My summer of 1942 was if nothing surreal.

During that summer of 1942 1 waited at the family summer home on Cape Cod for the sailing of the troop ship that would take me overseas.

On the one hand, there were halcyon days of basking in the sun on our Hyannis Port beach, as if without a care in the world. There was also sailing in Nantucket Sound, dances at the Country Club, tennis, golf. And there were gatherings of family and friends especially on weekends at the family summer home we all loved.

On the other hand, the drone of PBY's on submarine watch just off the coast abruptly brought us back to reality. America was at war. I had enlisted in the American Field Service. Orders to report for embarkation could arrive at any moment.

I was suspended between Peace and War.

Those summer days were too happy to be real. And there was so "little time," and there might be no tomorrow.

As explained in my "Preface" above, I had resolved a crisis of conscience by enlisting in the American Field Service, with the approval of my Milton Draft Board --- and also with an assist from my friend and fellow Miltonian "Jock" Cobb. For a number of practical reasons, there was no AFS "boot" camp or in-country training. Training would take place during the long passage overseas by ship; also in the field.

Short of reporting to AFS regional Headquarters in Boston to complete certain formalities and for assistance in outfitting, there was nothing to do but wait. And the waiting continued well into September.

My memories of this summer of '42 are a blur, although some stand out. Remembrances of family are poignant --- Mother, Dad, my three sisters, especially my twin. And just before travel orders finally arrived, my sisters and I climbed Mt. Monadnock, together sharing in this way an enduring experience.

Also, memories of getting together during that summer with certain friends are vivid to this day. We were all "in the same boat" facing imminent orders to "ship out" to uncertain destinies far from home.

One set of such memories is of visits in Boston with a close friend, Irving Mabee, both of us expecting travel orders at any moment. We had worked together on an American Friends Service Committee project in Wisconsin the previous summer of 1941 and both of us opposed war in principle. After Pearl Harbor, Irving had searched his conscience and decided to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Force in a "just war" against the Nazi atrocity.

Irving had a good voice and loved to sing. On rare and treasured opportunities we would meet at the piano bar of Alpini's restaurant near Boston's Kenmore square, and sing and toast the night way with fellow guys and gals, all of us drowning thoughts of war in song --- and beer. Then Irving and I would stroll along the paths of the Charles River embankment to talk. Somehow, as walked, the song we sang most was "Stormy Weather."

Irving had decided it best not to marry his College sweetheart and fiancée until after the war, should he return. It was a heart-wrenching decision, and we agonized about our own personal lives as well as about the fate of our generation and our world.

Irving made it back in one piece, as did I. I was invited to share in a homecoming dinner with his fiancée and her family.

One of the young people we met at Alpini's was Rita McDonald of Brookline, a sparkling lass with auburn hair and smiling Irish eyes. We exchanged letters while I was overseas. In one letter (July 1943) she wrote of the frustrations and the loneliness she and other young women experienced at the "home front." A nurse, she was anxious to serve overseas, and made it to Italy with the American Red Cross, 73rd Station Hospital.

Another set of memories is of two friendships I made in that summer of '42 with young Lieutenants who flew those PBY's on submarine patrol, Ray Hinton and Dick Whitney. They were doubtless more attracted to my sisters and other young women friends of ours than to me, but all of us shared together in dates, dances at the Club, picnics on the beach, doubles in tennis, wide-ranging talk, thoughts denying of war. Ray married a Hyannis Port girl, a friend of ours, and survived many missions as a fighter pilot based in Italy. Dick, a wonderful young man, flew B-24's, and was lost over the oil fields of Ploesti, Rumania. He and my twin sister had been a delightful couple in that surreal summer of '42.

Of these four of us in that summer of '42, three of us came back when it was over. And as America mobilized in that summer of '42, we were just four of millions of young men of our generation wafting for orders for duty overseas, and while waiting seeking to seize each precious moment, obliterate the future, find. surcease in each other's company and in. all the "old familiar places."

The young women of our generation, torn from husbands, brothers, friends, lovers, bravely mobilized in support of the war effort as never before and provided us with the inspiration of their service and their love.

In that summer of '42 I was invited to AFS Headquarters, Boston, for meetings with senior AFS staff, all AFS veterans of World War I. They helped complete the recruitment and outfitting formalities, and share with me some of their experiences.

In the "Acknowledgments" above I referred to "A Trove of Writings a Half-Century Old" gathering dust in my attic. These included the outline for a book (never written) intended to portray my experiences in the war; they also included drafts for two opening "chapters". One of drafts record my understandings or misconceptions about the War and about AFS at that time as well as accounts of my visits to the Boston AFS Headquarters, Newbury Street during that summer of '42.

The other draft records the forty day passage by troop ship from New York City to Egypt in September-October 1942. I wrote both accounts when I was overseas during interludes between action.

The narrative which follows in this Part II are based upon these drafts of a half century ago. I have some misgivings in repeating them as they are at times flippant, even critical in tone reflecting my inexperience and naivete and an excess of youthful hubris. I may have tarnished an AFS icon or two in setting down these immediate impressions for which I apologize. Nevertheless, they vividly capture the reality of a remote past, and are fresh, spontaneous, with humor. And so I have set them down, with a bit of editing here and there, in the pages which follow.

Few of us Americans in summer 1942 really knew war. My first impressions were molded by the full-page color advertisements that appeared those days in Life, Time, Newsweek, Look. War was all done up in maps with big red arrows showing where various generals or admirals were shoving Nazis and "Japs" all over the place --- maps with zig-zag stripes to indicate the latest advance of the Russians, or the "seeming impregnable ramparts of Hitler's. Feistung Europa. Or there were artful relief maps as backdrop for action scenes superimposed upon them. These scenes were a dizzy melange of all the things that could happen in modern war and all going on at once.

In the foreground, for example, was "one of our boys" leaping in mid-air over mines and barbed-wire with the bright sun of full day glinting on his fixed bayonet, and a Nazi, eyes wide with fear running away at the right hand corner of the picture. Directly behind a jeep was suspended in air leading a convoy of half-track tankbusters with cannons blazing and myriad machine-guns spurting death into an exploding German ME 109.

Elsewhere tanks were crossing a river, Mustangs were diving on a lone German gun emplacement, shells (ours) were dropping all over the place, the sky was alive with all known types of bombers while from a large convoy out at sea (top right-hand side of the picture) landing craft were zooming in to an established beach-head. Top left-hand side of the picture showed a soldier, with a white circle all around him, giving death-defying instructions into a "walkie-talkie.

The military explanation for this jig-saw puzzle (or so the caption read) was "in the army everything is in coordination because of the 'walkie-talkie' ." And then the reader was advised in large block letters, to buy "Eveready Batteries" or "Gillette Blades" or "Borden's Milk."

Thus it was, in the summer of 1942, that my impression of the conduct of war was a posed Life Magazine impression, sanitized, romanticized. This did not much conform to the horror stories of war I had absorbed as a child during the anti-war furor of the 1920's and 30's when everyone was signing Oxford pledges --- and sending scrap iron to the Japanese. Nevertheless, as Russia and Britain took the full force of the Nazi onslaught, and then America was attacked at Pearl Harbor, there were photographs in deadly realism on the pages of Life, Time, Newsweek, and Look.

And the newsreels were filled with sights-sounds-screams of war in clouds of billowing smoke. So the romanticism waned. Hundreds of Americans went to the movies and cried their eyes out in those cruel beautiful scenes of "Mrs. Miniver" and "Eagle Squadron" --- and then went home to Saturday night beans and Sunday morning baths. Quentin Reynolds boomed sententious bull-frog accounts of "what they were doing over there." Reality began to sink in.

But it was still pretty much "over there" in that summer of 1942, and for the American people war was second-hand stuff. No nation can know what war is about until its young men get shot at, and its people in their cities and homes bombed. By then the only war that can, be prevented is the next one.

My impressions, or better misconceptions, of AFS in the war in that summer of 1942 were also influenced by Life Magazine.

One morning, while I was sprawled on the beach warmed by a Cape Cod summer sun, a friend put the latest edition of Life in my hands, pointing to a series of captioned photographs about the American Field Service with the British 8th Army in Africa. These were the first Americans overseas and the first Americans to serve with the British, then engaging Rommel's Afrika Korps in the "Western Desert" of Egypt and Libya.

