On leave before leaving

Photo: The Aquitania waits for us in Boston Harbor, June 21, 1944.

The answer came the next morning when we were all given furloughs to go home and visit our folks. I went back to Elyria, Ohio, where Mom and Dad had just moved into a new house on Denison Avenue. Dad was working a lot of overtime driving trucks for the Beiter Line between Elyria and Cleveland. The flow of war supplies produced by local manufacturing companies was just tremendous, and I was impressed by the way the "home front" was supporting its fighting men. Dad took me over to the trucking company offices (resplendent in my Army uniform) to say hello to Mrs. Ann Beiter, who ran the outfit like a man -- or maybe better!

A few days later the newspapers and radio reported the momentous news that the D-Day invasion of France was taking place on June 6, 1944. It was going ahead without us! I guess most of us in the 398th Battalion had mixed feelings about this, but our folks were certainly glad that we were home and not charging up some beach in Normandy.

Upon returning to Camp Edwards we had another week of training exercises and target practice out near the tip of Cape Cod before we packed up and marched down the street to another waiting train. This time we headed north to camp Miles Standish just outside Boston. We went through the whole processing routine again and finally on June 21 we were trucked to Boston Harbor to rendezvous with our ship. This time there really was one!

It was the Aquitania -- a four-stacker that was the fifth largest ocean liner in the world at the time. She weighed 45,647 tons when she was launched in Clydebank, Scotland on April 21, 1913. The Aquitania and her sister ship the Mauritania were both luxury liners that had also served as troopships in World War I.

We applauded when we saw the huge liner sitting in the harbor because we knew the trip to England would take only a week. A smaller ship would have to travel in a convoy with other ships escorted by warships and would be on the ocean at least two weeks. So far, the German submarine packs had been unable to target any of the large ocean liners like the Queen Mary or the Aquitania because they were too speedy to be chased down by the subs.

Despite its large size, the ship did not provide much space on board for the individual GI's. After we struggled up the gangplank loaded down with a huge duffel bag, a field bag, cartridge belt and bayonet, canteen, gas mask and M-1 rifle, we looked for our "cabin." This turned out to be a huge open area filled with bunks stacked five high. There was less than two feet of open space from the bottom of my bunk to the bottom of the bunk above me, so it was not possible to sit up in bed. But the British crew told us we were lucky -- the ship was not double-loaded this time. When this happened, they said, there were two men assigned to every bunk so that one slept while the other was on deck and vice versa.

Anyway, we finally got things stowed away and took a nap so that we could be on deck when the Aquitania pulled away from the dock at 11 p.m. on June 21. After we cleared Boston harbor and hit the open sea, it soon looked like our helmsman was intoxicated. At least he didn't steer a straight line. Then someone in the crew explained that the course was changed every few minutes in order to zig-zag so that an enemy submarine could not lie in wait ahead of us because its captain would not be able to predict where we were headed.

The cuisine on the Aquitania will probably never be forgotten by anyone who sailed on her during wartime conditions. There seemed to be kidneys and mutton cooking in the galleys 24-hours a day so just the smell was enough to kill any desire for food. Fortunately, they only served two meals a day, although coffee was available at all hours. After tasting the coffee it became clear to us why the British drank tea. For my part, I really couldn't stand the kidney smell so I subsisted on U.S. Army K Rations during most of the voyage.

Editor's note: My dad till this day thinks he hates lamb though my mother has been able to sneak it on to his plate on occasion.