I had finished my tour on March 21, 1945 and was on the ship, I think, on April 21, 1945, maybe earlier. I know we were in New York on April 26, 1945, maybe 5 days is too short a time, even for the Ile de France traveling alone.

Anyway I was first sitting. Table?. Officer's Dining Room, "C" Deck Aft, two meals a day, breakfast at 7 AM, dinner at 5 PM. (That seems like an awful long time between meals.) There were only 1500 ambulatory aboard, I don't know how many not ambulatory. Although crewed by the English, the dining facilities were still French and I can remember white tablecloths, much silver, china and crystal and ordering from a menu both at breakfast and supper. There were four of us in a stateroom which was set up to hold twelve and only seven at our table. What a contrast to going over in the previous July, on the SS Uruguay, a South American cruise ship converted to troop carrier, crammed to the ceilings (overheads) with all branches of troops. Two meals a day, eat standing at long tables, I think we had metal food trays but used our carried aboard canteen cup and utensils.

The only troop train I was ever on was from San Francisco to Boston. We had finished RTU, gone to Hamilton Field, been assigned a B-24 to fly away to ?, but after having taken all manner of shots (South Pacific type) and drawing over water and summer flying clothing, we boarded the troop train with twenty-eight other crews (I do not have any orders but for 29 crews, seems so few for a troop train) on June 19, 1944. From San Francisco to cross Nevada, across the Great Salt Lake, to Granger and Cheyenne, Wyoming, across Nebraska to Grand Island and to Omaha, to Des Moines, Chicago, Toledo, Cleveland, Albany and to Boston, nearly 3300 miles, coast to coast. I'm not sure that some of the men on the shipment didn't leave the train and catch up with it later, at least there were rumors to that effect. Our crew's navigator remembers a layover or long wait somewhere and says we went to a hotel, checked in, bathed and checked out. Also that we ate a big steak and drank quite a lot. Guess the last must have been true as I don't remember the first part. I recall stopping in a small town in Iowa or Nebraska and two hundred and ninety air crewmen descended in mass on the merchants and virtually bought them out, especially anything alcoholic.

Our crew had some sort of kitchen guard detail which wasn't too bad as it allowed us to have additional food and also access to the shower in the kitchen car which was much better than trying to bath in those small slopping sinks in the car toilet facilities.

We got to Camp Miles Standish on June 26, I guess seven days wasn't too bad for a cross country run of 3300 miles. I remember spending four days flying from Tonopah to Albuquerque to Denver to Tonopah. It made me three days late for my wedding day, but that's another story….