Life. with characteristic zeal, "did the thing up brown." There were sand-streaked ambulances standing desperately alone in a vast expanse of sand, while sun-browned men in khaki shorts lifted wounded men into them. One photo was of four of the "Volunteers who serve without pay" running in crouching positions with a stretcher balanced between them.

The caption read that "it takes practice to keep the stretcher level while running crouched down because bullets are zipping over-head."

This thing made a profound impression upon me, and added to the romantic attraction of the "adventure" into which I had launched myself. I was going to be shot at. I was going to cruise over foreign battle-fields, willy-nilly, picking up wounded who would look at me with thankful eyes while bullets "zipped" overhead. Suddenly I felt myself an object of admiration in the eyes of my friend.

Many months later I learned, even before my first battle experience at Mareth, that no one cruises "willy-nilly" over a battle-field. That the succor and evacuation of wounded men by ambulance follows a systematic, highly organized plan all the way from the most advanced medical posts back to the field hospitals behind the lines.

And I was somewhat abashed when I learned, months later, that those dramatic photographs of AFS in action in Life had been taken at a field hospital where not even a long-range enemy shell could have strayed. The part about "running ... because bullets are zipping overhead" had been posed, as in Civilian Defense training when catsup, or lipstick, takes the place of blood.

In that summer of '42 the German armies achieved their greatest penetration of the Russian heartland, approaching Moscow to the north, Stalingrad to the south. Japan's conquests were at their apogee, although thwarted by American carriers and heroic flyers at the incredible Battle of Midway, June 3-6, 1942.

In the Western Desert, Britain's Army of the Nile, reorganized as 8th Army, was being pushed back towards Cairo by Rommel's Afrika Korps determined to advance through the Middle East and on to India. Things looked grim for the Allied forces.

Since 1940 British and Axis forces had see-sawed back and forth across hundreds of miles in offensives and counter-offensives on the deserts of Egypt and Libya, with Tripoli on the west and Cairo to the east at stake. The tide had turned in favor of the Axis in May and June 1942. Irwin Rommel's Afrika Korps outflanked and occupied French forces at Bir Hacheim as well as the British defensive position at Tobruk, and then crossed into Egyptian territory with the British forces in retreat to lines hurriedly established at El Alamein for the defense of Cairo. The German advance reached and probed the El Alamein lines in July.

AFS units had performed heroically at Bir Hacheim, and at Tobruk. All of them killed, wounded, or captured at Bir Hacheim; others lost at Tobruk.

My summer of '42 was the summer of this British retreat on the Western Desert. In retrospect, it was to be the last retreat of British forces, and indeed of Allied forces in Europe and Africa during the war; back then it seemed like the knell of doom. Pessimism ran high. Rommel was hell bent for Alexandria, Cairo, the Suez Canal and points East and nothing was going to stop him.

Last remnants of anti-British feeling still lingered because many Americans had not yet identified our cause with England's, and the reality of war had not yet taken hold. It was said in some circles that England was "decadent," and why should we have become "involved" in England's wars? And so the exploits of Rommel the "desert fox" outweighed British heroism and generalship. Few stopped to realize in those days that the British 8th Army was under-manned and under-armed.

But help was on the way. During that summer of '42 the gathering might of American war production translated into stockpiles of tanks, canons, airplanes (President Roosevelt had set a target of 50,000 a year), ammunition, motor transport, and spare parts at East Coast docks for transshipment to docks in England and Egypt. One of these shipments included the first American Sherman tanks to reach Britain's massive Suez base.

During that summer two men of England took command of 8th Army and the sprawling complex of GHQ MEF Cairo, providing new mettle and morale for the stunned Commonwealth forces. On August 13 General Bernard Law Montgomery assumed field command of 8th Army, and would lead it in one of the greatest exploits of brilliant defense followed by victorious advance in military history. On August 15 General H.R. Alexander took over as Middle East Commander in Chief, directing the overall strategy and build-up for counter-offensive and victory. These events constituted one of the major turning-points in the history of World War II.

Military history was being made before my eyes, but my "first-hand" understanding of what was going on had been the impressionistic, indeed misleading, newsreels, movies, and Life, Time, Newsweek, Look articles. Realistic and informed reporting would come soon enough, and of the highest quality.

But there was something "first hand" in my Summer of '42 about getting a uniform and all kinds of shots in the arm, and completing other formalities, as called for by the Boston AFS Headquarters. I am somewhat amused now when I remember the trepidation I felt when I entered the Boston Field Service Office for the first time.

During World War I Boston had provided the National Headquarters for AFS, and Boston men its leadership. A majority of the volunteers had come from Massachusetts and the other New England States.

However, before the start of World War II (Sept. 3, 1939) AFS National Headquarters had been established in New York City, initially 120 Broadway then 60 Beaver Street not far from Wall Street. Then, at the outbreak of war a regional AFS office was established at Newbury Street, Boston led by William de Ford Bigelow and other distinguished Bostonians many of whom such as Mr. Bigelow had served, with AFS ambulance or transport units with the French in World War I. This office was highly successful in raising funds and in recruiting volunteers for service. Massachusetts, with a total of 223 was second only to New York's 434 in numbers of AFS Drivers in World War II.

I should have known that the Boston office had to be on Newbury Street, not Tremont Street, or Boylston Street, or any old street. Newbury Street has that certain aura about it that Bostonians love, and besides when you work at Newbury Street you can nip over for a quick one at the Ritz. Newbury Street is the Street in Boston for fashion.

Newbury Street is lined with the proper kind of converted brownstone apartment house with a slow elevator run by a buxom Negro lady because there is no racial prejudice in Boston. And the Boston HQ of an outfit (AFS) which made news-print for the Society Section of the Boston Herald, whose Commanding Officer in the field was a Boston (Milton) Man, and whose ranks were filled (in part) by scions of the best families, would have to be in a converted brownstone apartment house on Newbury Street.

Yes, I should have know that.

And I should have known, also, that I would be welcomed with the genial nonchalance that comes with good breeding. Especially because one of the men who ran things at the Office (something to do for the war effort) knew me when I had been a student at Bowdoin College.

He gave me a hearty slap on the back and shoved me into a comfortable leather chair beside a filing cabinet and a desk with papers on it that made it look very busy.

"Let me see, Edwards, aren't you? Letter man on the old track team. I know you. I know what you stand for because I know what the old College stands for. You're just the man for the job, just the man."

He plumped my hand, and puffed on a half burnt-out cigarette: "Wish I was going with you myself, kidney trouble you know, got a bad kidney. Not that I don't swim a mile every day, back up in Maine in the old College pool. It's a great outfit, AFS, a great old outfit. I can remember back there in France. Doesn't seem so long ago at that..." Somehow, that last war had a habit of creeping in, in conversations in '42. It seems odd that getting mixed up in a big brand new war would be one way to drag the other one out of the ashes.

"I know what you stand for, all right. And that's good enough for me." The old grad AFS 1918 was continuing: "but just for form's sake we want three references. Here's the blank form. Better look it over and make sure it's all clear." It was the sort of form where you fill in the name of your Minister, the Dean of your College, a reputable Boston lawyer.

My genial inquisitor and Bowdoin friend continued: "And this blue sheet here, merely a formality you know, that's for the British. It says you are supposed to shave every day. And this pink one, that's the British Army Disciplinary Act --- not that it will ever apply to you. Just get your Dad to witness it. Your Dad, Bowdoin '00, great Bowdoin Man. Look, I've got all the sheets together, one-two-three, white-pink-blue." He stuck a, pin, deftly, through the assembled forms, binding them together. I was thankful AFS didn't have to use red, white and blue forms.

He answered all my questions, bang, bang, bang. He really knew the Field Service, all right; there was no doubt about it. After all, he'd been through the show before. "Yep, you wont be sailing until you're all set. Yep, this list of equipment is just what you will need on the desert. Just mention Field Service at Roger's Peet and Richard's uniforms. We've got a special arrangement with them. You can get those thermotabs and that diazole at the Ritz drug-store just across the street. Better stock up at the bar, too, while you have the chance...."

I consumed two thermotabs while on the desert. I lost (or was relieved of) my diazole, my compass, my belly-bands, my money-belt, my folding bucket, my boy-scout knife, and my deluxe flash-light in the water-proof case before HMS Aquitania reached Suez. Oddly enough, the British Army had a Quartermaster Corps which supplied all the important things we needed.

"By the way, can you drive?"

