Sailor remembering a Solider on the Gray Ghost

At the corner of Rockton and Ellsworth Street in Amsterdam, New York, there’s a banner.  like all those banners celebrating the hometown heroes who served, this veteran is remembered because this is where Edward Bablin (Bablinskas) lived with his family from 1955 to his death in 2000. Before his death, he wrote down his story so future generations would know why Veterans Day was celebrated. In the process, he remembers another veteran with no children and no family and no banner.

“We stopped at Jersey City and got along some docks,” he said. “Finally, I noticed the Hudson River up ahead and started to march over to the Queen Mary, and we all boarded.”

In the build-up to D-day, the Queen Mary crossed the Atlantic 72 times, transporting almost one million American G.I.s to the European front in the battle against Hitler. The average trip involved over 15,000 soldiers. On one trip, crossing July 25-30, 1943, she carried the largest number of people on a floating vessel: 15,740 troops and 943 crew—a total of 16,683 passengers, a record that still stands today.

Edward writes, “No fanfare, no bans to see you off and what turned out to be the biggest adventure of the war. Now, everyone was anticipating all kinds of far-off places. Nobody knew where we were going.”

  Edward was in the Navy, where his first tour of duty had him in the “Armed Guard Unit .” The armed guards were naval personnel sent on cargo vessels to protect them from U-boat attacks. Edward was on one such ship, The MV Oil Freighter Florida, on March 15, 1943. It was torpedoed off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, by U-154. The Florida managed to make it to port without loss of life. Edward was then transferred to Lido beach, Long Island, and to a naval salvage unit.

As naval personnel, Edward was required to assist with all naval duties.  This would mean anything and everything from mopping floors to making breakfast for 15,000 soldiers. The Queen Mary did not follow the North Atlantic convoys but traveled alone at a top speed of 32 knots. The average speed of a German U-boat was 17 knots. So the Queen Mary would and did, on many occasions, outrun the German U-boats that tried to get her. There are two positive documentation of U-Boats missing Queen Mary or the Grey Ghost, as the enemy would call her.

Edward documents life on a wartime ocean liner turned into a troop ship.

“We hit the Gulf Stream, it was nice and balmy. I went on deck and walked around. The ship was so huge we had about 15,000 men on a vessel that could only hold 2,500 passengers, but somehow, we managed to get all on board. They were everywhere. I was one of the lucky few, being a Navy man and had a bunk.”

But after leaving the Gulf Stream, the January storms of the North Atlantic came after them again, as Edward explained.

“The voyage progressed into the choppy North Atlantic waters. We got up one morning, and the seas were rough. We are in a good North Atlantic storm, I thought. And since there were so many men on board, we only made two meals a day. One in the morning and 1:00 at night, the only thing they had to serve us was kidney stew.”

 It was in the middle of the Atlantic that Edward came across a fellow, Hometown neighbor. “One morning, I believe, on the third day, I stumbled over a fellow on the ground with an Amsterdam Recorder newspaper, Thomas Rowley.” Thomas signed up with the army in 1939—105th Infantry Regiment. In 1942, he was transferred to the U.S. Army Air Corps from Fort Moultrie, Georgia, on his way to an army air corps base to assist in the Allied bombing of Nazi Germany.

So, Thomas and Edward, two boys who grew up on east main street of Amsterdam, who went to high school together, perhaps played baseball and watched football games, are now on the Gray Ghost in the North Atlantic dodging U-boats as they head towards their next assignment. That next assignment, of course, would be the Normandy invasion in 1944.

“We talked about the hometown for hours. Since he lived very close to where I lived and knew everyone in my family. We had a nice chat”.

The January 22 crossing is documented as one of the roughest. It was recorded that a 90-foot wave hit the Queen and came very close to capsizing. “Knowing a little about the sea, one certainly never sits down at the end of a table because when the seas are rough, the ship starts to pitch. The storm hit so bad that the poor group at the end of the table had coffee and Stew and everything right on their laps. It was sad and funny at the same time.”

Edward goes into detail about the storm that almost capsized the ocean liner.  

“This trip on the Queen Mary, from what I learned later, was one of the roughest she had ever had. The story was that she listed as high as 38 degrees during the night. One wave was so big that when it hit them, it tore a gun turret off the back of the fantail, breaking loose a bunch of lifeboats. When it broke loose, and the ship heaved and pitched, it went through the railing and tore everything off. It was incredible how one wave tore the ship apart.”

It was indeed a rough journey, but the ocean liner remained true and brought Edward and Thomas to their destinations safely to the Firth of Clive, Scotland. Edward recounts the coast of Great Britain into the Irish Sea.

“It was early in the morning. I went on deck and saw we were going between the Irish Sea, Ireland, and Northern England. Since this was the first time for me in the area, I watched the beauty of Ireland. It was a magnificent sight. This is why they call it the Island of Green. The landscape looked so green compared to New York City.”

Edward also assisted in the unloading of cargo, and witnessed the prevalent class disparity even in wartime.

“It was amazing to see loads of beef carcasses we unloaded. I knew beef was a limited commodity in the States, so we pulled over to see so much unloading here. There are tons of it. I examined the labels and the sides and noticed the tags reading Duke and Duchess or Sir. Even in wartime, my theory had been proven true. It’s who you know that will get what they want. Everyone else has to go without.”

Edward Bablinskas, serving in the U.S. Navy for a year and a half, is being transported along with 300 other men of the navel salvage unit to Roseneath, Scotland. Then he was transferred to Cherbourg, France, right after the landing on Utah Beach. Thomas, who is assigned to the 323rd bomber group based in Essex, England, would never see each other again except perhaps after the War.

Both Edward and Thomas would return to Amsterdam at the end of the war in 1945. Edward would marry and have eight children. There’s no historical record of Thomas after being admitted to a hospital in 1959. Thomas had no children, no hometown hero Banner and, therefore, had no one to remember him on Veteran’s Day. But Edward remembered him as he mentioned him in his memoirs. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the Gray Ghost in January of 1944. He would make the rounds on November 11. Edward’s son will play Taps, observe the 21-gun salute, and honor all veterans who served, including Thomas .         Stan Strikolas