The last hawser had been cast off and the Big Queen moved slowly away from England. A military band on the deck swung into God Bless America and the 15,600 G.I's aboard cheered. Hundreds took up the words of the song; they sang it joyously, as men do who glimpse a bit of their own homeland in a foreign port. England wasn't foreign to them. Most of them had done their final invasion training in England; they had made friends in England and, except for the warm beer, they liked England. But now they were going home and they were thrilled.

Small tugs puffed importantly and shoved impatient noses against the stern of the Queen Elizabeth ship, pushing her into the channel. The Queen's nose was pushed around and, when it was headed for the open sea, the gigantic screws began to turn. The Big Queen was off-headed for New York 3,000 miles away, This was to be her last trip taking G.I.'s home. She was to return to England and begin to bring Canadians home.

In cabin M-63 on the main deck, Colonel William Barnett, Troop Commander, breathed a sigh of relief. This was his 83d trip on the Queen Elizabeth, but the embarking of a full division of men is a terrific responsibility. and Barnett never felt at ease until the big ship had pulled away from the dock. From now on it would be routineunless the weather was bad.

Colonel Barnett picked up his phone. His staff consists of 12 officers and 20 enlisted men. He checked with Captain Williams, Captain Fenderick and Captain Harte, his three area commanders. Everything was okay He checked with Major Bernard Kahn, troop transport surgeon. He didn't have a single customer in his hospital. He checked with his mess officer, Captain Paul Paschal, who said that he was ready to serve 15,600 luncheons.

It was noon now and the Big Queen was swinging along under her own power. She went slowly, with lookouts peering ahead. The Germans had dropped a lot of mines here in the channel-called Southampton Water-and many more around the Isle of Wight. Even now mine sweepers constantly patrol the waters. Sometimes an anchored mine breaks loose and just drifts around. These are the ones the lookouts are searching for.

The Big Queen now settled down to a wellordered routine. Everything was being done according to plans forwarded by Major General Clarence H. Kells and his staff back in New York. General Kells is in charge of the New York Port of Embarkation with 78,000 men to help him. It took two days to completely load the Big Queen at Southampton. She was bringing home 1,000 men of the 70th Division and larger units from the great Third Division, the 78th, and others. But, for the purposes of the trip, all had been temporarily incorporated under Brigadier General Thomas W. Herren of the 70th.

First, Colonel Barnett had requested General Herren to send 750 M.P.s to the ship 24 hours before she was scheduled to sail. These 750 were not wanted for police duty, but for traffic duty. They had come aboard and had been shown over the ship by Major Reed Calvin, Adjutant, and Captain Bill Williams.

The M.P.s had to learn every part of the ship. The. Big Queen is divided into three areas, the Red (forward), White (midship) and Blue (stern) areas. As the troops came aboard each would be handed a red, white or blue card with numbers telling the exact compartment or cabin each would occupy. No G.I. was to leave his designated area during the trip. The M.P.s' job was to return them to their proper areas if they got lost. They were also to guide men to the mess hall and to watch for smoking in forbidden sections.

Then Colonel Barnett asked for 630 K.P.s.

They, too, boarded the ship 24 hours ahead of sailing time. At first the K.P.s grumble at having to work their way home but Barnett knows the answers to that. They get privileges no one else gets. They can eat five times a day if they wish. They are never "hot flunked," that is, they never have to share a bunk with another G.I., sleeping in turns, one night on deck, the following night in the bunk. They are not put into large compartments with dozens of their mates but are given cabins. The K.P.s do all right and after the first day, they don't mind peeling a few potatoes and bathing a dish or two.

Colonel Barnett also asked for 150 "leading officers" to report a day in advance. Each officer gets a station and is assigned 100 men. He is responsible for these men. If a man feels sick, he reports to this officer and the officer reports to Colonel Barnett's area commander. He is responsible for each man carrying his life jacket with him at all times.

Installing the Medical Staff

Barnett also asked for three assistant area commanders to help Captains Williams, Fenderick and Harte. He asked that a doctor, dentist and twenty enlisted medical assistants be sent aboard early. They are shown the hospitals and operating rooms by Major Kahn. Actually, of course, with any full division, there are sure to be a dozen or so doctors who can be called upon in' emergencies. Finally, Colonel Barnett asked for a special service officer to arrange entertainment for the men and to supervise the publication of a ship's daily paper.

For twenty-four hours these men are briefed and their various lobs explained. Meanwhile food is being taken aboard the Big Queen. The entire crew of the ship is, of course, British, all under Cunard White Star's Commodore Sir James Bisset, K.B.E., a genial Scot. The British crew runs the ship and feeds the G.I.s. They have to serve about 32,000 meals a day-two meals for each person aboard.

