Now we had just detrained at Jersey City, New Jersey, been ferried across the North River, and were marching two by two, like Noah’s animals, to the troopship loading dock.
Dingy clouds shared their misery with us, drenching us with rain as we struggled to maintain control of the rifles on our shoulders, and the slippery, sodden packs on our backs.
Our destination was the RMS Queen Mary. The British Crown had stripped this former luxury liner down to accommodate troops, and the once-opulent craft had been reduced to a vulgar caricature of her former self. She was painted a dull, camouflage gray. Few vestiges of her previous majesty remained, but her imposing mass rendered us landlubbers awestruck nonetheless.
It was midnight by the time we’d all boarded the ship. We were led to our assigned part of the mammoth vessel by a special guide. As large as the ship was, there still wasn’t enough room for everyone, and we had to eat and sleep in shifts.
We slept in hammocks strung one on top of the other, and they were far from comfortable.
I tossed around as I tried to sleep that night—at least as well as one can toss around in a hammock. But wasn’t the gentle rocking of my incommodious bunk that kept me awake, though, it was the carousel of thoughts that circulated through my mind. I thought about war. I thought about fighting. So many of my comrades could hardly contain their enthusiasm for seeing battle action. Though not that much older than most of them, I couldn’t bring myself to share their gusto for going to war. Time would teach me that the eagerness to engage in battle is found almost exclusively in young, untested soldiers, and a rare, dangerous breed of battle-hardened veteran. Coping with the thought of living as an ordinary man did not keep me up that night, it was dying a hero that rattled me.
I thought back to my first fight, the one I’d had years before with Roy the Ripper. I remembered the rush I’d gotten after defeating him, but I realized that I hadn’t killed him, either. Would it feel that much different to fight in war? Would it feel anything like that to exact the ultimate toll from my enemy—his life? Would I really feel like a just victor, or would killing be a stain on my soul that I could never wash off? All those things worried me, but what troubled me most is that it could be my life that would bleed away on the battlefield. It wasn’t that I agonized over having my life sacrificed, but more so that I couldn’t bear to think the pain Ellen would suffer if I were to die and be buried on foreign soil.
~~~
I woke up the next morning feeling more stiff and tired than when I went to bed. It was Sunday morning, but it didn’t feel like a Sunday. It didn’t feel like any day I could think of.
I stood on the deck as tugboats pushed us out of the channel and into the ocean. We all stared at the Statue of Liberty. I’d read about her, but never dreamed I might actually see her, at least this early in my life.
The salty breeze coming off the Atlantic evoked uncertainty and excitement about our impending voyage. It seemed so anti-climactic; there were no marching bands or tearful kisses to send off the men of the 29th Division, many of whom were sailing off to keep an appointment with death.
I don’t think as many men felt as deeply as I did about leaving America. I wondered how many of us were seeing the last glimpse we’d ever see of our homeland. It seemed a lot of my comrades didn’t grasp the possible finality of it. Leaving my country was a turbulent feeling. It felt like my insides were fixed to an invisible, elastic tether that was fastened to the shore. The more distant the land became, the more tortured I felt inside.
I watched Lady Liberty begin to become obscured by mist and distance. She held her torch of freedom unwaveringly. She symbolized all we would be fighting for, and I hoped to carry that torch with me to Europe and bring some hope to those “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
The land looked like hardly more than a thread now, a line of demarcation between an ocean of water and a vast sea of sky. The Lady became a speck. The upheaval in my gut crested. Heedless of those around me, I stood at attention and saluted the evanescent Statue. Haze drew a curtain on the shore, and it felt like the line that caused my inward turmoil and attached me to home snapped. I wouldn’t fight fate. Whatever my destiny, I would greet her graciously. I waved thanks and good-bye to the departing harbor escort vessels, and went below the deck.
~~~
“You hungry for smoked fish?” Johnny Snarr grinned at me and held up an over-achieving flying fish that had soared up onto the deck. He’d put his cigarette in its mouth, but it didn’t look like the fish was taking too well to smoking. I smiled wryly.