The unexpected abruptness of this critical question, perhaps the most important one for a person about to join an Ambulance Car Company with the British 8th Army, cut across clouds of my tobacco smoke induced fantasies (about saving lives, being a hero, driving "hell-bent for election" over those battle-fields pictured in Life, Time, Newsweek, Look) that had begun to drift across my brain.

I often wondered what my friend would have done if I had said "No!". But then, he knew "what I stood for."

"That's enough business for one morning, don't you think?" My genial interviewer leaned back in his swivel chair with the air of a business-man who had just completed a "deal."

He continued on, in his relaxed mood: "Lots of Bowdoin men in AFS. Let me see, you know Stratton of course, wounded at Bir Hacheim. There's Doubleday of your own class, and I believe Jones is considering. You're both A.D. Phi, aren't you? Why don't you drop him a letter? That's great ... a big help for me."

And again, another key question out of the blue: "By the way, did you have any special reason for taking on this job? It's a tough one, immediate action overseas..."

"I'm a conscientious objector,' I said. "I'd rather be on the medical side of things as long as my draft board is willing."

Most of the fellows with whom I was destined to live and work through days and nights on the Western Desert, in Tunisia, and in Italy were varying degrees of that often maligned creature known as "conscientious objector," otherwise "draft-dodger," "shirker," and lumped hodgepodge in 4E, 1AO, 2A categories of Selective Service. Tag-marks or misnomers such as this dwindled in significance as one of those fellows pulled a British soldier from a burning ammo truck; as another of these fellows burned to death when his ambulance hit a mine.

Nevertheless, I felt that my confession (if such it was judged) was out of place at Newbury Street, Boston. Somehow I sensed that I should have wanted to "pack a pistol" or mount a tommy-gun on the hood of my ambulance. The "old grads" at the Boston Office in their refreshing zeal may have forgotten about the Geneva Convention and the meaning of the Red Cross which we carried --- or so it seemed.

A rather portly gentleman ambling into our room put an end to collegiate reminiscences with my new-found Bowdoin mentor. He looked very important --- was indeed one of the senior men at the Boston Office and had served AFS and France with distinction in World War I.

He had just received a routine "signal" (as the British call it) from AFS Hq Cairo: the exotic city that then seemed to me so remote and yet so close to the war. I did not catch his name, and refer to him as "Mr. B" (for Boston). Mr. B was truly "close" to the war. Apparently the "signal" reported major AFS losses.

It was late June or early July at the time of this my first interview at AFS Boston. June had been a month of disaster for 8th Army and the attached forces of the Free French. The principal Allied defenses along the Egyptian border with Libya had fallen, Bir Hacheim in the desert to the south and Tobruk key port and base at the coast. In mid-June, at Knightsbridge-Acroma 8th Army had reportedly lost 280 tanks in a single engagement. The road to Alamein was open to Rommel's Afrika Korps. But all our ambulances were getting out, you bet. --- except all 12 at Bir Hacheim, and those many captured or destroyed at Tobruk.

Arthur Stratton, who I had met at Bowdoin, was wounded at Bir Hacheim. In my naivete and inexperience, it looked to me like finis for 8th Army.

Thus, while momentous events were unfolding in Egypt, we lounged about in the oak-panneled splendor of AFS Newbury Street, with muggy New England summer crowding in at the window which looked out on the Ritz Hotel. It was dead quiet in the office. Suddenly the war seemed closer and for the first time real because "my" outfit was getting knocked about in it. I pictured ambulances scurrying about over desert sands picking up fallen soldiers under the very noses of charging Tiger tanks that had grim black and white crosses painted on their Nazi sides.

Somehow I wanted to be there.

I timidly broke the silence: "I guess there's no hope for Alexandria and Cairo now." My naive remark exploded like a mortar-bomb in the dead-still room.

Mr. B grunted his disapproval, and a flood of angry words puffed up his sagging jowls, "Hell, the 8th Army can't lose; England's best and you can bet on it, you can bet ... hell, strategic withdrawal, just a trap ... hell." He shuffled out of the room. I felt that I had been disloyal to Boston, to AFS, to England, but I had not even then learned a lesson about the "old school tie that never breaks."

"Does this mean the end of the Field Service?" I offered to my friend and sponsor in a meek voice. His reply would have made Mr. B. blush for lack of enthusiasm. "My God man, no! Field Service will "carry on" with its back to the wall. What if Alexandria does fall? There's still India. 8th Army won't go there without Field Service."

I was convinced. Newbury Street, Boston knew Field Service, knew the "Brits," and the Boston Office was able to handle any emergency that cropped up. Mr. B. had received a "signal" straight from Cairo. Here was a man who was in touch with things, deep down. And mine was a new found wisdom about war, and keeping a "stiff upper lip" no matter what.

In actual fact, the heroic delaying actions at Bir Hacheim and Tobruk had allowed a "strategic withdrawal" and time to prepare the defenses at El Alamein. Coincidentally Montgomery took over command (August 13) of an 8th Army reinforced by massive shipments of ordnance including the first Grant and Sherman tanks. When the Germans mounted their thrust in strength to take Cairo and beyond in the first week of September, Montgomery had actually lured them into a trap, exposing them to withering counterattack on land and from the air --- and defeat.

This, the battle of Alam el Halfa, followed by the famed break-out by 8th Army in October in the Battle of El Alamein, mark one of the most significant turning-points in favor of the Allied cause in the entire history of World War II. Mr. B. and Newbury St.. had been right, all along.

Before I left Newbury Street, Mr. B. had assured me that notwithstanding my inexperience I would be a credit to AFS. My new found friend at Newbury Street, a fellow "Bowdoin man" who was both sponsor and mentor for me, assured me once again that he knew "what I stood for" and that was "good enough" for him. In his parting words he told me to "go in there and fight because if I didn't go he had a mind to because he couldn't let the old gang down even if he did have a kidney stone."

I felt good about Newbury Street --- and AFS.

My summer of '42 was drawing to a close. It was September, and I was still waiting to do my part. That Labor Day weekend was devoted to exhortations for war production, and American Labor would do its part --- you bet. A plethora of catchy-named alphabetized agencies were spun out of Washington to take control of mobilization of all aspects of the economic life of the nation, each agency led by a top executive regardless of political party. Thus Management and Labor rallied to harness the American "Arsenal of Democracy," stirring words of our Commander-in-Chief F.D.R.

The Commander-in-Chief, President Franklin Roosevelt, was firmly in charge---revered leader of our nation, dynamic leader of the free world in the titanic struggle for freedom, justice, peace. Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt---the Home Front in World War II documents with a human touch the extraordinary feats of leadership by the Roosevelts in that unusual time.

There was a distinct chill in the September air as the sea-washed breezes veered around from the northeast, bringing with them one crystal clear picture-perfect Cape Cod day after another.

There is one vivid memory of that September, of returning one evening with those special friends of summer from the last of our social gatherings.

My "date," a delightful friend of my summers, had been relegated with me to a rumble seat for the ride back, and a chill fog had set in slowing our passage home to a crawl. Although both of us became chilled, perfect gentleman that I was I did not take any advantage to dispel the chill. Nor was there room to "maneuver" had I tried. Rumble seats are a thing of the past; but I assure ire you that their alleged "advantages" for "courting" were greatly overrated.

As with the account of "My Summer of '42" above, some memories of those September days of long ago, and the long sea voyage which followed, are a blur.

I do not remember the day when the anxiously awaited orders to proceed to New York City and embarkation for Egypt on HMS Aquitania arrived, as arrive they did. It was mid-September of 1942. 1 do remember getting on the midnight train for New York at Boston's South Station, accompanied only by a single elder friend of the family-known to my sisters and I as "Uncle Harry." Good-byes with family at the Station might have been too painful.

I felt self conscious, clad in my brand new AFS uniform (courtesy of Richard's Uniforms, Boston). Mother had insisted that I book a lower 4, but I had taken an upper 5 instead (in a vain attempt to be less conspicuous).

I was weighted down with what proved to be all kinds of superfluous baggage stuffed into a large duffle bag, and I wasn't used to my new uniform which had seen previous "action" at one or two of the summer dances at the Hyannis Port Club. People stared at me at the station, and seemed to be saying they were glad that I was to have upper five all to myself.

Anyway, the Field Service office at Newbury Street had assured me that I was a credit to the outfit.

