Band of Brothers_ E Company, 506th Regim - Stephen E. Ambrose [15]
There was a great deal of cursing, partly because the men had hoped to march through New York City on their way to war and did not, also because they were not allowed to wear their jump boots. The reason: enemy spies might see them and would know that an airborne division was shipping out. They had to take the patch of the 101st, the Screaming Eagle, off their shoulders.
Winters remembered only one case of Gangplank Fever. A medical officer was "just smart enough to know what to take to be assigned to sick call and miss the voyage." All the others lined up in single file to walk up the gangplank, lugging their barracks bags and weapons. As they stepped onto the liner converted into a troop transport and called out their names, a checker marked them present. It took almost a full day to get the 5,000 men aboard a transport built to carry 1,000 passengers. Finally tugs towed the ship from her berth, and she started steaming out to sea. The men of Easy Company lined the rails to see the Statue of Liberty slip astern. For nearly every one of them, it was his first trip outside the United States. A certain homesickness set in, coupled with a realization, as the regimental scrapbook Currahee put it, of "how wonderful the last year had been."
3 "DUTIES OF THE LATRINE ORDERLY"
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ALDBOURNE
September 1943-March 1944
The Samaria was an old India mail liner and passenger ship converted to a troop transport. Originally built for 1,000 passengers, she carried 5,000 men from the 506th. The overcrowding created really dreadful conditions. Fresh water was severely rationed; the men could drink only at stipulated fifteen-minute intervals for a grand total of an hour and a half a day. The showers ran salt water, cold. The men had to wear their life jackets at all times, and their cartridge belts with canteens attached, which meant they were constantly bumping into one another. They slept in their clothes. One bunk was assigned to two men, which meant they alternated, sleeping every other night on the deck or in a hallway or wherever space to lie down could be found. The stench was simply awful.
There were two meals a day. Christenson described his first breakfast: "I didn't think we would ever stop going down stairs to the mess hall on the lowest deck, stairs that were slippery with grease and when we finally reached the bottom, the stench was almost overpowering. They fed us from large pots, containing boiled fish and tomatoes. The cooks wore stained white clothing, stains on stains showing they hadn't changed for days." The men ate the slop because they were hungry; to Webster, the mess hall had "the air of a floating madhouse."
At least the meals were a break from the routine, which consisted of walking the decks, leaning on the rail watching the convoy, or gambling. The gambling was continuous: poker, blackjack, and craps. Large amounts of money changed hands. Carson won $125 one night, lost it all the next day. Men tried to read, but they had precious few books. Captain Sobel tried to lead the men in calisthenics, but the space was insufficient and it became another Sobel joke.
On September 15, the Samaria docked in Liverpool. The next day a train took the men south. Trucks picked them up at the station at Ogbourne St. George and carried them on to their new home. They marched the last mile and a half, after dark, with only flashlights to show the way,- the wartime blackout impressed upon the men that they were in a combat zone. They got to their barracks, which were Nissen huts heated by twin potbellied stoves, were given mattress covers and shown the straw they could stuff into them, along