My last duty station in the Navy was two years shore duty in the south of Spain. When my enlistment was up, I had the option of being discharged in either New York or Spain. If I chose the latter, the Navy would ship me home at their expense within a year. After that I was on my own.
At the time, I had saved up enough money to buy a VW for cash, plus a little extra. I also had my ration card for gasoline and cigarettes. With a VW, gas wasn’t a problem, I didn’t smoke, and American cigarettes were the “coin of the realm” on the beach, so money wasn’t a problem either. I decided to tour around Europe for the summer. I had been accepted by the University of Maryland in the fall, and my only commitment was to get back to the U.S. by September.
By late August, I had experienced all of the countries on this side of the Iron Curtain. It was time to head for home, so I showed up at the Frankfort-Main Air Base to arrange transportation. I was informed by an Army Private that I had to submit my request in writing 60 days before my departure date! This would have ruined my chances at the University of Maryland for the year! It was panic time. After checking all my options, I shipped my car home from Antwerp, and was walking the docks in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, trying to get a job on any kind of ship, handling lines or washing dishes or whatever they needed just to get home in time. The clock was ticking! On the street in Rotterdam, I bumped into a US Coast Guard Commander who was attached to the American Consulate. I explained my predicament and he told me to show up at his office at 0800 the next morning. After making a few phone calls he said “We have a ship leaving out of Bremerhaven on Tuesday. Get up there and we’ll put you on board!” Hallelujah! Problem solved! All I had to do was hitchhike across Europe in three days!
I couldn’t ship any luggage with the car, so I had to carry all my worldly possessions on my back. My knapsack, sea bag, crash helmet, spear gun, and reel-to-reel tape recorder would have been no trouble to throw in a car but it was a minor challenge to tote. Looking like a walking mound of luggage, I got a number of short hops across Holland, then in Germany got on the Autobahn. That was a different story entirely. Big, fast cars and trucks going relatively long distances. I was in a truck-stop checking out the license plates for Bremerhaven when I came upon one from Bremen. I explained my problem to the driver, and he told me he could take me as far as Bremen and to hop in! This was a Mercedes Benz 10-ton truck, towing a 10-ton trailer. The front seat was wide enough to seat five guys, with a mahogany dash that stretched all the way across the cab. On top of the dash sat a five band Telefunken AM-FM-Shortwave portable radio with a three-foot antenna and it could pick up broadcasts from around the world! I climbed up, stowed all my gear and off we went to Bremen. The driver asked me where I was from, and I said “New Jersey”. He replied “Ach! Ich bin in New Jersey gewesen, in Fort Dix in Kriegsgefangenshaft!” I didn’t speak Germen well enough at the time to know what “Kriegsgefangenshaft” was and after several attempts trying to explain, he flipped a switch on the dash which fogged up the windshield and with his finger he wrote “POW”! He had been a Prisoner of War in Fort Dix! He spent most of the trip telling me how much better he was treated as a POW than he was as an enlisted man in the German Army, and how much better the food was and so on. He would have stayed in America except he had a family farm back in Germany and he was the only son, so he had to go home and take over.
Pretty soon we were in Bremen, and he dropped me off at the Bhanhoff (RR Station) where for a Mark (about 25 cents) I got a train to Bremen. I showed up right on time for my appointment and got my orders for transportation home on the USS General Gordon, a WWII troop ship. This gave me two days to kill, and being hungry, I went to the mess hall for some breakfast. The guy in front of me in line was an Army Corporal who looked familiar. I looked at his name tag which said “Brooks.” I said “Brooks! Bobby Brooks! He turned around and said “Mendes, Vinnie Mendes!” We had gone to high school together! He and I hung out for the next few days and he said, “Were having a party Saturday night and we’re one guy short, why don’t you come?” That took care of the weekend!
Tuesday morning saw me in my dress whites lined up halfway through 3,000 soldiers according to service number. Boarding was a slow process because each of us had to get checked off individually.
When my turn came, I got to the top of the gangway and this big Chief Bosuns Mate with a gravelly voice, told me “Come over and stand by me, “Gunner.” After the remaining 1,500 soldiers had boarded, he led me to the aft gun crew compartment, and since it was peacetime, there was no aft gun crew. I had the place to myself with two mattresses on my bunk and my own private head (bathroom). The rest of the passengers were sleeping in 50-man compartments, with bunks five high!
There’s a lot of water between Bremerhaven and New York! It took 11 days. My grandmother had come over from Poland 60 years before and it only took her seven!
We finally approached the mainland around dawn, and it was so foggy that visibility was cut down to about one-half mile. This was really disappointing as I had grown up on a hill that was the highest point on the East Coast for a thousand miles each way. On top of the hill was a lighthouse, distinctive because of its two towers known as the “Twinlights.” This had been the first sight of America for hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including all my Armenian, Polish and Irish ancestors as they approached the new world, and I had missed it in the fog! As we turned north to head into New York Harbor, we passed under a gigantic cable which suddenly appeared out of the mist.
I had sailed these waters for years and thought I knew every inch of them, and I knew this shouldn’t be here. It turned out that it was the first suspension cable for the new Verrazano Narrows Bridge, connecting Long Island to Staten Island, destined to become one of the longest suspension bridges in the world.
As soon as we entered New York Harbor, the fog magically lifted and we could make out the Statue of Liberty, Governors Island and lower Manhattan. Next thing we knew we were in the East River, approaching the Brooklyn Bridge, with the massive smokestack of the Schaeffer Brewery in the background, the Brooklyn Navy Yard and our berth. On the dock were my father and one of my brothers waiting to meet me, then the familiar drive across the Hudson River, down the New Jersey Turnpike and home!
With the Navy behind me, and college ahead of me, I had entered a whole new exciting phase of my life! More to come!