I remember staying at the midtown "Y," NYC. I was also invited to dinner with the family of Natalie Walters at their home in New Jersey. Natalie was a good friend of Hyannis Port summers, and a good sport --- fortunately so because I managed to capsize our family sailboat that summer in Hyannis Port harbor with Natalie on board. This incident was cause for good-natured ribbing by AFS comrades soon to be.

I could not forget an all too brief introduction to AFS Director-General Stephen Galatti, other memories of AFS HQ 60 Beaver Street NYC are a blur.

One could never forget a meeting with Mr. Galatti however brief. In the course the years during and after the war I was privileged to establish a warm relationship with him during the war and as an activist in the world-wide AFS International (now Intercultural) Scholarship program which we Drivers established in 1946 because of his initiative, and which he directed until his death in 1964.

Mr. Galatti served with the AFS ambulance corps in World War I, rising to Major and second in command in France. He led in its reestablishment in 1939, served throughout World War II as its Director-General. He devoted his life to AFS; he in fact "was AFS" and won the admiration and love of all.

"Steve" Galatti's management style was direct, unpretentious, informal, personal --- and he operated more often outside than inside the confines of an office. Jock Cobb wrote an hilarious account of one of his early visits to AFS/HQ at 60 Beaver St. that summer of '42, somewhat analogous to my own irreverent first impressions of the AFS Boston Office at Newbury Street.

I quote from a letter of Jock's dated July 16, 1942:

... Mr. Galatti, genial man with the girls in the office, was bawling out one of the nice girls for chewing gum, whereupon another nice society number piped up that we were fighting for liberty and that liberty consisted of chewing gum when you wanted to, and Mr. Galatti fell back on the remark that nobody would hire a secretary who chews gum. Joan (Belmont) snapped back that all secretaries chew gum, especially the good ones, and furthermore he wasn't such a good boss because he had such a mess on his desk and all the nice wire baskets were all empty ... etc. I think Galatti got the last word, though.

Stephen Galatti in that summer of '42 had committed his life to AFS, as in World War I, devoting his enormous energies and talents to the service first of France in 1940, than securing the accords with Britain and obtaining the resources --- funds and vehicles --- for the first unit of AFS Drivers to join the Commonwealth and Free French forces against Afrika Korps before America was attacked at Pearl Harbor.

He rallied to his side for AFS command at home and abroad dedicated and able "lieutenants" such as Ralph Richmond, Bill Wallace, Ford Bigelow, Stuart Benson, Dunbar Hinrichs---themselves AFS veterans of World War I. He had also assembled a devoted cadre of volunteers and some paid professionals to help manage the NY/HQ nerve-center of the entire worldwide operation. Joan Belmont was one, Dorothy Field another. Dorothy was the Mother of one of our best and bravest Drivers and Officers--- Manning Field --- also Mother-figure for all of us.

After the war, it was Stephen Galatti's vision, and the authority and respect he commanded in all circles at home and abroad, that created out of the AFS war experience the world-wide AFS Intercultural Programs of which he was principal founder and first President up until his death in 1964.

Jock's account on that July 16 of 1942, written with tongue-in-cheek, basically captured the camaraderie, good-will, warm good-humor, democratic spirit of the leadership style of our rumpled and beloved "D-G."

Jock (Cobb) had had a far different "summer of '42" than I. We had been volunteers on a public health project with the American Friends Service Committee in Mexico, and he had returned to the States in April of 1942 about a month ahead of me, and completed recruitment formalities with AFS ahead of me. He had been called to New York on July 15 for embarkation to Egypt --- an embarkation which in fact had been repeatedly postponed until my own AFS Unit Mideast 26 of September 21. Jock had "cooled his heels" in or near NYC for more than two months that summer.

Not all this time had been a loss. He had met with Major Shaffer, who would command our Unit 26. Major Chester N. Shaffer served with an AFS Transport Section in France, World War I, and went on to a career with the U.S. Army. After our Unit ME 26 reached Egypt, he served for a time at Col. Ralph Richmond's AFS/HQ at Cairo to establish and direct an effective Supply and Transport division.

Jock wrote that "when I got in, Major Shaffer handed me a book of instructions in map reading and a book of Arabic which was the most amazing thing I ever hope to see, and he told me that I would be the man to learn about all these things and pass them on to the others." Thus Jock was prepared to teach a course in map-reading during our pending sea voyage. Jock was also given an assignment by AFS as photographer, and during his long wait had time to prepare his camera and photographic equipment and to obtain the necessary authorizations from the Board of Economic Warfare. He wrote: "I'm going to be doing a good bit of photography for the outfit which should be fun."

The cause of the delay that had kept Jock waiting had been torpedoings by German U-boats off the American coast. Jay Nierenberg, initially Unit ME 15, had been on one such sailing. AFS personnel on board were rescued to return to New York to form part of Unit ME 26. HMS Aquitania with our Unit 26 was the first to get through in September. Jock had been forced to wait on shore. In all, during the war, there were seven torpedoings when AFS men had been on board.

The German U-boat campaign all along our eastern coasts in 1941-1942 raised havoc, sinking 400 ships in the first six months of 1942. It was Germany's first assault against the United. States, an "Atlantic Pearl Harbor." The book Operation Drumbeat, by Michael Gannon (NY, Harper & Row, 1990) documents this tragic story.

During the long wait until our actual embarkation September 21, 1942 I had enjoyed summer at Hyannis Port with family and friends, while Jock was caught in the heat of New York City and the frustration of repeated false alarms . So it was that Jock and I were delighted to find ourselves among the 50 AFS recruits forming Unit ME 26 preparing to board our assigned troop ship HMS Aquitania on that September day. Our meeting was unexpected as he had returned ahead of me from our project with the Friends Service Committee in Mexico. Referring to me as "Carlos," my name used in the Mexico project, he wrote in a letter written "At Sea on a Ship" :

Many are the moonlit nights that Carlos and I have leaned over the promenade deck rail and told over and over the stories of Mexico... and the scenes we shared... An amazing coincidence indeed. was the fact that we find ourselves together here. No one was more surprised than Carlos to find me sitting in the port of embarkation where I had been wading for months. He, the lucky dog, had spent a delicious summer on Cape Cod the most amusing incident of which was the day he capsized a beautiful blonde in Hyannis Port bay.

We sneaked out of New York harbor under cover of night, leaving from an out of the way pier on Staten Island. The German U-boats still roamed the Atlantic, having taken terrible toll all along our coast during the previous year, this phase of the war now well documented. Our stacks and spars were shrouded in fog. A ghost-like antibarrage balloon was tethered high above our stem.

We sailed that night and all the next day into a howling September Nor'easter whose thundering waves, winds, darkening clouds actually provided some protection from submarines while also investing almost the entire ship's company with seasickness. My own sea-legs stood me in good stead.

Our troop ship was the last of the great four-stackers of the Cunard line's fleet of luxury liners. She had been stripped and fitted as a troop ship capable of carrying as many as 7,000 troops plus many tons of ordnance for the troops in the field. She would sail alone, changing course every seven minutes in submarine infested waters, relying on speed, and a six-inch naval gun with platform and gun-crew at her stern. She slipped out of the blacked-out New York harbor at night, carrying one of the first large contingents of US troops and armaments (including Sherman tanks) --- and us. We were a prime target.

Our AFS contingent, 50 of us, was the 26th AFS unit to leave the USA designated Unit ME 26, still relatively early in the American participation in the War. Unit 1, 100 strong, had set sail from Halifax almost a year before our Unit, and a month before Pearl Harbor, and there had been an AFS presence in France even before this.

Those early AFS Drivers in Africa had served with honor and courage, some wounded, others killed, in that terrible holding action as Rommel pushed relentlessly towards Cairo; and equally in the momentous El Alamein campaign --- one of the major turning points of the entire war. They had paved the way for the respect all of us received from our Commonwealth and French fellows. The survivors of those early battles rose to responsible officer command, leading the long march to Tunis, on up the Italian spur, and in India-Burma. Their names are AFS legend: Hoeing, Howe, Nettleton, Ives, Chamberlin, Snead, Field, Payne and others of equal stature whose names are writ large in the annals of AFS World War II.

It took forty days and nights to zig-zag down the US coast, across the South Atlantic, then up the Indian Ocean and Red Sea to reach Port Tewfik and the huge British base at Suez and its El Tahag mobilization center south of Cairo. As we sailed, the power of the German "Axis" was at its peak. The Mediterranean Sea was closed. But as our Unit reached Egypt, the tide of war would turn against the Axis at El Alamein, Egypt, and the defense of Stalingrad, Russia. Following our initial training and field operations in Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria many of us went west for action in the "Western Desert" all the way to Tunis; then up the Italian "boot" and the final Axis surrender in May 1945.

