Chapter 2. North Atlantic

          With luxury long gone, traded for space by the Cunard Line, the Aquitania had been remodeled into a troop ship—and 4 of our 5 Red Cross cadre found ourselves assigned to a tiny space in the hold, with a common bathroom a short walk away.  Our windowless cubby hole of a cabin had an upper and a lower bunk built into each side leaving just enough space to allow one of us at a time to enter and head toward its wash basin.  (Verb chosen carefully because it was a rough winter crossing.)

We 4 were the Assistant Social Worker, 2 Recreation Workers and the Secretary.  Our supervisor, assigned to a different cabin, was the professional Social Worker. Our job would be to try to make life more livable for the GIs.  Red Cross would supply furnishings and equipment and supplies needed to outfit a recreational hall, and such other supplies as razors, soap, toothbrushes, cigarettes and tobacco shipped from the US, or possibly at times from English or French Red Cross headquarters.

We would be expected to facilitate solving any personal problems of the patients and to make life easier for them through setting up recreation facilities and providing recreation activities.  Typically in a General Hospital there would be half ambulatory and half ward-bound patients, 500 each.  We would set up a recreation hall and provide activities, taking supplies to and holding activities in the 10 wards of 100 beds each.  But this Atlantic crossing week, plus a few days, we just tried to keep on our own feet and cheer up each other.

At first we gave no thought to our own safety once landed in England because for some mysterious reason the Germans had not bombed the British Isles for almost a year before we sailed.  By mid-Atlantic, among the high waves, the radio waves brought the unwelcome news that regular bombing and a new buzz bombing had restarted with a vengeance.  There went my chance to see Scotland en route to London where we were to report to our supervising staff at the Red Cross of Great Britain.

We docked in Greenock, Scotland at twilight, gliding into its harbor crusted with sheets of revolting trash.  Overhead the garbage was flying piece by piece into the air in the beaks of thousands of seagulls.  Weighted again in battle dress we boarded the train for London.  In total pitch blackout we spent the crowded night.  Our one stop we mistook for arrival.  Instead we were ushered out into the night where suddenly someone thrust a hot mug of something into my hand.  One sip struck me as the most delicious taste in my life.  “What IS this?” I asked.  An older woman’s voice answered “Tea.”  That sip resulted in my lifetime drinking of teapot-brewed hot tea whitened with evaporated milk and sweetened with sugar.

Grateful for the gift of those older English volunteers to us Americans in the 3 a.m. frigid, damp weather, in the blackout we re-boarded and proceeded to London Town.