They load the ship with enough food to last eight days. They have found the kind of food a G.I. likes best. They found that the

G.I. didn't care about kippers or kidney stew or steak and kidney pie-all dear to the palate of the British Tommy. The G.I. wanted cereal, and ham and eggs and roast beef and steaks and potatoes. When the chef shops in port, here's what he buys for each voyage:

On a single voyage, the Queen uses 155,000 pounds of meat and poultry and 124,300 pounds of potatoes. There are four sittings for both officers and men. For breakfast you have melon, cereal, bacon and eggs, with side orders of liver, ham or sausage. You can have all of these if you can handle them. There is American coffee and, when you're through; you can make yourself a sandwich of ham or beef, wrap it up in a paper napkin and stick it in your pocket and that will tide you over until dinnertime. An ordinary dinner will be soup, turkey, string beans, potatoes, cauliflower, fresh rolls, salad, ice cream and coffee.

It's full speed ahead now in the Atlantic Ocean and that's thirty knots. The biggest ship in the world is on her way.

There is a public address system on the ship and, from the bridge, Major Calvin gives periodic orders. His voice carries to every part of the ship. "All personnel. All personnel," his voice comes. "At eleven hundred hours each morning there will be emergency muster on deck. All personnel will proceed to the nearest deck carrying life jackets which must be put on and properly tied. Stand in lines away from the railings. There will be no smoking anywhere on the ship during emergency muster and inspection. The muster will take approximately one hour during which time compartments and cabins will be cleaned and inspected."

The Big Queen is now out of sight of land. The sea is calm and the G.Ls line the rails watching the age-old miracle of a sunset at sea. Night comes suddenly. G.Ls have a knack of making themselves at home anywhere. They've been aboard only a few hours but they've found favorite deck spaces to flop. Some play cards; others get books from the library; others refight Omaha Beach or tell of the champagne they liberated at Cologne or Frankfort. Officers pass the word

around. "You were forbidden to bring dogs or other pets aboard. However, if any of you have done so, there is a special cabin where they will get care. They will be returned to you when we reach port." A few sheepish G.Ls take dogs from their barracks bags and bring them to the cabin designated.

The officers' lounge, once the most luxurious salon afloat, is crowded with officers playing bridge, gin, poker. It is so crowded 1 that a hundred men have to stand. M.P.s stand at the heads of staircases directing men. No one minds the crowding. We are homeward bound and every turn of these huge screws brings us nearer.

"Set your clocks back an hour and a half ' at midnight." the loud-speakers boom. "Officers will leave the lounge at twenty-three hundred hours' (11 P.M.)." Some 3,000 men will sleep on the deck or in corridors tonight. Tomorrow night they'll sleep in bunks and another 3,000 will sleep on deck. It's midnight now, and when you walk along the promenade deck you have to pick your way over sleeping forms. They have plenty of blankets and the life jackets make good pillows.

No one is griping. The ship plows through a soft night and a calm sea.

Scribes Rank As Captains

Correspondents are given the simulated rank of captain and, when traveling with the Army, get the privileges of that rank. On the Big Queen, captains sleep fifteen in a cabin. There are five rows of three bunks each in my cabin.

"How about this rule about no smoking in cabins?" one of the men asked.

"That's the rule," I said.

He hit the walls. "These are made out of steel," he said thoughtfully. "And this woodwork here? You know since the Normandie's fire all big ships have completely fireproofed their woodwork."

"Then if we smoked we wouldn't set anything on fire here," another said.

"You've talked me into it," a third said and he lighted a cigarette. We locked the door and all lighted cigarettes. We were fifteen very happy men. A forbidden cigarette tastes better than any other brand.

"This is a dry ship, isn't it?" one asked. "It is that," I said.

"I don't see why we can't have an occasional drink," another grumbled.

"They had a bunch of Australians on this ship once," I told them. "It was a wet ship. Five of them decided to take a swim one night. They dived overboard and they never did pick them up. So it's a dry ship now. They're all dry ships."

"Does that mean officers, too?" one of them said hopefully.

"I wouldn't know," one said evasively. "You know it may blow up rough tonight," big man said slowly. "And I'm a man susceptible to seasickness. A drink or two now would maybe ward that seasickness off."

"As a medical man," another said gravely, "I can say you're right."

"You advise it then, Doctor?" someone asked eagerly.

"I always recommend Scotch and water for seasickness," the medic said.

Four men tumbled out of bunks. Four men said simultaneously, "I just happened to bring a bottle along," and within ten minutes a very happy two-bit limit poker game was on; the one glass we had was being passed around and fifteen of us were firm friends. I found out later that this was going on in fifty other cabins. Colonel Barnett and his staff are very smart guys indeed. They are so smart they know when to look the other way.