One of the most vivid memories I have to this day of this sea voyage, is when a sailor member of the crew of the ship, deranged, attempting suicide, jumped overboard as we steamed full speed well out in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar. Although we had been warned that in that eventuality it would be too dangerous to stop on account of submarines, the ship nevertheless dropped a life boat while underway and circled widely while the errant individual was picked up. When the rescue tender reached him, a huge albatross had landed on his head. That's how they were able to spot him,

Another delightful memory of that sea voyage was three days of shore leave at Cape Town. I journeyed down the coast towards the Cape of Good Hope in a spotless electric train, invited to stay with a South African family in their lovely ocean-front cottage. This was almost like a touch of Old England. The black troops were not allowed to go ashore for fear of unpleasantness.

But I am getting ahead of my story, and the nickname I acquired as I was marching up the pier with my new found "brothers" in AFS. I remember vividly the huge black side of our ocean queen looming up into the darkness above, and the narrow gangway which we had to climb, each of us carrying his gear in a duffle-bag slung over the shoulder. Our AFS unit was the last of an endless line of troops, and the last to board. The first 37 of us, including Jock who had been waiting the longest, received officer-status quarters in cabins of the top-side decks.

I was one of the final group of 13 assigned to cramped space down below in a converted swimming pool on E deck. Unlucky perhaps, but in time, those of us who served together "for the duration" considered ourselves to have been "the Lucky 13." We met this way for the first time, and with forced humor were making light of our ominous embarkation. In this way we exchanged names and nicknames.

In those days, I may have had a fox-like sharpness to my nose, or even a foxy gleam in my eyes --- especially under the muffled lights of the darkened pier. The fellow directly in front of me (Jack Chaffee by name) looking back as we walked, exclaimed: "You look like a fox!" Others of our "Lucky 13" group, who would become my bonded brothers, overheard, and the name stuck. To this day I am known as "Fox" Edwards in AFS circles.

Prophetic nickname it was: soon we were dodging submarines, as the red fox dodges the hounds; and we were all en route to encounter Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox."

As in my account of AFS Newbury Street Boston, I had also written a "chapter" about the forty days and nights of my sea voyage by troop ship to Egypt, which I had titled somewhat facetiously "The Major and the Minors." I also discovered in my attic letters I had written to family at that time, as well as the copy of a letter to my mother by "C.N. Shaffer, Major, AFS," dated November 23, 1942 from "somewhere in the Middle East." Jock Cobb also made available for me copies of letters he had written while at sea. The narrative which follows makes use of these materials.

The logistics of transporting 2,000 or so AFS Drivers to overseas posts in time of war was formidable to say the least. Director-General Galatti overcame all obstacles, finding openings for AFS Units of varying sizes destined for Mideast, Central Mediterranean, India-Burma. A total of 2,452 AFS Volunteers embarked in the years 1939-45. There over 50 Units for the Mideast, 100 or so for Central Mediterranean and India-Burma respectively.

AFS assigned a Unit Leader/Commanding Officer for the larger Units. As noted above, our Unit 26 Commander was Major Chester N. Shaffer, who had served with the AFS Transport Sections in France, World War I, followed by U.S. Army service. When I first met the Major, at Newbury Street in Boston, he was in civilian clothes. He was a smallish man, just a bit stooped with the air of a person who knew a lot but kept his own counsel. His laugh, a bit forced, and his lips which seemed to twitch as he talked, told of an excess of nervous energy. He was busy, rushed --- big things were "on the fire" and the drowsy office at Newbury Street radiated his zeal.

The Major was in uniform when I met him again in New York shortly before we sailed, charged with an even greater importance and thereby busier than usual. Everything was set for embarkation. He had plans. Top men had been lined up among we Volunteers and special assignments handed out to them: Frank Coleman for calisthenics and sports, "Padre" Hart for church, Cobb for map-reading, and so forth. "Mike" Michelson would be his "envoy plenipotentiary" for liaison. Most were Boston men, of which the Major (from Lexington Mass.) was one.

Unit 26 was to be a "crack unit" all right and the Major was seeing to that. With a nucleus of Boston men it couldn't miss. I had been called to Boston to meet him initially for a special assignment of which I have long since forgotten.

After so much waiting, at home then in New York City, we had all been put on two hour's notice for the embarkation.

On that night of September 21 the slate-gray sides of HMS Aquitania rose, wall-like, behind and above the side loading doors spaced along a Staten Island dock. We of Unit 26, 50 odd fellows spic and span in English-cut trench coats stood in helpless clusters near piles of bulky bedding-rolls and even bulkier duffle-bags into which we had carefully packed all the latest "doodads" that ambulance drivers in Africa were going to need. Already we looked to certain "Section Leaders" --- "top men" picked out by the Major for guidance: "passports ready? ... don't lose those tickets! ... the Major is taking care of everything..."

We shuffled restlessly, stamping our feet in a cold night of late September while long files of American troops, tin-hats, rifles, "C" bags complete, moved in endless line up the long gang-plank.

It was not yet our turn to board, to struggle up the long gang-plank as the soldiers had done, to cut the last thread between ourselves and home.

Some of us would not return.

There were state-rooms (officers' quarters) for the first 37 of us to board. The remaining 13: well, the Major was doing his best. Perhaps there would be some empty bunks in the lower regions of the ship. I hoped so, because I was one of that "ill-fated" or "unlucky" number. The "unlucky 13" is what the others would call us during our forty days and forty nights on board.

Those state-rooms up on the boat and promenade decks weren't all that much to brag about. In a letter written "at sea" Jock wrote: "We only have a room about half the size of our toilet at college for six guys... but they feed us very well." We of the "unlucky 13" by contrast had enlisted men's rations.

We of the "unlucky 13," already singled out on our first hour of embarkation, stood guard beside our duffel-bags in the deep shadows of one corner of the dock now almost empty of its throng of uniformed people. The Major, his picked men, his Section leaders, most of his Unit 26 had long since disappeared into the bulk of our troop ship. They were assigned to state rooms on A and B decks. One large state room was set aside to be Unit HQ: a place where "Mike" could typewrite orders of the day, where lists and rules could be posted, where the Major could issue directives and hang up his uniform jacket with the colored bits of ribbon from World War I.

All this while we stood on the stilled dock until early morning ... and then wearily trudged into our own quarters with the troops down in E deck in what had been the pool and had been fitted with metal bunks slung in tiers of three and smelling of feet and arm-pits.

This was our first bond of friendship. We were the "E deck boys," members of the "unlucky 13", black-sheep of a crack unit, occasionally invited to officers' quarters where the Major sat at a little table with the "officer of the day."

Some of us: Chan Keller, John Leinbach, George Collins, Art Ecclestone, Jay Nierenberg, Jack Chaffee were soon joined in our work and our play by Vern Preble, Jock Cobb, Howard Brooke. We would all stick together for training; and during difficult times in Egypt, Tunisia, Italy. Eventually, we joined and formed the core of C Platoon of 567 ACC/AFS, and served in the same Sections of that Platoon.

We were the bunch from E deck. In time we became pretty thankful for the unlucky" break that got us "stuck" together, henceforth a "lucky 13." Oddly enough, some of the "picked men" went home when their first term of enlistment expired.

The Major flew home after several months with AFS/HQ Cairo. Not that the Major didn't do a good job of getting us all overseas, the best job of which he was capable. He was a good officer: perhaps a bit too good for a bunch of civilians who had never known what military discipline was like. Nor were we to need much "military discipline" for the job we were about to do. Our discipline as Ambulance Drivers was to accept individual responsibility within the framework of comradeship, and of mutual respect among fellows who do a job because they want to, not because they have to. We were AFS "volunteers" in the defense of freedom and for peace. In actual fact, there were only a few cases requiring disciplinary action involving an AFS Driver.

But who were we "volunteers" in AFS that the fates had conspired to bring together? George Rock's History records representation from every State of the Union save three, with 60 or more from ten States. Most of us were college students or graduates. There were elders too old for Selective Service having had significant midlife careers. There were youths barely meeting age requirements.

Others of all ages had medical disabilities; still others were objectors to war. All were united in their motivation and devotion to the purposes and principles of AFS.

