Over the sea to Great Britain

The Aquitania was the last of the four-stackers.
Cunard Lines retired it in 1950.

Early in 1944, the 474^th boarded yet another troop train, its last stateside, and moved up the east coast to New York City. The unit was billeted at nearby Camp Shanks and, for a short while, lived it up, taking the bus and the Weeahawken Ferry to the city.

Then one day the man said, “No passes today.” In the early hours of the next morning, the youths, who were green rookies just a year ago, and who were now polished soldiers, crammed the last of their belongings into a bag almost too big to be carried, staggered onto a ferry boat into which they were packed like sardines and sailed down the Hudson to Manhattan. Arriving at the pier, they carried their heavy barracks bags up the gang plank, which went up several stories into a ship that seemed to be some 10 stories high and a block long. Inside, they went up stairways and through corridors until they reached “A” deck, the top deck of the ship and found large ballrooms packed up to the ceiling with bunks. Some had to climb five bunks up to get a place to sit down.⁵

The four-stack Aquitania, sister ship of the sunken Lusitania and the retired Mauretania, set sail for Great Britain on Saturday morning, Jan. 29, 1944. For most of the men on board, it was their first ocean voyage but not to be their last. Jack remembers the boat ride well. “Manned by the English, we naturally had crappy food,” he recalls. “The traveling conditions were salt water to wash in and a terrible storm for most of the voyage with everybody getting seasick. We went around Iceland twice to avoid German submarines.”

The outfit pulled MP duty and manned the ship’s anti-aircraft guns, mounted in turrets high above the boat deck. They got their first shot at the Germans while aboard, firing on a German reconnaissance plane. A master sergeant became ill during the voyage and died, and Jack remembers that the corpse was lashed to the deck at the front of the ship to keep it frozen for the remainder of the voyage.

All commissioned officers, Navy nurses and Red Cross workers had their quarters on the top decks, “and we were not permitted in that area,” Jack says. “In my area, I was on the bottom bunk with three or four bunks above me. I had to be careful when I exited from my bunk so that I could duck the heave-ho from the seasick guys above.”

The Maverick Outfit reported, “As the Aquitania rolled and dipped into towering waves in a storm-tossed ocean, some of the fellows feared they would be thrown into the sea. Others wished they would. At one time, the boat listed 30 degrees, losing one of its lifeboats.”⁶

Jack adds that he volunteered to go with a few guys to the front of the ship and then down into the hold to secure his battery’s PX rations. “That was a mistake! This is the worst place to be on a ship when you’re in a storm. You lose all sense of direction and have to hold onto the rails on the stairs. What an experience!”

Eight days after leaving New York, the Aquitania passed the Shetland Islands along the west coast of Scotland and went through the North Channel past Northern Ireland before easing into the Firth of Clyde. Still aboard ship, the men received a letter on White House stationery bearing the signature of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and addressed to members of the United States Expeditionary Force. It said in part:

We who stay at home have our duties to perform—duties owed in many parts to you. You will be supported by the whole force and power of this nation. The victory you win will be a victory of all the people—common to them all…You bear with you the hope, the confidence, the gratitude and the prayers of your family, your fellow-citizens and your President.⁷

Another paper carried this message from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill:

To each American soldier who has left home to join the great forces now gathering in this island, I send a message of greeting and welcome. Wherever you may go in our country you will be among friends. Our fighting men look upon you as comrades and brothers in arms. Welcome to you while you are with us, and when the time comes we will go forward together and carry the good cause to final victory.⁸