Army & Navy – LOGISTICS: Farewell to America

The Army last week eased its censorship of the silent interval between the last phone call home before troops leave for overseas and the mailing of the “safe arrival” card. On a censored date it took correspondents on a 14-hour inspection of the huge, wide-flung New York Port of Embarkation.

Naked, save for shoes and dog’ tags, the men clumped down the stairs to the first floor of the barracks, where the doctors were waiting. The medical team peered and prodded each man as he filed past. These were hard-bellied soldiers, tanned and toughened by training. This was their final physical, which War Department regulations require within 48 hours of embarkation. A few men were motioned out of line: hernia or hemorrhoids make a man unfit for combat. Sometimes a heart or a lung case turns up. Sometimes a mental case, dormant in training.

Last Inspection. Weapons, too, were stripped down. A mobile gunsmith shop moved from building to building for speedy adjustment and repair of rifles, carbines, submachine guns and pistols. Ordnance officers make sure each man knows how to use his weapons.

At a “showdown inspection” came a complete inventory of each soldier’s belongings. Here, men lost any extra shirts or pants they might have snaffled, gained any replacements they needed. A set of impregnated (anti-gas) clothing was issued. Gas masks were carefully tested, decontamination powder and protective ointment supplied.

At the vehicle staging area (Armyese for any place where troops and supplies are readied for overseas), women workers grinned through their grease. With spray gun and grease gun. the women coated the glass of vehicles destined for deck load so no warning reflection would betray the convoy, smeared the underparts for protection against salt spray. They drained gas tanks and radiators, checked and charged batteries, sealed all engine openings.

Marching Off. When a truck picked up their “B” bags (which are checked through to destination) the men knew they had not long to wait. Then their outfit was alerted; they were on their way.

A long train of coaches stood in the multitracked railway yard of a staging area. Down the road came the troops, sweat glinting under their helmets, their eyes straight ahead. They had a band. When the colored contingents slapped along, the band broke into jive. The men jigged, some of them; some grinned. But nobody, black or white, laughed aloud or wisecracked.

The band marched down the whole length of the train, playing some brassy hodgepodge. The locomotive hooted twice, the long train began to move. The band played Harrigan. The soldiers began to wave, casually at first, then wildly, as the train pulled around the curve and out of sight.

The Piers. At an ammunition pier grey ships waited with yawning hatches, red flags fluttering at their mastheads. Freight cars were pushed out on the long pier, packaged ammunition was swung .aboard. The ships steamed softly, screens over their funnels. Longshoremen moved quietly, talked quietly.

At other piers, bristled thick along the shores, ships were loading, cargo booms swinging. Foodstuffs in great hills of cases, gasoline in drums, steel landing mats for foreign airfields, rails, boxes of mystery identified only by code words—all in ordered progression, heavy stuff on the bottom, to bring the ships “full and down.”

Troopships were loading, too. Three-tiered bunks and plain wooden mess tables replaced luxury fittings. Hundreds of men slept in what used to be a cocktail lounge. It was early evening, but most of the men aboard were already asleep in their clothes, life belts and canteens handy.

Some were in canvas bunks below, others sprawled loose-limbed on the decks. Every day at noon they would change about.

Against the end of the pier bumped ferries, jammed with standing soldiers in full kit. A band played as they marched off, blinking in the bright-lighted cavern of the pier, their weapons banging their tails, their helmets heavy on their heads.

They were tired after their last, long day ashore, and their eyes rolled wearily. As their names were called, they answered with first names and initials, accepted without emotion cards showing their quarters in the ship, took doughnuts and lemonade proffered by Red Cross women.

The embarkation was a nightmare of hurry and numbers and weariness. The train had marked the real departure, the breaking of the cord, the physical moving off of the visible men. The ship lay quiet, a stolid appendage to the pier. Even when she moved into the stream, she moved as a ship, an iron entity anonymous and impersonal. The men hardly knew they were leaving.