Unit 26 was large enough to reflect this diversity. In a letter "At Sea" Jock (Cobb) gave a down-to-earth representative profile of the Unit:

We are an alert bunch, ranging from the student of 18 to the serious minded fellow of 45... This crowd is positively a selection of universities. About one-sixth of us are in the outfit for the same reason as Carlos and I (objectors to war); another sixth because they wanted to get into action and some physical defect kept them out of the army, and a few because the romance of serving in the Middle East attracted them. There were another few because things at home were tense ... or the AFS was seen as a stepping stone to a decent rank in the army. Some were either too old, or too young for the army and wanted to do something humanitarian or adventurous. We're a genial gang, and proud of the AFS even though we have yet to start work.

In this same letter, Jock wrote "a few brief character sketches" as follows:

Major Shaffer you know ... a very understanding conscientious man.

Mr. Stockton is the section leader ... photographer ... Middle aged, pleasant...

Frank Coleman in Sid's class at Harvard, a swimmer,. well built... thoughtful, school teacher.

Slim Curtis, baseball player at Milton and Harvard, genial, quiet, also a school teacher.

Bob Brown, the typical American, age 28, married, midwesterner with solid sense of humor, executive of a trucking company...

Charlie Edwards whom you know ... zealous... solid.

Howard Brooke from Virginia, young but mature for his years, silent, deep thinker with interesting background.

Ernest Boger, also a southerner, aged 29, big shot in textile business,, very friendly but ... conservative, strange combination.

Francis Bloodgood son of a minister from Wisconsin, age about 20, lots of drive...

Bob Adamson, exhibition dancer and about everything else at the tender age of 20 ... active mind ... unstable but likable.

You can see that the crowd is amazingly diverse.

In another letter "two weeks out" Jock captured the flavor of life in the cramped quarters of his cabin :

Flash: Lounge rumor has it that for the ninth time the German radio has announced the sinking of this ship. Just another rumor. Just in case you hadn't heard.

Now as I lie in my lower bunk all of a foot off the floor, the arms and legs of the two men above me make a grotesque tangle as they struggle to get undressed where they sit cramped up on the edge of their bunks shoulders against the edge of the next bunk. And an arm's reach away three more men are similarly tangled trying to be jovial, and we are pretty jovial. Brown is crabbing about somebody who has eaten his candy which was averred to have been there. We have a rule that anybody who gets caught with some candy has to share it. One rapidly loses one's sense of property, propriety, and proportion living in such close quarters.

Young Bloodgood, son of the Reverend three bunks up to port, throws out a topic for argumentation: "What do you think of 'Tobacco Road'?" This was addressed to Adamson, the self-styled literary critic of B-3. "Have you ever seen it?"

The emphatic reply: "Praise to God no, I hope I never do. That's one man who just bores the s- - - out of me ... Is my language colorful enough for you Cobb? (I am striving to add color to this brown cabin by frowning upon the use of crass words from the regions below the belt.)

Plump "King" Boger, third bunk up to starboard, the $20,000 per year 29 year old graying double-chinned king of the cotton mills --- "Ernie" to us --- puts in his two cents: "I walked out in the middle of that one. Did you stay through the whole thing, Bloodgood?"

Adamson again, words of wisdom, "All of these incestuous p---- bore the p----- out of me. I think they think it's a cult. Almost the only decent incestuous thing I ever read was a surreal short story by a young Irish poet named Thomas..."

Here the thinking young gentleman from Virginia, son of Colonel Brooke of Brooke Rd., sees fit to drawl a statement of opinion. "As far as I am concerned they can take all that surreal stuff and sink it to the bottom of the ocean. To be any good, a think has to make sense."

We began to know each other better as our forty day "cruise" began to shake down. After so much waiting we were relieved to be at sea; I wrote. in a letter home:

At sea at last ... today we were coasting by the shores of Staten Island. I spent some time exploring the comers of Aquitania with the same interest as when we children ran through the decks and corners of the Naushon. on one of our picnics to New Bedford. The Aquitania was much larger, and the voyage ahead filled with greater apprehension ... I will not have ranged so far across the sea since I traveled north with ... MacMillan ... my lust for travel will always tug at my heart.

In the first days at sea a storm off the New Jersey coast, with green seas breaking over the sharp bows of our "greyhound of the seas" and a Navy blimp sailing ghost-like in the scudding clouds above the ship's masts, shook up all who weren't able seamen, and there were plenty of these. The third day out the wind was tempered by the gulf-stream, and the spirits of everybody warmed. We became nut-brown, played deck tennis in our African shorts, sun-bathed along the broad reaches of the promenade deck bristling with machine guns.

The nurses (there was a contingent of 200 on board) revealed that sweater-girls are not found only in Hollywood. For a moment, it seemed like a Caribbean cruise. Soon there were couples arm-in-arm on moon-lit nights, just as on any tropical cruise of normal times. Thus far war was fun.

"On. quiet evenings," Jock wrote in a letter, "as the men lean over the rail shoulder to shoulder all along the promenade deck, there is singing and a strange sort of camaraderie that comes to a group in constant danger with a common destination."

We of our "Lucky 13" were in good enough spirits to put up with the overcrowded quarters of E deck, and the good weather allowed for sleeping space on the open decks. Down in E deck our companions, members of a transport company headed for Eritrea, spent most of their time fighting the civil war; half of them came from below the Mason-Dixon line. They were good fellows, but it was always a relief to get away from the tobacco-smoke atmosphere alive with the gentle Southern-style cusswords, and on to the top decks of our great ship.

Of an evening, I would struggle along one of the below-decks corridors with blanket roll on my shoulder, to pick my way between sleeping bodies for a place outside. At dawn, I would find myself sprawled high on the sheer bows, with white foam hissing far beneath me, and a saucer sun cupped on the horizon. Once I spent the night beneath one of the six-inch guns riveted into the narrow stem. The ship shuddered down to her beam ends when the ribbed rudder was forced hard over every seven minutes in a zig-zag course designed to throw any submarine off track. And at our stern, almost to the horizon itself, a phosphorescent trail of boiling seas told of the speed of the famous old troop-carrier, serving again in time of war.

We were alone on the high seas.

The Aquitania knew her job. We were coursing the high seas, suspended between two continents whether we willed it or not, each day closer to the front lines of war. There were ports ahead, drawn to them by lines on a map. None of us knew of the outcome of the adventure on which we had embarked so gaily.

The officers and men of the medical and transport units which made up the 7,000 troops on board, were just about as green as we. The first few submarine drills were all jumble, but gradually system took shape and bunched up lines of soldiers in bulky life-jackets pushed steadily up the stair-wells to the tune of the wail of the sirens whenever practice drill was called. We of the Field Service, perhaps because we were thought of as "gentlemen volunteers" and more accustomed to chivalry, were to assemble in the main lounge in order to assist the nurses into the life-boats. That done, we were to hurl ourselves bodily over the side, making sure to hold firm to our life jackets lest the impact break our necks. There were supposed to be enough life rafts floating about to go around.

The situation was somewhat complicated by the Major who, with all good intentions, insisted that each of us have a musette bag ready at all times to grab in the event of an emergency. In the bag we were to keep chocolate, canteen of water, a flash-light, warm hat and gloves, stockings, and pull-over. With all this around our necks, we would have surely sunk to the bottom. At least we would have avoided agonizing days at sea in a life-boat. It was not a very comforting thought.

After life-boat drill, everybody acted bored, and lined up for a "Pepsi" in the main lounge. One or two officers in tow of Colonel Baird, in command of the ship, would make their morning inspections at this time. The Colonel was one reason why I was glad to be under the Major's command. Once we had "shaken down," settled in, and gotten our sea-legs, the Colonel took ship's affairs firmly in hand.

All officers and Field Service men were summoned to the main lounge on a hot equatorial afternoon. The Colonel strode boldly onto a raised platform at the end of the ornate salon. He commenced auspiciously: "Now I don't pronounce my 'r's' like they do at Harvard, and I don't pronounce my 'a's' like they do at Yale, but I pronounce my 'h's', and that's HELL'"

It was one of those situations in which you wonder if you are supposed to laugh. There was dead silence. Fortunately the Colonel labored on: "The Cruise is over! Preparation for the theater of war commences ... today! We are approaching our designation! Now I want those latrines down on E deck clean, and I mean CLEAN ... "I knew then that I wasn't supposed to laugh when the Colonel spoke. There were to be many such enlightening bits of oratory before our "designation" was reached.

