I spent VE day in a hospital near Southampton. By that time, the pains in my midsection had quieted enough to go into town to celebrate. The nurse sternly warned me not to consume any alcohol, or I would have to answer to her. This frightened me so much that I waited until reaching the second pub. This breach of discipline was rationalized because we didn't plan to be back until well after midnight when her shift would be over. This did not take two things into account: It was still broad daylight when we returned, and she had waited up for us.
A few days later, after viewing a film that explained why we now had to go to the Far East to whip the Japs (we called it "TS in Technicolor,"), we boarded the USS Argentina, a converted cruise liner, and sailed for home. We were allowed to take anything we had as long as we could carry it, so I used my carefully nurtured maturity to take home the really important stuff. Stuff like ten cartons of five cent a pack cigarets.
The ship itself was luxurious, but of course we were pretty well packed into the staterooms, with barely enough space to have a huge poker game in one of the cabins. There was a small black fellow we called Caldonia who, it turned out, was a professional Negro. He was an excellent mimic, kept everyone entertained with his mindless antics, and would have been a pitiable case if he hadn't won every dime on the boat.
The last day out, a Sergeant from the Transportation Corps came through collecting weapons, saying it was illegal to bring captured German weapons into the States, and he was authorized to confiscate any we had. All of my space was tied up with cigarettes, and I never did get a German P-38 - the best pistol ever made and coveted by all as a souvenir - but those who did grumbled and gave them to the Sergeant. Of course, no one checked to see if we had such things when we got off the boat - it was a Hospital Ship, for God's sake. But we could also smell the good old USA, and it wasn't a huge loss.
We landed in Boston on June 6 and went by hospital train all the way to Letterman General Hospital at Longview, Texas.
[I was there on VJ day, still on a no-alcohol or fat/ high sugar diet, but I did manage to celebrate VJ Day by getting, according to the MP's, "drunk and and disorderly" in Longview, Texas. I still believe that if there is any place where it is entirely proper to get drunk and disorderly, it's Longview, and that VJ is the day to do it].
After recovery, I was sent home on a 90-day recuperation leave. While there, some of the guys from Company A stopped by on their way to Fort Sam Houston for discharge. Because they had been POW's they got more points than the rest of us did, and thus were discharged several months early.
At the end of the 90 days, I received orders to report to Fort Sam Houston for reassignment. Much of Fort Sam was used as a Redistribution Center, with the duty of reclassifying those unfortuante returnees who lacked the points to get out. They made me a classification specialist, and my job was to interview returning soldiers to determine their skills and match them with job openings in the fast-disappearing military.
Our working hours were 8 to 12, Monday through Friday, and it was as close to being the ideal job as I had ever heard about, before or since. We spent our afternoons in San Antonio, where we could make daily visits to the Menger Bar. On weekends I could visit my sister, who lived there. Of course, this idyll was too good to last. After the big rush of people from the Pacific had cleared, they closed the Redistribution Center and reassigned me to Camp Edwards, Mass, as a Personnel Technician.
Camp Edwards was near Buzzards Bay (I'm not making this up) on Cape Cod, and was used as a German POW camp during most of the war. What it was used for when we got there was never quite clear, but it was only a short ride into Boston.
(At Edwards, I spent much duty time poring over Army Regulations in search of one lousy point--I had a total of 44 points toward the 45 needed for discharge. Nights and weekends we enjoyed Boston, a really great town for servicemen, where everyone went out of their way to make us feel welcome and soak up some of the culture. While we were there "Annie Get Your Gun" had just opened at the local theater prior to moving to Broadway that Fall).
(By now, I had managed to reach the rank of Corporal--promotions were given alphabetically because nearly anyone could do the work and everyone was getting discharged. I figured if my name began with a Q or with an S - the two letters the promotion list always ended-began with - I would have ended the war a full General, which would have beaten my High School friend Lew Allen who didn't make his fourth star until about 1980.)
Then, they closed Edwards (it was mainly a German POW camp) and moved us to Fort Devens, still in the personnel classification business.
In April, they dropped the point requirement to 40, and I was discharged at Fort Devens on April 26, 1946, after having served two years, seven months and fourteen days.