Troopship
This is a special posting featuring a first-hand account of life on a World War II troopship written by my late father. It appeared in Now and Then (Vol. 39, No. 4, Wednesday January 30, 1946), a student publication from Saint Paul Academy. My dad taught and coached at this preparatory school in Saint Paul, Minnesota — now known as Saint Paul Academy and Summit School — from 1945 through 1949. I present this story in honor of the incredible sacrifices our veterans have made fighting wars for our country. –Eric
Mr. Olson
(Mr. Olson has recently completed three years of service in the army. The following story is a description of his voyage from the U. S. to England before D-Day.–Ed.)
TROOPSHIP
“When your surname is called, answer with your given name and initial. Pass quickly up the gangplank!”, someone barked in the maze of olive drab.
The tide was rapidly coming in and the liner was rising above the pier, making the gangplank a miniature problem in mountain climbing. A wool uniform and boots did not help one to forget that it was August. Here is a partial inventory of the items with which I was to “pass quickly”, as the announcer so blithely informed us, up that incline: one caliber 45 sub-machine gun, seventeen thirty-round clips for same, field pack complete with entrenching tools, gas-mask, and steel helmet, all draped around the neck and each in a competition to close the normal channels of air. Perched above all, one balanced his duffel bag containing extra uniforms, gas-resistant clothing, more boots and an array of personal effects.
“Is this trip necessary?” quirked a voice. We made the grade.
Nine thousand men in some nine hundred feet of ship (sardines and neutrons enjoy a tremendous freedom) present many interesting problems. There is, for example, the matter of food. Your card reads, “Sitting No. 7, Line No. 2”. So, one having inclinations for breakfast, without further dispatch seeks “Line 2”. It winds from the bow of the ship to the stern, through passageways, down gangways, and around bulkheads. Finally, one finds an emaciated individual who admits that he represents the end of “Line No. 2”. Your joy is short-lived, however, for he hastens to add that he also comes in the category of “Sitting No. 1”, You mentally survey the situation and wonder if it’s possible to have six more sittings of breakfast tucked away in the galley. It tried our patience–but we ate.
Recreational facilities were of necessity limited and most of us had degenerated, during the long period of training, into the habit of depending on others for entertainment. Here was a challenge to that rarely practiced faculty of entertaining oneself. Learning the secrets of the ship, the converted luxury liner, America, provided great interest. The radar detector apparatus, the turbines, the signal system, the sea doors, and a host of others were available to the observer. During clear weather one could worm his way among the discussion groups on the main deck and discover anything from the best recipe for “corn pone” to a fool-proof solution for all the world’s ills.
We were not in convoy. The ship’s speed (twenty-three knots) and constant change of course were her primary protection. Certain disciplines had to be strictly observed. At dusk, when the amplifier announced, “The smoking lamp is out,” the ship was in total darkness but for cat’s-eyes of light marking the inner passageways and lights in essential areas such as the galleys and engine rooms.
Until one became familiar with the ship, it was judicious to carry blankets and sleep on deck if he expected to remain there after dark–or perhaps spend the night groping in the bowels of the ship for his lodging on “B-Deck, Compartment 5, Bunk 65”.
Casting objects overboard was a serious offense. Unrestricted disposal of refuse by the men, each article in itself being of little significance, when multiplied by nine thousand would publish on the face of the ocean the size of the ship, its course, and type of cargo.
These random sketches are no attempt to summarize the character of all troopships. They are not a detailed account of the ship in question. Perhaps, they will help you add meaning to the laconic news item: “U. S. S. West Point arrived at Liverpool with nine thousand troops”.
November 11th, 2005 at 10:10
Here’s to your dad, Eric!
November 11th, 2005 at 14:02
“Veterans day” did not start out as “Veterans Day.” It was originally “Armistice Day” and had a very different meaning. See below.
Perhaps the best way to honor veterans, and ALL who are decimated by war (it is no longer the soldiers who suffer most in war) is to go back to the original intent of Armistice Day, of mourning, horror, and disgust at war, and relief at its end, and redouble our efforts to make such organized human madness an action of only the very final resort, if at all, instead of “wars of choice.” Wishing you a peaceful Armistice Day. –Jonathan
Today is Veterans Day, honoring Americans who have served in the armed forces.