The tempo of life on shipboard quickened perceptively. The Colonel carried on extensive latrine inspections, scoured the ship for fifth-column activity, engineered frantic submarine and air-raid drills, doled out sentences to the brig for those caught in an embarrassing position with a nurse behind one of the funnels after black-out, filled the stuffy lounge with bombast and invective after each noon meal, occasionally paraded the decks in a relaxed mood but with his paunch at attention.

For the Field Service it was a case of "keep up with the Jones's" from then on. The Major matched the Colonel, move for move. "Picked men" gave map reading classes posing all kinds of impossible questions about ambulances lost in the wilds of the desert. Examinations were taken, and handed in. Note-books were kept, and graded by the Major himself. Squad leaders were kept hurrying each day, overseeing weekly "kit-lightening" inspections. "Lightening your kit" was one of the special manias of the Major. He had gotten down to a trunk and duffle-bag himself; and all of us had filled up boxes full of pajamas, sheets, extra books, underwear, extra socks and any other such excess baggage to be disposed of that a "hardened" desert rat would be ashamed to possess (or so said the Major).

"Basic training" was in store for us. Squads were lumped under "picked men." An "officer of the day" dined at the Major's table to help make important decisions and to discuss important affairs. Ties had to be worn at officers' mess (to which we of E deck were occasionally invited): sleeves were not to be rolled up, short pants had to have a respectable "longness" to them lest the 200 buxom Army nurses on board (also with officer status) be offended. Demerits were handed out it you were late to the daily morning meeting held in the heavily paneled rear lounge of the ship. The Major addressed these meetings in a low, important sounding voice so that no one in the back rows could hear what was said. Gradually a program of work, and of play, evolved for all members of Unit 26.

There were classes in first-aid. There were French classes given by three characters representing "La France Libre." The Major had an especial sympathy for these fellows, because Field Service and France were "brothers" in the last war --- so much so that we ended up by lugging their polished trunks full of polished uniforms off of the ship when we arrived at our "designation." Uniforms, trunks, and Frenchmen wrangled political jobs in Beirut and settled down to cocktails at the Normandy Bar as a part of the civilizing influence of the French empire.

There were Section leaders posted in the corridors all night as a precaution in the event of attack by submarine, or from the air, There were times for going to bed, times for getting up, times for shaving. These getting up times, and our watches, were advanced an hour each week to compensate for the time zones we crossed. We were getting "toughened" for the desert, and besides there could be no stint in the competition with Colonel Baird.

The schedule of the mounting crescendo of our lives began to read something like this: 5:45 rise, on deck at 6:00 for physical drill, below at 6:20 to shave, on deck at 6:30 for close-order drill and uniform inspection, breakfast at 7:00, map-reading classes at 8:00, 9:00 reserved for meetings of the Unit, everyone attending. Then followed first-aid classes at 10:00 and language classes in the afternoon. Orders of the day required map-reading homework each evening, and lights out at 10:00 PM. "Black marks" were handed out to all those who were tardy in any of this.

The American soldiers began to look at these antics with amused wonder. There was less and less time for the charming company of the nurses.

But we were happy in the knowledge that we were being toughened, prepared for a life of desperate rigor where a man must win or be defeated by the desert. We lightened kit willingly, and went through all the rest of it with glad hearts. After all the Major knew best ---he'd been through it all before.

And so when we eventually lined up in smart array on the sand at the Port Suez Transit Camp, counted off by fours, wheeled and turned in the appropriate array, and were "reviewed" by a bewildered Major Hinrichs who had come from the Cairo office to welcome us on our arrival, each person felt sure that all he had to do was climb into an ambulance and pilot it to the front.

Among the only things we didn't know how to do were to drive an ambulance, dig a slit trench, follow brigade divisional and corps signs marking out routes and points for medical evacuation or army advance. These things really mattered ... but in fairness to the Major, couldn't very well be taught on shipboard.

Although this account of Unit 26 is based on a draft written a year or so after the event with a touch of irreverence and in a jocular at times facetious vein, no fundamental disrespect is intended.

Indeed, in one of my letters to Dad written "At Sea" I reported:

Life begins to have some order about ft. Morning calisthenics, map reading, first aid, Corps meetings, afternoons devoted to French study with M_____of_____ (words inked out by the censor), and with evenings to read, write, or relax in the lounge or up on deck. I am looking forward to morning drill, and also the long training period once we arrive. There is so much to learn ... this seems especially true of the Field Service.

The map-reading was of course important. Jock Cobb, the "picked man"' to lead the map-reading classes was assisted by two neophytes in the subject, Slim Curtis and Frank Coleman. He reported with good humor, in a letter "At Sea," of the problems this gave him:

I have been under fire here this evening for having worked out such a fiendish problem for map reading class. Everywhere, in the lounges, in the cabins, groups are pouring over the map trying to figure out the shortest route for an ambulance driver carrying a hypothetical patient who won't tolerate more than a very little bumping. Guys have been coming to me with bloodshot eyes and worn out brains swearing that I'll be shot at sunrise if they don't get the problem right after all that work.

His letter continued:

It's an amusing situation, because most of the men are older than I, so I have to sort of kid them along; and the two guys who are helping me with the class are both teachers by profession, but don't happen to be as familiar with the subject. So my rather irregular pedagogy is also under continual fire. In short, we are such a genial group that nobody minds telling me just what they think of the way I run the classes, and as a result I am probably learning more than anybody.

In his pedagogy, Jock denied any dispensation for me, his fellow Miltonian, Mexico Work Camp participant, and friend-to-be for life. He wrote in another letter: "It is now later and I am alone. Carlos is struggling with the stiff problems in map reading that I have assigned the class tonight ... I have the somewhat questionable honor of being the guy who learns about map reading from a book and teaches it to the others."

Jock also wrote in another letter about his and our language studies:

I'm on my way to being a five language man. I've found a man on board from Syria, an Arab I guess, and he has been teaching me the mysteries of Arabic...

A few of us who are more advanced in French spend a couple of hours a day with a marvelous Frenchman who is really giving us a workout in his language. He has a marvelous sense of humor and pride in his language which is typically French and leads him to explosive gestures when one of us slaughters his beautiful language. Then I have been paying some attention to my German, which I find surprisingly easy ... Spanish I am afraid must go by the boards for a while.

It's a strange thing this war... with genial educated people around I find it hard to appreciate the horrors of war and the tragedy of it all.

I wrote in similar vein in a letter "to Dad" from "At Sea":

Most of my waking hours are spent on deck continually enjoying the sea with its movement and vastness and changefulness in all the hours of the day and night. At times all this seems fantastic; and yet most always it seems natural, and there is a casual nonchalance about it all. Perhaps because for these days on ship we have become detached from the world --- like wandering Odysseus.

Our isolation was virtually complete. Strict radio silence was imposed, although some messages and information came through by code, I assumed. There was favorable news about the war from various corners of the globe, as well as a periodic report on our location.

We had ranged far south in our zig-zag pattern, then turned north and east for the tip of Africa. Before reaching Cape Town I wrote in a letter "At Sea" about the seas we had traversed, and the landfall made, but without being able to mention names:

I have always thought of this ocean as especially beautiful: gifted with the high romance of far away places. My thought has come more than true. For the last few nights there has been a splendid moon, and even the clouds have reflected its light.

A bit of irony is that the most beautiful of moon-lit nights is at the same time the most dangerous for our ship. And I have thought of D.H. Lawrence's lines addressed to The Sea : "You who take the moon as a sieve, and sift her flake by flake and spread her meaning out." And I have thought especially about the last September moon I saw, brightening the horizon which I viewed from my attic window at Hyannis Port. Those days seemed to sift so brightly through my hands.

We did indeed make landfall at Cape Town for needed provisions, and for an equally essential two days of shore leave as far as we "passengers" were concerned. It was a welcome respite almost half-way through our voyage. The threat of the submarine was not an idle one. Shortly before we made it past submarine barriers and inside to the safe harbor, there had been sinkings just outside the harbor entrance .