“It would be an improvement on rations,” I agreed.
“Yeah, and we could even cook it if we wanted to make it a special treat,” Johnny added, walking over to the rail to toss it overboard. The British food was horrible. The war had taken its toll on food supplies, and everyone suffered because of it, including us.
Johnny held the fish by the tail and tried to drop it down headfirst into the water. He watched it fall, and wiped his hands on the rail.
“Holy shit!” he exclaimed, looking up toward the bow and clutching the railing with both hands. I felt a bump, and ran drunkenly toward the rail as the ship shuddered and the deck tilted back and forth. A throng of men gathered along the rail, and I threaded my gaze through the heads and shoulders in front of me. I stared in stunned disbelief at what was left of the HMS Curacoa, an antiaircraft light cruiser that had been escorting us. It had collided with our vessel, and its bow, which had been severed from the rest of the ship, scraped the side of the Queen Mary with its nose up. Some men watched in hushed horror, while others shouted in terror.
“Jesus Christ, stop the ship!” a voice screamed.
“Lower the goddamn lifeboats!” someone else ordered.
“Life preservers!” I shouted, pushing my way to the rail.
I flung a doughnut in the direction of a half dozen thrashing sailors. Three of them saw it and frantically lunged for it. Two of them were able to grab a hold, and several fellows assisted me in pulling them to safety.
A frenzied effort to throw life preservers to drowning sailors ensued. Men bobbed like toys in the water, screaming for help, screaming for us to stop. But the Queen Mary steamed on ahead. It was strictly a military decision. They wouldn’t jeopardize twelve thousand men for several hundred, so all we could do is try to save as many as we could.
Ninety-eight were eventually rescued, but 332 perished in our wake, just a few hundred miles from our destination. We watched, stunned, as clouds of black smoke billowed into the clear sky from the bisected craft. The point of its bow reared up toward heaven, like the snout of a mighty sea monster in the throes of death giving one last, valiant struggle for life. The sea subdued it, and the mortally wounded half-vessel sank backward into the Atlantic, the ocean inhaling ship and smoke, and burping up bubbles and steam.
“What the hell happened?” Leroy Green asked nobody in particular. His eyes mirrored the horror felt among the hundreds of men that watched the Queen Mary churn ahead, leaving the ocean to lap up the living, the dead, and the dying.
Frankie De Luca stayed true to form, working himself into a panicked frenzy. “We’ve been hit!” he babbled to me. “We’re gonna sink!” I ignored him.
“Are we sinking? I think I can feel it sinking!” he latched himself onto the next available ear.
“Jesus Christ, Twitch, give your head a shake!” Tech Sergeant Pete Santos snapped at him. Frankie simmered down a little. We were all worried about meeting the same fate as the Curacoa’s crew, but there was nothing to be gained from hysterical fits.
“Gentlemen!” a voice thundered from behind a wall of men. I stood on my tiptoes to try and put a face to the voice, but to no avail. “Our ship has sustained damage to a portion of her hull. However, the hull is compartmentalized, and so there is no reason to fear that her seaworthiness has been compromised. We expect to dock safely in Scotland in several hours. In the meantime, all B-A-R men stand watch on the deck. May God
have mercy on the souls of the perishing.”
While we were relieved to hear our safety was in no immediate danger, our minds were still consumed by the tragic blunder we’d just witnessed.
~~~
The mood was still sober and reflective hours later when we docked in Greenock, Scotland.
“Would you look at that!” Private First Class Jedidiah Hankins stopped dead on the gangplank as we walked off the Queen Mary on wobbly legs. He pointed to a gash in her bow you could have driven a tank through. We all looked at the yawning hole, mouths agape, each of us probably thinking it was a miracle we were still alive.
“The Lord was watching over us, that’s for sure!” the preacher from Georgia said fervently, shaking his head.
“Damn rights!” Private Alistair McPhail concurred with feeling. Looking at the extent of the damage, it seemed difficult to believe that we’d just safely sailed for hours on the vessel.
