Yards in less than one week.
We had one clue as to which route we would be taking on this return trip......we were issued an extra heavy wool GI army blanket ( which I kept and still have to this day ).

I was assigned to a stateroom with seven other Air Force officers. Sound luxurious? These 'staterooms' were modified so that two-high bunks lined both side walls of the room with barely enough room between the bunks to get dressed and no room at all to do anything but sleep. The most depressing aspect of this accommodation was that there was no porthole or natural light from any source and most upsetting of all, as we later discovered, this room was below the waterline of the ship.
The first night out, as our ship began to assemble with the convoy, we were awakened by what sounded like someone pounding on the hull with a huge hammer. The next morning some of the ships crew informed us that these sounds were depth charges being dropped by our escort destroyers. While the war was close to an end, fighting was still taking place both on land and on the sea with submarines still sinking ships wherever they found them. The first night out and submarines were detected? What a start to an Atlantic crossing!!
The next morning, as the convoy moved into the English Channel, we were allowed on deck for some fresh air and exercise. The convoy was well under way and appeared to be made up of about 20 or 30 ships of all sizes and types......many like our Liberty ship, some considerably larger and some luxury ocean liners. Our naval protection consisted of about five destroyer escort vessels (we would have felt better if we had twice that many). I would guess that our ship held about a thousand men, most of them in the hold of the ship where hundreds of bunks had been constructed four-high, where there was no natural light and where the ventilation was poor at best. We were lucky to have the stateroom and never complained again after we saw the conditions in the hold.

Wartime secrecy prevented us from knowing where we were going or when we would arrive but it soon became obvious from the drop in temperature that we were headed for the States via the northern route......similar to the route we followed when we flew over......only this time we would be riding the waves. Rumors had it that this trip would take us about six days if all went well. The speed of the convoy being determined by the slowest ship - and I think that was ours.
About three days out of Southampton the weather began to change and by the fourth day we were no longer allowed on deck. The sea began to build and our ship began to bob like a cork in water. It soon became apparent that we were in the middle of a real Nor'easter. (North Atlantic term for a hurricane) somewhere off the coast of Labrador or Nova Scotia. As the sea swells increased, our ship began to creak and groan. With each monstrous wave the bow of our ship would be thrust into the air atop the swell and then would come crashing down with a thunderous boom. As the bow hit the bottom of the swell the ships props would come out of the water and every inch of the ship would vibrate violently. There was an inner panic when this first occurred but as the night wore on the violence of this action seemed to increase with first the crashing of the bow hitting the water followed in seconds by the violent vibrating of the ships props as they left the water. This action repeated over and over and over again for the next three days.
All of the men aboard were airman who had completed missions and had many hours of flight time in turbulent weather but none of us had ever experienced anything like this. For those three days I felt terrible (not quite seasick but almost). With the rest of the men we spent our days and nights in our bunks almost going crazy with the repetitious sound of the banging and vibration. At one point I literally fought my way down to the hold, clinging to whatever I could that would help me to stay upright, to see how conditions were for those unfortunates assigned there. I found almost everyone in their bunks since standing or walking were near impossible. The floor was awash in vomit which sloshed from one end of the hold to the other as the ship rose and dropped. It was a terrible sight. The fear that this ship would not hold together another night seemed for sure to become a reality. To make matters even worse, in the midst of this nightmare, all power, except for the emergency lights, went out and the ventilation system failed. After several hours without power, the odor and heat began to build to a point where some of the men had to be restrained by the on-board MP's from trying to open the hatches to get some fresh air into the living spaces.

There is no doubt in my mind that there was not a man on that ship that did not contemplate the possibility, that he, having survived enemy action over Europe, was doomed to end up at the bottom of the Atlantic. A parachute would do no good here.

As time wore on the tossing and vibrating of the ship began to subside and a thousand stomachs began to return to normal. We had left Southampton on May the third and we knew that the war in Europe was just about over. We had no access to radios or any news as to what was transpiring with the war until, on May the 9th, the ship's intercom belted out a message from the ships' captain

"The Germans have surrendered. The war in Europe is officially over. In celebration of this momentous occasion there will be free beer for all in the Galley for the next few hours"

Well, I'd say there were no more than a handful of strong stomachs that were willing to attempt a beer at that time...even free American beer. A shaky visit by me to the galley confirmed that only about forty or fifty men were still hearty enough to be enjoying the 'free beer'. What a celebration!
The war was over. What welcome news.

I clearly remember that on this special day we were finally allowed to go on deck - for the first time in 3 days and nights.
I was astonished by the view that confronted me as I emerged out of the lower level of the ship. The front of each Liberty ship had a steel platform constructed about 10 feet above the deck on which was mounted a naval gun, the caliber of which I could only guess. This gun served mostly to give the crew the feeling that they had something with which to fight back if they were attacked by another surface vessel. This steel platform, gun and all, was totally flattened against the deck by the storm. It was as if one mighty hammer blow had been swung down directly on top of the platform. In addition, all the steel ventilator intakes had also been flattened and the hand railing around the bow of the ship was ripped away and hanging awkwardly over the side. Other damage was apparent wherever I looked. We had indeed weathered a vicious storm and possibly had come near breaking apart.
We later found out that our crossing had taken three days longer than normal because of the storm and that for these three days we had almost stood still in the midst of the storm trying to maintain a proper spacing of the ships in the convoy.

Now the storm was over and the sun shown brightly as we slowly made our way down the New England coast. Some of the ships in the convoy continued on to other ports but most of them joined us as we paraded into Boston harbor.
I remember the feeling of stepping onto solid ground once again and saying a little prayer that I was safely back in the good old USA. At my first opportunity, I found a telephone and called my mother. I had arrived home on Mother's Day, May 12, 1945 and it seemed appropriate that this should be my first call.

It had been two years and eight months since I enlisted. I had completed many months of training, flown the Atlantic to England, flew thirty combat missions over Germany in a B-17, survived a very stormy Atlantic crossing in a Liberty ship, and was now finally HOME. I had much to be thankful for.