Distaff Invasion

ARMY & NAVY

Gleaming white in peacetime paint, the Army transport Thomas H. Barry eased out from Manhattan's Pier 84, nosed down the Hudson to the sea. Aboard her, goggly with excitement, 349 Army wives & children milled through the maze of corridors and companionways, clustered on deck for photographers, clung to the rail with last, fluttering farewells. The first contingent of service families was off to join the occupation forces in Europe.

Because few enlisted men had so far asked for their dependents, the passenger list was top-heavy with officers' families. Among the fourteen generals' wives: Mrs. Mark W. Clark, Mrs. John C. H. Lee, Mrs. Lucius Clay; no less excited: Mrs. Frederick G. Mahn of Stoneham, Mass., wife of a second lieutenant.

One of the youngest was 17-year-old Mary Anne Orr, wife of an MP private in Vienna, looking like a high-school freshman in bobby-sox and saddle shoes. On her first trip away from home, Mary Anne had come as well prepared as any much-traveled Army wife. In her baggage were five suits, 20 dresses, nine pairs of shoes, five pairs of nylons. Besides clothing enough for a year or more, most had also stocked up on cosmetics and kitchen utensils; some had brought automobiles, furnishings to fit out a house completely.

So far, everything about the trip had been wonderful. WACs and Army nurses prepared baby formulas in a special diet kitchen. There were play pens, toys for older children, and a four-room section set aside for teen-age boys. The first meal was a whopping lunch which bore no relation to Army food.

Advance Notice. The wives all knew that life in devastated Europe would be hard, uncomfortable, probably boring. Only Berlin seemed really equipped to handle the invasion. There, the Army expected no difficulty in providing adequate food, medical care, and comfortable homes in the relatively undamaged suburbs of Dahlem, Zehlendorf and Wannsee. Schools would be ready by next fall. Libraries, bathing beaches, riding academies were already in operation.

Elsewhere the picture was darkened by overcrowding, shortage of sanitary facilities, a lack of most civilian comforts. In all of Rome there were only 200 spare beds, and no Army funds available for new construction.

Everywhere U.S. women would have to learn to get along without fresh milk, eggs and vegetables. Recreational facilities would probably be limited. Transportation certainly would be.

But the wives were eager to go anyhow. By the time the Barry reaches Bremerhaven, another transport will be at sea, a third preparing to sail. Within a month, some 1,250 wives & children will have passed through New York's Fort Hamilton embarkation center. Said one wife of her husband: "I'd rather live with him in a bomb crater than go on with this separation."

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