The Union of South Africa, then firmly in the Commonwealth under its notable President Jan Christian Smuts, had committed its troops --- the "Springboks" --- to the war effort in Africa. Cape Town was the most British and one of the loveliest cities of the country, its people proved to be friendly and hospitable, and its setting spectacular as detailed by my letter written "On Shipboard" following our idyllic sojourn on land:

We have had shore-leave at only one port since my last seeing you. I recall quite well our first sight of land, and the inevitable gradualness of approach. We coasted beside dark rock mountains with great white sand dunes licking at their feet. Directly. across our bows loomed a fortress-like bulk of rock, high buttressed with the deep gorges of a hundred thousand years. Clouds banked against a great stone mountain --- the famed "Table Mountain" --- and seemed to be the only protection for the town that clustered at the base. The town seemed barren from a distance, exposed to wind and sun, dwarfed by the mountain mass behind it and wedged between the relentless sea and the barren rock. But as we neared shore, a safe harbor opened. There were green fields, hills, comfortable looking houses, while friendly signal lights winked from the shore as code flags fluttered bravely from the masthead of our ship. Finally we made port, warped into dock by the laboring tugs. It was with a spirit of security and festivity that we set foot on ground, especially since the waters outside were not safe.

We were warned before going ashore that certain parts of the city were strictly off limits and the entrances patrolled by the MP's. These were the shanty towns of the poor, the black African tribal peoples who had come in from the rural areas for work. "If you went in," we were told "you could never come out."

We broke up into small groups to savor the hospitality and the shops, restaurants, sights of the colonial center of the city. Jock wrote: "We got ashore a couple of days and were superbly entertained: people gave us rides all over town, went out of their way to give us a change from the life we had been leading." Jock with Frank Coleman located and had dinner with an Astronomer known to Jock's Professors at Harvard. I, with some of my "lucky 13" buddies, recall sitting down to a feast featuring the local lobster at the dining room of one of the first class hotels. A few others took the cable-car to the top of Table Mountain. On the second day I went by spotless electric train down the coast for a swim at a beach resort. The way was lined with snug brick homes with tiled roofs, flower-boxes at the windows, and manicured gardens or lawns behind neat brick walls. It seemed like England.

I wrote my impressions of the city in my "On Shipboard" letter:

A rather unique city, mixture of Oak Bluffs and Broadway, gingerbread and modern architecture. Efficient electric trolley busses climbed the steep hills, there were flowers (for it was early Spring), and a cable-car to the top of the great mountain mass against which the town is built. I even took a swim at a resort town down the coast that a few miles beyond terminated in the famous Cape. When we left port after a stay of several days a great wind met us and kept up for almost a week.

It was after this, far out in the Indian Ocean, that the incident of the man-overboard took place that I reported above. There was one more port of call for us before our voyage was over, it was at Aden in what is now Yemen at the entrance to the Red Sea; I wrote:

We have put in at our third port of call. A hot, barren place with a few freighters in the roadstead, which is backed by unbelievably jagged mountains like I have always thought the mountains on the moon to be: completely devoid of vegetation. The sun set crimson behind them, and they stood out black and jagged.

There was no shore leave, nor would anybody have wanted one: it was unbelievably hot and the place uninviting. And our busy on-board schedule continued unabated.

Nevertheless a treat was in store for me while we rode at anchor. It was my turn to eat at officers' mess. We of E deck's "Lucky 13" were invited to take turns at times with the other privileged 37 of Unit 26 who dwelt in the officer quarters with the Army officer cadre on board. The food was good, and served with British upper class style despite the fact that we were a troop ship en route to a combat zone in time of war.

I wrote and account of this in another of my letters "At Sea":

Today was my turn to eat at officers' mess. It is always good fun, because the food is excellent, the table-cloth is a luxury, stewards buzz around, there are many tasty delicacies. The great difficulty for me, at least, has been trying to read the menu ... As a matter of fact, all of the Field Service eat "up there" except we of the "lucky thirteen"... Incidentally, one of the stewards has become a good friend of mine. He has two very nice children whose pictures I have seen, and who live with their Mother in London. The Mother works 12 hours a day in a factory plus her work at home. He very seldom gets home, and is a staunch member of the independent labor party and a follower of Stafford Cripps. We have had some good discussions together enhanced by the fact that he "saves out" a choice delicacy for me times when I do not eat at officers' mess.

The final week of our forty day "cruise" (if Colonel Baird will pardon the expression) sped by so fast that it was a surprise to see the blunt-nosed Egyptian lighters snuggled up against the tall sides of our ship. They waited impatiently for us to scramble on board, and then panted and chugged for shore leaving the slender silhouette of the Aquitania shrouded in a moon-silvered night.

I shall always love the Aquitania. She was a great ship.

I do remember our last night on the Red Sea. Map books had been packed away and Section leaders posted in the corridors. All was in readiness for unit 26 to disembark. Word came from the Major's office that "Tewfik was in flames." The Jerries knew we were coming. They were after us, all right: first and largest contingent of Americans to land in the Middle East! It was Halloween night, and anything could happen. You couldn't trust "the Boche" on Halloween night.

Orders came that no Field Service man was to stray on deck. In the first place "you don't have tin hats." In the second place "never risk your necks, men, unless you have to." This last was the soundest bit of advice the Major ever gave us. It was good common sense ... even 'tho Tewfik hadn't been visited by the Jerries in months. A year later, in Italy, we drank a toast to "Tewfik is in flames night."

Three days after our arrival, the Eighth Army broke through the Alamein line. Rommel was on the run. Fourteen thousand Commonwealth troops were dead.

We were camped in the sand at the El Tahag giant mobilization center of the British armies located on the desert south of Cairo. There were faint threads of sound of the colossal British artillery barrage that heralded the break-through at Alamein, enhanced by our imaginations. But at that moment the Battle of El Alamein didn't seem so important to us as the batch of mail from home waiting for us at El Tahag camp. Through-out the war, mail from home was our most important morale builder.

At El Tahag we drew British army battle-dress, tin-hats, respirators, boots, leggings "web for the use of," and all the rest of it. Here we donned the uniform that was to obscure our identity as Americans, and bring us close to the stolid, stubborn wonderful people of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

We were not to get off scott-free with the receipt of so much new equipment if our Major had anything to do with it. "Kit-lightening inspection" was the order of our second day at El Tahag. We had just finished moving into tents big enough for four each, when the Major ordered duffles opened and contents spread out on the ground for examining eyes.

An ominous rain-cloud threatened in the skies overhead.

"Don't worry, it never rains on the desert this time of year," said the Major. His words were swallowed up in a gusts of wind and a swirl of sand followed by torrents of rain tumbling down on our unprotected possessions. We crammed stuff into our duffle bags while our tents drifted away on a new-formed lake.

"That water will be drawn up by the sun in no time," said the Major. A week later the lake was still where it had formed in the midst of kit inspection. We pitched our tents on a higher bit of ground.

The major was posted to AFS GHQ Cairo to head its Supply and Transport Division. He wrote comforting letters to our folks, one to my Mother dated November 23, 1942 from "Somewhere in the Middle East." His letter explained: "We had had extensive ship-board training and now were prepared for ambulance driving on the Western Desert. However, most of us were to be sent to Syria for additional training before going to the desert itself. We were his boys, fine boys, and he was proud of us" so wrote the Major.

He also wrote, with considerable pride, that "Our trip was an epochal one in the history of American Army transport" and that "we were commended by the C.O. of American Troops making up the transport, the Ship Command, and upon arrival by our own command in the field."

And he went on about me (and I guess all the others) "...at all times during his service I will consider him one of my own men regardless of his placement, and I will feel it to be incumbent upon myself to watch his progress and advise where I feel it to be of value." Notwithstanding, I never saw, or heard from, the Major again.

Several months later the Major flew home after a session as director of supply and transport at AFS HQ, Cairo. Several new ribbons were pinned on his chest, and he was photographed holding a scrap-book of his war-time experiences. "Rommel would put up a hard fight" he told the newspaper men.

He phoned my Mother, which I did appreciate. He was sure I was "hard as nails" or words to this effect. I don't know how he knew. When he left Cairo I was a thousand miles away.

Versatile Jock, whose map reading classes sharpened our wits --- and tempers---was inspired to write a poem our last night on board Aquitania, the first large American troop ship to arrive in the Middle East.

His poem, a Shakespearean sonnet, provides a fit epilogue for our forty days and forty nights at sea. He sent it to The New Yorker, New York City, under cover of the following address: "John C. Cobb, Volunteer, American Field Service, APO 616, New York City, with the British Forces in the Middle East, Nov. 17, '42."

Part Two
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