From Doc Ellis
REALLY FOLKS, I don’t know if its anchors away or anchors aweigh, but what I’m really curious about is: How many of us WWII guys who served overseas remember the name of the ship that carried us at sea to the great adventure or the dates of arrival and departure to wherever?
I’m over-oriented on that stuff and have anniversary-itis about it was (???) years ago today that (so and so happened). Like for instance, and you knew I was headed there... 62 years ago on Aug. 3, 1943, this 18-year-old Army Air Force buck sergeant and his outfit, the 1074th Signal Service Company, commanded by 1st Lt. Robert Scott Gruhn of Wilmette, Illinois, boarded a British troop ship at a dock on the Hudson River side of Manhattan Island, New York City. The ship was the RMS Aquitania. The next day, Aug. 4, 1943, we sailed to Gourock, Scotland, Great Britain, arriving and debarking Aug. 12.
Our outfit, while aboard the Aquitainia, was way below decks, just the deck above the engine rooms...like where the torpedoes would enter if the German submarines took the time?
Our cabin was a cubicle just large enough for four bunks on one side, three on the other (A LARGE OVERHEAD PIPE BLOCKED INSTALLATION OF AN EIGHTH)...and barely room to stand between ‘em. The thing is, that was 7 bunks and we were 8 guys. None of us wanting to share that narrow a bunk with another guy, so we figured it out. We were all buck sergeants in the cabinet, so couldn’t pull rank. We drew straws and the guy with the long straw slept on the floor/deck the first night out, then he’d succeed to a bunk and the guy he displaced hit the deck for the night and each night until each of us had a floor/deck sleep for ONE night and a bunk the rest of the voyage.
I have a framed picture of the Aquitainia and in one corner of it I’ve preserved my boarding/mess card. Its on the wall here in my den along with so many other mementos of some great adventures I’ve shared with military buddies and later with family and chums.
By the way, as our outfit marched down the gangplank departing the ship, we faced a large warehouse with huge oak doors and on it, in red, were painted the following welcoming message, YANKEES GO HOME!!
Ya know somethin? If we could’ve, we would’ve.
But later we were glad we stayed. Some of the best years of our lives just ahead...sad, frightening, adventuresome and even educational are the ways of the world, but most of all, we were there doing something for OUR country, the greatest adventure of all for the greatest country of all.
Hope this isn’t drivel to you guys and ladies...but I do have curiosity as to how many of you have similar shipboard memories. Take care of yourselves good chums and chumesses... Luvv’ya all, respect ya all.
Published in U S Legacies Magazine November 2005
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