lthough the war in Europe was over, it would be eight more months before my father would receive orders to return home. He traveled extensively in Italy, Switzerland, France and Germany and lived very comfortably, but he longed to return to his family.

On Dec. 19, 1945, my father, stationed near Obersdorf, Germany, received the long-prayed-for orders to go home. Christmas found him in Paris, ducking rain drops in a leaky barracks, waiting to depart for Le Havre, the port of embarcation.

On the morning of the 26th, he climbed onto a truck, part of an enormous convoy that stretched as far as the eye could see, headed west from Paris to Le Havre.

Snaking through piles of rubble two-stories high—part of the destruction from German buzz-bomb attacks—the convoy wound its way through Le Havre to the docks. Hours later in the darkening twilight, a tug boat adorned with Christmas lights led my father's troop ship, the General Alex Anderson, into the English Channel, headed for home.