15,000 TROOPS HERE AFTER ROUGH TRIPS
Heavy Storms at Sea Dash Hopes of Veterans to Reach Homes by Christmas
Carrier Fought Four Storms in 9-Day Crossing—Battleship Washington Also InMost of the 15,000 soldiers who arrived in New York yesterday from European an Asiatic ports after experiencing storms of hurricane force on the Atlantic appeared to accept philosophically the prospect of another Christmas away from home.
The service men who arrived here represented more than one-third of the estimated total of 40,000 returning to east and west coast ports on Christmas Eve.
Disappointed at first when they learned that the severe weather they had encountered would delay their separation from service and return home until after Christmas, officers and men appeared to brighten considerably as they realized that they were back in the United States and within reach of their homes by telephone and telegraph.
Skyline Symbol of HomeBernhard M. Auer of Bronxville, N.Y., returning from twenty-two months over seas service, during which he was a special agent of the Army's Counter Intelligence Corps in India and Burma, seemed to sum up the prevalent attitude when he said:
"When I saw the New York skyline again and knew that I was really back in the United States and close to my family, nothing else counted. My Christmas is going to be all right."
Mr. Auer returned from Karachi, India, on the Navy transport General McCrae that brought 3,208 passengers to Pier 88 North River. The largest group to arrive here came on the aircraft carrier Enterprise. She carried 5,057 passengers, including 4,086 Army officers and men, from Southampton, England, to Pier 13, Staten Island.
Comdr. John Monro of Andover, Mass., damage control officer of the Enterprise, said that during the four storms the carrier encountered in her nine-day crossing the forecastle deck had been awash in eight to ten feet of water from waves up to 75 feet high.
The pounding waves, in a gale that reached an eighty-mile-an-hour velocity, carried away loose gear in the forward section of the carrier, smashed a ten-foot steel walkway on the starboard bow, forty feet of timber railing on the flight deck and the lashings of about forty life rafts on the flight decks. None of the rafts were lost.
Commander Monro declared that Capt. William L. Rees had done "a masterful job of seamanship" in battling the weather, which he compared to a China Sea typhoon.
Tells of Seven StormsOn the battleship Washington, Capt. Francis X. McInerney, said that the storms he encountered during the ship's ten-day crossing from Southampton with 1,570 soldiers were the worst he had experienced in twenty-six years at sea.
"There were seven storms and twice the wind reached hurricane force," Captain McInerney said. "The waves ran from seventy-five to 100 feet high, loosening rafts, damaging the superstructure and injuring several seamen."
The late Gen. George S. Patton Jr., who was burried yesterday in Luxembourg, was to have arrived on the Washington. Reservations for his passage had been made before he was injured fatally in a motor accident. His naval aide, Rear Admiral Frank J. Lowry of Cresco, Iowa, returned on the Washington as scheduled.
The Washington docked in an adjoining berth to the General McCrae at Pier 88. The battleship was three days overdue and the navy transport, which took twenty-seven days to come from Karachi, was five days late.
Other transports arriving yesterday or due to dock last night were the General Hodges from Karachi with 3,217 troops, the Waycross Victory from Antwerp with 1,580, the Daniel H. Hill from Havre with 568, the William Rayburn from Southampton with 34, the Zane Grey from Havre with 84, the George Gipp from Antwerp with 29 and the Spetsan from Calcutta with 28.
