VE Day

(Going back to the very beginning of my mariner's career shortly after we left Mobile we put in at Port Arthur, right at the tip of Sabine Pass. It was a Sunday afternoon and I went ashore. Found a Methodist Church with evening services, went in early and sat down. An eagle eyed usher saw me, came over and welcomed me. The he cast his eye over the scattering of other early arrivals and settled on a young woman. "Come of over here" he said, "I'd like you to meet Miss ??? (God knows what her name was). We chatted; I sat down beside her.

After the service she took me home, introduced me to her parents, and they welcomed me like one of their own. Praise God. I've never seen such extravagant hospitality in a Methodist Church (other than my own!). Going over that incident at lunch with Ellie, I concluded, "that's true Christianity", and very, very rare. They had plenty of reason to fear and distrust travelers.)

My next cruise was to France, and I had become the Chief Radio Officer (at 18!). Starting out from the East Coast, in the usual large convoy (there was no longer much danger of U-boats by then, at least in convoy), we sailed for LeHavre and Rouen. We keep a close watch, but somehow managed to miss a message for us at BAMS (at a certain point we dropped the East Coast watch and took up the European watch; we were supplying the ETO). Orders came that we were diverted to the Med, Marseilles in fact. But we made port at Le Havre, then moved up the Seine to Rouen; I doubt that it made much difference: 100,000 gallons of gasoline here or there, like peanuts.

I thought this might be (and it turned out that it was) my only chance to see Paris, so up the river I went, spent a couple of days there getting acquainted: fat chance! I couldn't find anybody who spoke English. (I noticed this many years later in Quebec; they claim not to speak English, whether they do or not.) Unlike many ports I visited, they were not very friendly with Americans. At last I bumped into a GI; he took me into the military world, sponsored me for the rest of the day; nice guy!

We sailed back home, and I decided to leave the ship and spend a few days in N.O. Lucky I did because the ship then went to the South Pacific and stayed there the next two years.

My next cruise was a brand new C2 called the Sea Dolphin (couldn't find any records on the web). We took this new ship out of Pasagoula Shipyard (now called the Northrop Grumman shipyard)(There is an aerial vew of submerged Ingalls (NG) shipyard after Katrina also on the web).

The C2's were the greyhounds of WWII merchant shipping. On my first voyage with the Sea Dolphin she sailed from NY to the Med, though the Suez Canal, stopping at Aden (now -sorry I can't remember the name of the little Arab country where the Red Sea opens out into the Indian Ocean-- senior moment). Anyway Aden was a British protectorate, and we stopped there for routing instructions. 3 of us went ashore (the skipper, the Armed Guard Lt, and yours truly). We completed our business before 10 o'clock, and the skipper inquired if we might get a beer. "Not until none" was the reply; the temp was 130 in the shade. And his reply, "I wouldn't stay here until noon for Cleopatra herself". (It give me a kick to remember that incident.)

We perservered to Calcutta (this is already too long to talk about Calcutta during WWII). We had broken the record for the time it took a merchant ship to go from N.Y. to Calcutta (don't ask me how long it was).

We came back via E Africa (Mombasa, Zanzibar, Beira, East London, Port Elizabeth, and Capetown. Heading home from there we found ourselves near the equator when word came of VE day.