"We're not coppers," Colonel Barnett said, when I asked him how the men behaved. "These soldiers are going home after months or years of very tough going. We leave them on their own. Americans are well-behaved soldiers, believe me. In 83 trips we've never had to put a man in the brig. Take a look around the ship. You won't find a bit of damage caused by our men and remember since V-E Day we've carried more than 90,000 men home."

The weather held the next day. We had 700 Wacs and nurses and Red Cross girls aboard. They were all aft in a special section. They had the aft end of the boat deck to themselves. This was "Out of Bounds" to everyone else on the ship. G.Ls from lower decks called up to them, kidded them and the girls kidded back.

After dinner I sat in Major Kahn's cabin. The phone rang. Kahn answered it and said, "Yes, I was afraid of it. Take him right

into the operating room. Get Colonel Humphries. Ask him to scrub up. No, I've got a bad cold-it wouldn't be good for me to operate." He hung up. "This boy has to have his appendix removed," Kahn said. "That was Captain Melko, the medic in charge tonight. Want to come up and watch?"

I Attend an Appendectomy

Ten minutes later I was in white gown and white cap and a white mask standing of the head of the operating table. The kid was Pfc. Clyde E. Poole. Colonel Humphries stood on the left side of the table; Captain Melko on the right. Four noncom assistants hovered about them. One was laying out instruments. A strong light hung directly over the table. The kid was lying there on his side with his legs doubled up under him. This made it easier to give a spinal anesthetic. Colonel Humphries talked soothingly to him. "This isn't going to hurt a bit, son. That I promise you. Now . . . just a pinprick, wasn't it?"

Private Poole said drowsily, "Sure, Doc. That was nothing. I wanta drink of water." "In a little while, son," the colonel said. He had anesthetized the skin with procaine. Now he inserted the long needle and withdrew a few c.c.s of fluid from the boy's spine. He filled the syringe with procaine and then inserted -the syringe into the needle and pressed home the plunger. The stream of spinal fluid and procaine went shooting into the spine to cut off all nerves from the navel down.

"You never felt it, son, did you?" the colonel asked gently.

The kid mumbled, "No.... ` How about a glass a water?"

The colonel straightened him out now on his back. The medical technicians put sterile towels on the boy's abdomen leaving a clearing of perhaps five inches by three.

"Your feet tingling a little, like someone was tickling you?" Colonel Humphries asked. The kid chuckled sleepily. "Yeah, you tickling me, Doc?"

Colonel Humphries kept talking to him soothingly. Then he took a needle and tapped the place where the incision was to be made. "Feel that, son?" he asked.

The kid said, "Yeah. . . You're hitting me with the end of a pencil."

Colonel Humphries waited, his hands covered by sterile rubber gloves held away from his body. In a few moments he tried again. The kid still felt the pressure of the needle. No, it didn't hurt but he could feel it. The spinal wasn't working. This happens once in a hundred times.

"Gimme a can of ether," Major Kahn snapped, and then added, "And get another can ready." He put a cone over the boy's nose and said, "Just breathe naturally. Don't pay any attention to this stuff. It doesn't smell bad, does it? You'll be asleep in a minute and when you wake up it'll all be over. Hell, you'll be able to walk off this ship when we get to New York. Take a deep breath, soldier. Go to sleep, son ... just relax . . . you haven't got a thing to worry about. . . "

Private Poole was asleep. Captain Melko took the knife one of the assistants handed him. He studied the Mercurochrome reddened abdomen and then, with a sure, swift, gentle stroke, he made the incision.

The ship eased gently through the night. Here in the operating room you couldn't hear a sound. Time was important now and Captain Melko's hands worked swiftly. Colonel Humphries acted as his assistant, handling retractors, clamping bleeders and swabs.

"Suppose it got rough and the ship started to roll?" I asked Major Kahn.

"I'd phone Colonel Barnett," Kahn said, "and the colonel would ask the skipper to head into the wind and hold the ship steady until we were through. That's happened plenty of times. We always have at least one appendectomy per trip. This kid on the table is the most important man in the world to us now. If the commodore had to heave to for hours and miss the tide in New York and delay us a whole day-he wouldn't mind. The only thing that counts on this ship right now is this boy's life."

The Operation's Critical Moments

Now Melko sliced through the peritoneum. He called softly for hemostats, clamps, retractors and other instruments. They were always ready. He called for a "curved Kelly" and one of the assistants handed him the clamp. Melko's hand was deep in the abdomen now.

"Found it," Melko said. The swollen appendix was hidden behind the large intestine. Gently, he brought it to the surface.

"It's red-hot," Kahn said. "All ready to rupture."

Melko tied the base with catgut. Then he took a scalpel and severed the unwholesome thing that might have caused this boy's death had the operation been postponed another hour. Nelko cauterized the stump with carbolic acid and sutured it. Then Melko straightened up and his eyes were smiling. Humphries drew a deep breath. Kahn relaxed. An hour and a quarter had gone by.

