Reflections of My Life by JL Byars – page 11

We received our orders that we were going to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey soon to get ready to ship out.  We left Indiantown Gap, not wanting to, since the place was so well kept and there were lots of places to see.   Most of the army wives were in camp the last night we were there, included my wife.  Lots of tears were shed.

We arrived at Camp Kilmer on the 26th or 27th of August of 1943.  There we were given all of the shots that we needed and some we may have just had.  After shots we were given our last physical exams.  The saying was “He’s warm- He’s in!”  We remained at Kilmer about four days.  On September 1, 1943 we were put on strict alert, complete blackouts, no passes and no telephone calls.  On September 4th we moved out of Kilmer on trains to New York Harbor.  There we had to carry all of our personal things in a barracks bag, which was a good load.  They marked our helmets with numbers and as our number was called we boarded the large ship.  The ship was an old English one, “Cape Town Castle”.  On September 5th we headed out to high sea, not knowing just where we were going.

Crossing the Atlantic was like the end of one epoch and the beginning of another.  There were about two dozen ships in this convoy.  There were a few destroyers checking in and out of our group.  This convoy continued to change direction every so often trying to confuse the enemy.  There were depth charges dropped as enemy subs got close. 

We were fed twice a day.  A long, never ending line of GI soldiers was trying to get fed.   The kitchen was very dirty.  The floors were so slick you could hardly stand up to get your food.  You would have your plate full and the boat would rock, then your food would go sailing across the floor.  Had it not been for a small PX on the boat we could have gone hungry.