This is a page from a scrapbook of my father’s with a photo of the ship that he notes brought him back to the U.S. from Europe. Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, and the newspaper is dated June 12. I haven’t looked up the date that he came back, unlikely to have been this soon, I suspect, but I’m sure that every such voyage was filled with exhausted soldiers, like him, ready to be home.
As for this particular article, I don’t know if the paper is being coy by calling the ship only the “Old Lady” and “Unowho,” or even by not disclosing the exact date or location of the “East Coast U.S. port” where she docked. Maybe they were careful with details because we were still at war; Japan didn’t surrender until September of that year. The Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth, among several others, brought U.S. troops back from Europe to the U.S.
Although their photos make me think not (though she was repainted gray during the war), I’d like to know if he did return on the Queen Mary, because I’ve seen her (from a distance) at her permanent home in Long Beach, CA, without knowing that was a possibility. Just last month, she reopened after three years of repair and restoration.
(Hi, Jim!)