5

5

The total number of men on board given 23,000.
There was a story written by a Reading author ^Ernie Pyle of the time about this particular
group of military on the Queen Mary.
Readers Digest published the article.
About the third day at sea, the Queen's
Crew "Cleaned the Guns" without prior
notification to our men, who were scared
very badly by the booming of the guns.
On the fourth day we saw "Spitfires," so
we felt some better about conditions.
After approximately three nights and
four days, we dropped anchor at
Greenock, Scotland.
17. Arrival in England Date June 1, 1943 our group was the first
one to leave the Queen. Large Barges
came out to the ship to take us to the
shore. At this point the train came to the
port. The trains were quite different in that
the doors opened to the outside of each
compartment. I do not remember how
long the trip was but do remember seeing
beautiful Scotch countryside. During
this trip the men wanted fruit pies (individual)
to eat - we stopped at several stations
during the journey. With each stop, we
would buy the pies and each time isntead
of gruit they would be meat. We ate
them but found individual fruit pies were
not made in that area! After several