The RMS Queen Mary and Form 53-55

Ordinary people in extraordinary times and places have always interested me like a fly to sugar.  It’s even more special when the stories get personal and it didn’t get personal for me until I re-examined Dad’s WWII Honorable Discharge (WD AGO Form 53-55).  He told me he served with the 1^st Infantry Division and was at Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania and sailed on the RMS Queen Mary, a voyage escorted by destroyers that dropped depth charges.  In order to confirm his stated link to the 1^st Infantry Division, I began with Box 30, Military Occupational Specialty: “Subsistence NCO 820”.  That didn’t make any sense because in Box 41, “Service Schools Attended” the answer was “none”.  Then I learned in many cases, specialties could be randomly applied, but the discovery made research simpler.  Hint - his basic training had included training in the new GMC trucks the 1^st Infantry Division was to receive at Camp Blanding, Florida February 21, 1942. 

 I concluded Dad probably went straight from basic training at Ft. Riley, Kansas on December 10th 1941 to the 1^st Infantry Division after the war started, so he must have sailed on the famous voyage of the 1^st Infantry Division August 2, 1942 which was billed as the first time an entire division (15,032) sailed on one ship.  Its destination was code named “Wildflower” for Gourock, Scotland.  Troops were staged at Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, loaded at Pier 90 in New York, and sailed without escort on the RMS Queen Mary pictured in the public domain photo.

Then I looked at Box 36, “Service Outside Continental U.S., Date of Departure 5 Sep 42”.  It was the September 5, 1942 Queen Mary New York-to-Gourock, Scotland voyage (WW#17E) mentioned in Gray Ghost by Steve Harding.  Its destination was Wildflower and Nabob (Ireland).  Dad did not sail with the 1^st Infantry Division after all.  Could it be that the entire 1^st Infantry Division did not sail on the famous August 2^nd voyage?  Then I found out that, indeed, its 2^nd Battalion of the 16^th Infantry Regiment did not.  It had sailed on July 1, 1942.  Could its MT equipment and personnel were reassigned to the Transportation Corps, part of the newly formed Services of Supply to establish the Mediterranean Base Section in Liverpool which moved to Oran after the landing in North Africa?

The Gray Ghost account only went so far.  Then I stumbled into a digital record: Water Shipments of Personnel – 1942, New York Port of Embarkation, “Prepared by Historical Records Division G-3, HQ FILE NO. 370.5”.  Part of what I found was that units of the 13,838 troops were staged at Camp Kilmer, Ft. Dix, Ft. Slocum, Ft. Hamilton, not Indiantown Gap. 

Unfortunately, the old documents, which are now declassified, do not mention individual units most likely because of war time secrecy.  However, other Internet searches listed the 305^th Bombardment Group, 65^th Infantry Regiment – Hispanic, 303 Bomb Group, and the 91^st Bomb Group as passengers.  There’s got to be a manifest somewhere.

I’m going on the theory that he and motor transport were separated from the 1^st Infantry Division about February 21, 1942 during or after it was refurbished with CCKW GM trucks.  They probably were shipped on cargo vessels with its personnel leaving in convoy with the unrelated units on September 5, 1942. (I’ve yet to find out what Orders “MS-E-M 6-17-42 and MS-E-M 7-24-42” references and date mean.) 

At some point the personal historian of WWII has to establish a time line and especially proof or even a plausible unit that his subject was assigned to.  At first I took too much for granted and did not look at the scarce documents close enough, but the story is still a work in progress.  It’s a mystery I just can’t resist.