We were greeted by a thin, damp wind, and a British army band playing a lively tune. Smiling NAAFI (Navy, Army, Air Force Institutes) girls provided us with small doughnuts and coffee. We warmed our fingers around the steaming mugs of coffee as the blades of wind stabbed through our uniforms, down to the bone. We marched on the spot to stay warm, and many of the lads got their blood moving by flirting with the girls, who seemed as happy receiving the attention as the fellows were in giving it.
Later that day, we boarded the London, Midland, and Scottish Railway train, bound for the English midlands. I fell asleep easily, waking up only a few times when my poker-playing compatriots became a little raucous. I was becoming so used to change and transition, I could sleep almost anywhere, under any conditions. This would be helpful on the battlefield.
Our train pulled into the station in Andover, England, about the same time daylight did. The sky was gloomy and overcast, as though grudgingly complying with every stereotype of English weather, so as to not disappoint us visitors.
We detrained, and the British troop-carrying trucks that they called “lorries” transported us to Tidworth Barracks on the Salisbury Plain. These barracks were a sorry sight compared to what we were used to. The imposing red brick and wrought iron buildings made the place look like a penitentiary, and the inside was stark and cold. A straw mattress and a couple of GI blankets were all we had to sleep with on bunks that were clearly designed for men shorter than me. It was perpetually cold in there too, and sometimes I almost welcomed our bi-weekly, twenty-five mile hikes. It seemed to be the only time we really warmed up.
We settled into the monotony of hard training, sleep deprivation, and poor food. It seemed the British meals consisted of anything meager and tasteless. We knew it couldn’t be helped, but that didn’t stop us from complaining about the repetition.
Whenever we’d get to grousing within earshot of a Limey, we’d be sure to get a bitter reprimand. “You know there is a bloody war goin’ on, don’t you, Yank?” The whole country was weary of war.
As for us, the only bright spot in our lives was when the mail came in. A letter and a package of food and sweets from home provided a huge morale boost for a homesick soldier. Both were ripped open and devoured, and fellows bartered and traded treats. The sugar seemed to produce a state of gleeful magnanimity in us, and we lucky ones passed out sweets to the boys that were less fortunate than us.
~~~
January 12, 1943, Tidworth Barracks, England
Dear Darling,
I pray you had a blessed Christmas. I was glad to hear your family was holding Christmas at your parents’ place. I hope it went well.
Did you get any snow for Christmas? My English Christmas was bleak, drab, and dreary—much like any other day here, except we were fed a Christmas feast, which I did thoroughly enjoy. Otherwise, it was a lonely time for most of us. One could sense most of the lads were wishing they were elsewhere for the holidays, and I suspect no one felt that yearning more strongly than I did. I do hope and pray that it was the last Christmas we must be apart, but I suppose what will be, will be.
Thank you for the package you sent. It arrived just days before Christmas. The scarf you made me is beautiful and warm, and is a much-appreciated defense against the damp chill of the English winter. Moreover, it’s a beautiful reminder of you, a token of your love that warms my heart whenever I see it. You also did a splendid job of sealing the package of fudge. It was still quite fresh when I received it, and it tastes heavenly. I’ve consumed most of it myself, but I allowed a few fellows some small pieces of it, and word got around pretty quickly that Corporal Mattox’s wife makes some mean chocolate fudge, so I’ve found it to be worth its weight in gold for bartering with.
There have been some recent developments in my life as a soldier. Last month, I applied to join the newly-formed U.S. 29th Ranger Battalion, and both Private Johnny Snarr and I were the only ones from our company who were selected. It is an elite fighting force, and that attracted many applications, though I think most of the fellows who applied had visions of playing the hero. I was asked startling questions during my interviews like, “Have you ever killed a man?” and, “Could you stick a knife in a man—and twist it?” I presume questions like that prompted many to second-guess their involvement with the Rangers. I, on the other hand, view it more as an opportunity to develop my survival skills, should I, God forbid, ever be put in a combat situation. Staying alive is more important to me than any medal or commendation I could win, and so I hope this training may help me to that end. I haven’t seen anyone die from training too hard—yet! I pray I will never have to use the training I am receiving.
