Occasionally, I publish some of Mr. Montgomery’s musings edited only for grammatical errors. Here is another of his reflection of earlier times. Mr. Montgomery wrote about much of his time enlisted in the U.S. Army, and this is ACT FOUR of SIX.
ROBERT MONTGOMERY – Wartime ACT FOUR – Crossing the English Channel
How to get involved in a WAR and stay SANE (or thereabouts)
Finally the war turned badly for the Germans, and suddenly the allied armies were chasing the German Army across France. Word had come back that Paris had been captured, and it was time for us to move the SHAEF headquarters to France. I was supposed to go with a group to downtown Paris and fix typewriters, but at the last minute the order was changed, and instead I ended up in Versailles.
Getting to France from Bushy Park was a strange and interesting trip. A group of us American soldiers (over 100) were sent by rail down to Southampton to board a ship to cross the English Channel. Normally it was expected to be a 3-day jaunt to France. Instead it became a sort of comic opera.
We arrived in Southampton, and boarded a ship that had once been one of the small ships that made regular commuter type crossings of the channel. It looked to me that it had been built for the good old days before the first World War, a real excursion ship. Anyway, we finally got underway heading across to someplace along the Normandy coast of France. It was a nice day, with summer sun for this frequently stormy area of the world. Anyway, we chugged along. The ship was an old-fashioned coal burner, with a reciprocating steam engine, and probably zipped along at maybe 10 or 12 miles per hour. We arrived along the French coast, and dropped the anchor, and then waited, and waited, and waited. In fact we stayed here all night. We waited some more the following morning. Once in a while they would crank up the engine and move to a different locale, still just off the French coast. We were in sight of the original landing shore of “Omaha Beach”, but just sitting there waiting. I think somebody in our group started a rumor that we were going to go back to Southampton after coal, but so far nothing had happened, just more waiting. Finally, true to rumor, our ship upped the anchor, turned around and went back to Southampton after coal. They really did. We spent another day getting refueled, and turning back across the channel and again waiting just next to Omaha Beach.
Finally they really did decide to disembark this boatload of US soldiers, onto a landing barge and off to the beach we went. Fortunately, the Germans were long gone. Our group managed to trudge up this very steep hill, and I marveled that our army was able to make it, especially after I saw the concrete block houses, and gun emplacements all the way up the hill. It was hard going for this bunch of clerks, cooks, and latrine orderlies to trudge up this steep hill—and nobody was shooting at us either.
We camped overnight, pitched tents, and acted like a real army in encampment. The SHAEF trucks picked us up the next day, and we were off to a life in Louis XIV stables at Versailles.
To be continued in ACT FIVE