Melko closed the thin wall of the peritoneum with chromic catgut, chemically treated so that the bodly absorbs it in about twenty days. He pulled the strong muscles together with plain catgut and sewed the torn fascia. Kahn had stopped the ether when Melko started to sew the peritoneum. Now, as Melko pulled the outer skin together and took a needle threaded with black silk from an assistant, the body on the table moved slightly.

"He's pushing," Humphries said incredu lously. Kahn tilted the ether can. The body relaxed. Melko finished a nice job of hemstitching the outer skin and it was all over.

"A beautiful job, Captain," Kahn said to Melko.

"It was indeed," Colonel Humphries added. We walked into the adjoining room where the surgeons took off their white robes and caps and masks and rubber gloves. I was surprised to see that Melko was very young. All three doctors had worn their uniforms under their robes I was amazed to see ten service stripes on the colonel's sleeve. That meant five years overseas. He said that he'd enlisted with the Canadians back in 1939. He'd been a brain surgeon in Boston but like so many others, he couldn't wait. He knew that America would be in it sooner or later so he decided to get in right away.

We had the taste of ether in our mouths and we went to Kahn's cabin for a bottle of beer. We talked of the operation, and of other operations at sea when the waves were running high. Every half hour Kahn phoned the hospital.

"He's all right now," Kahn said.

I walked up to the boat deck. Fifteen thousand men were asleep. You couldn't feel the engines far below. The deck was lined with sleeping forms, and the moonlight touched their calm faces. The sea wasn't moving. The Big Queen slid along steadily at thirty knots.

Soon we reached our last night. There was an electric air of expectancy through the ship. We were almost home. A long cable came to Colonel Barnett. It was from the staff of General Kells in New York and it told Colonel Barnett just how the men would disembark when the ship reached Pier 90, North River, New York; Half would use the forward gangplanks and proceed to ferryboats waiting just sixty yards away. The other half would use the aft gangplank and proceed to ferryboats moored to the end of the long pier. Some would go to Camp Kilmer; the rest to Camp Shanks. We would dock at 6:45 A.M. The 15,600 men would be unloaded and headed toward the two camps within five hours.

The loud-speakers woke us all at 4 A.M. It was one time no one minded being awakened early. By five everyone was on deck. It was dark and a chill rain slanted down as we entered the New York Narrows but no one noticed the rain. A small boat carne alongside and a group of men from General Kells' staff came aboard. They reported to Colonel Barnett that everything was in order.

How many ambulances would be needed at the dock? Major Kahn said he'd need only one. Private Poole wanted to walk off but Kahn vetoed that. He was doing fine but no use taking any chances. The embarkation officers had a walkie-talkie with them and they threw an aerial out of Colonel Barnett's cabin and talked to their headquarters in Brooklyn.

The rails were lined with G.I.s. We passed the Statue of Liberty at six o'clock. Even the rain couldn't dim the brightness of the golden shafts of light which etched Lady Liberty sharply against the darkness. Fifteen thousand G.I.s cheered. They'd kidded with the girls in England and France and Germany but this was the girl they'd really been waiting to see. A G.I. standing turned to his pal. "Hey, she looks fatter than when we saw her three years ago."

New York Harbor was still asleep but as the Big Queen steamed by, it came to life. Ferryboats, brightly lighted, tooted their whistles, and anchored freighters boomed deep welcomes. Then off the starboard side came the unmistakable music of The Sidewalks of New York. Everyone rushed to the starboard rail. There was the welcoming ship, Miss America, with a Wac band and sixty girls looking up and waving. The trim looking ship, once a private yacht, came close and now the G.Ls yelled greetings down to the girls and the girls yelled back.

A Harbor Alive with Whistles

No, it doesn't matter what time the ships come in. They're welcomed with bands and by girls. By now every whistle on every ship in the harbor had been tied down. G.Ls rushed from one rail to another. They didn't want to miss a thing. The dawn was breaking through the murky, rain-soaked night now and the gray line of New York's skyscrapers appeared jagged.

Now the Big Queen headed up the North River. The rain had stopped and the sun broke through to show us a clean, rainwashed New York. We approached the pier and now another band on the pier took up the musical welcome. This one was from Camp Shanks. They played everything and the G.Ls yelled from sheer happiness and excitement. You couldn't help but feel a tingle down your spine. It's the greatest thrill there is--coming home. Now we slid into the dock.

"All silver star men report to forward promenade deck gangway," a voice droned through the loud-speakers. "They will be the first off. Others will follow according to previous orders."

The ship was moored to the dock now. Three hundred silver star men waited. Then the order came. They lifted their barracks bags to their shoulders and ran down that gangplank. They were home. For the first time, most of them realized that the war was actually over. They were home. God Almighty; they were home, and, brother, that's the best there is!