Last week I dreamt that Hitler had died of tuberculosis. In my dream, I remember jubilantly celebrating with my mates, ecstatic that the war was over, and that we wouldn’t have to fight. We were hooting and hollering and firing our rifles in the air, and above the mayhem, I shouted over to Johnny Snarr, “I can’t wait to go home. I can’t wait to see Ellen.” I recall thinking, “This is too good to be true.” Well, it was. When I awoke, I felt like crying. It depressed me for days. Even now, not a day goes by that I don’t think, “Maybe today the war will be over. Maybe today Germany will surrender. Maybe today Hitler will be killed.” Thus far, that day hasn’t come. It may sound cowardly, but I hope that day comes before our training ends.
Darling, it seems strange to think that since we’ve been married, we’ve been apart more than we’ve been together. We were married for such a short time before I left, yet I feel my life with you is the only life I know, the only life I want, the only life that feels right.
It is said absence makes the heart grow fonder. Whether that is true or not, I cannot tell, but what I know is that being apart has made me yearn for the things about you I took so for granted, all the things I love about you. I love the way you give selflessly of yourself to me. I love your teasing smile when you’re playful, and the sound of your laughter. I love the way your eyes can sparkle like the sea one minute, and the next, draw me in with their smoky blue sultriness. I love seeing you let down your hair in the dusky glow of candlelight, and watching it spill over your bare shoulders with a tousled wildness that arouses a savage sort of love in me. I love feeling the warmth of your skin when we lay together after you’ve drained every drop of passion from my body. I love hearing you whisper, “I love you, Robbie” in the darkness. I love you. And I miss you.
Till we walk hand in hand again,
Robbie
~~~
As freshly-minted U.S. 29th Rangers we began our training at Tidworth Barracks, and in 1943, we trained in numerous locales, including the British Commando Depot in Scotland, and in Bude, Cornwall. We were introduced to a whole new level of training intensity; half of the men couldn’t cut it and dropped out. Some of them were kicked out, quite literally. Each time I saw a fellow Ranger bite the dust, I just bore down a little bit harder. Failure meant punishment and humiliation.
The training was grueling, far beyond anything we’d experienced up until that point. We did physi
cal training in winter, stripped to the waist, and the obstacle courses and climbing and marching exercises were absolutely punishing. Our sorry food and shabby living quarters only made it that much harder to handle the harsh training.
In Bude, however, we had the luxury of being lodged in a former resort hotel, and the food was fantastic there, too. It was a welcome change for us, and we all wondered how long the good times would last.
It was a sad day when we were told we were being sent to Eastleigh, in Hampshire. We dreaded leaving our cozy digs and good food, but we soon found out our reluctance to leave Bude was unwarranted.
When we reached Eastleigh, we discovered that instead of being housed in Nissen huts, we would be billeted in private homes of local residents. Our billets viewed us as more than allies, and many did everything they could to ensure our comfort. They were nice people. Sometimes too nice, maybe.
~~~
“Good day, Mrs. Harrison,” Private First Class Harvey Thomas and I spoke and doffed our caps in unison.
“Oh, please, call me Claudia!” our new billet, Mrs. Claudia Harrison, objected as she let us into her tidy, two-story brick house. She showed us our rooms upstairs, and I could feel my ever-tired body relax in anticipation as I viewed the thick white comforter and soft feather pillow on my bed. We each got our own room, another welcome change from sleeping in close proximity to other men.
We left our gear in our rooms and followed Mrs. Harrison back downstairs for a bite to eat. She was a handsome woman, tall, redheaded, with pale, lightly freckled skin. Not a beauty, but without any obvious flaws in her features to relegate her to homely status.
We got acquainted over some wartime-grade tea. We found out her husband was serving in the North African campaign with the British forces, and had been gone for several years now. They had a nine-year-old son, and I was surprised to learn she’d been married fifteen years. She was thirty-six, but didn’t look over thirty. There were lines around her eyes and above her mouth, but they didn’t make her skin look old, just soft.
Love is a Wounded Soldier Page 13