November 11 was originally called Armistice Day because it was on this day in 1918 that the First World War came to an end. The armistice was signed at 11:00 AM, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year. After four years of brutal trench fighting, nine million soldiers had died and 21 million were wounded. It was called “The War to End All Wars,” because it was the bloodiest war in history up to that point, and it made many people so sick of war that they hoped no war would ever break out again.
Many intellectuals and artists were disillusioned by the war. The philosopher Bertrand Russell said, “All this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country’s pride.”
November 11th, 2005 at 15:47
Very nice and interesting. I don’t think I have ever read anything like that from your dad before.
November 11th, 2005 at 17:27
Hi Eric, thanks for sharing this special gift from your dad. I can see you the inherited humor, sense of irony, careful attention to detail and great writing skill from your dad. –Ilze
November 11th, 2005 at 18:35
Hi Eric, Thanks for sending letter and picture. Great stuff! Especially for Veterans Day……
November 11th, 2005 at 22:57
Thanks for all the messages I’ve received on this post so far.
My dad always called “Veterans Day” “Armistice Day”. I heard him repeat on many occasions the popular Wilson-era notion that WW I was “The war to end all wars”, always in a voice reflecting the cruel irony.
November 12th, 2005 at 00:05
Hi Eric, my own late father used to refer to Armistice Day in the UK on 11/11. Now we have Remembrance Sunday on the closest Sunday to 11/11. Thank you for your father’s account from Now and Then. God bless them all. Geoff
November 12th, 2005 at 05:43
My father got back and out and married in March 1946 after being inducted on Pearl Harbor Day, 1942. They got him when he was thirty years old, to his surprise. Had little to say about the experience, except to show me his CIB when I was a kid and tell me it was the most important thing on a soldier’s uniform. He got the opportunity to see his two elderly aunts in Austria, which would never have happened otherwise. I found out years later that a U-boat sunk the first troop ship carrying half his 66th Division across the channel and 900 died. He was on the sister ship Christmas morning. Eisenhower was in a panic over the Waffen counter-offensive and was throwing men at the problem like Stalin. Because of the loss of men and equipment the division was redirected south to attack a couple of Nazi gun fortresses on the Mediterranean, which was cake compared the the meatgrinder of the Bulge. He wasn’t big on American leadership, considering it impromptu and amateurish and disorganized. He hated the American Legion when I was a kid, and Nixon and everyone else he considered a phony in California. I came back from VN with no CIB in ‘68 and I think he was just fine with that. The Camels got him six years ago, but he stuck it out for 87 years.
November 12th, 2005 at 06:05
John, your post blew me away. Thank you very much for that story. I certainly relate, as my dad “had little to say about the experience” as well. I actually know very little about the action he saw, but he was in the thick of the Bulge. His job was computing trajectory for artillery. He never got over whatever it was he saw. Once or twice he spoke of fields of corpses and the stench he could not forget. My mother never forgave the war for what it did to him.
(Pardon my ignorance, but what is “CIB”?)
November 14th, 2005 at 14:18
Hi Eric, I am impressed with your father’s writing. Must be where you got your talent. How do people put up with the amazing hardships of military service? It just makes the world seem stranger and more grueling than ever, to think about how many are doing it for a living these days, not even for any set of beliefs.
November 15th, 2005 at 10:17
Hi Eric,
I watched a discussion yesterday on SkyNews between Robert Wilson and SkyNew’s Adam Boulton on Blair’s recent speech at Doha. I have never in my life witnessed such perverse apologetics from a member of Bush’s entourage (Wilson). The way in which he papered over the falsehoods propounded in the run up to the war by the Bush Administration, claiming everyone had the same intelligence, was startling. The only redeeming quality of this discussion came in the form of the arbiter, the programme host, who asked some very searching questions (as yet to be answered by Wilson) on the issue of intelligence prior to the war. In additon, the host actually accused Bush’s politicisation of the Rememberance Day services as highly inappropriate; and indeed it is, cheap, low and the clearest indication to date of Bush’s ethical satndards.