Transcript of Letter from Katherine Fite to Mr. and Mrs. Emerson Fite

27 Paris, Friday, Dec. 28. Dearest Mother and Daddy - Can't tell whether this letter or myself will reach u first. But it is along time stnce I wrote. I have spent a large part of my time in Paris arranging for homecoming - and today heard that I have a place on the Vulcania sailing from Le Havre on Monday. That means I am coming via State Dept - not War Dept. The Embassy, I think, would have preferred to have me travel on Army orders and Army boats - less trouble for them. But I dread- ed coming on a troop ship - probably waiting 48 hours or more in Le Havre - then coming on a Liberty Ship - crowded. And being pushed around as a civil- ian by the Army. But with the State Dept travel orders, the Embassy really had no choice and I think gave me a good priority in the end - since the Vul- cania was supposed to be all booked. The U.S. Lines apparently get a ship about every week - what the Army chooses to give them and the Vulcania is a prize - and will accommodate more women whom they apparently have difficulty in movéng. So I am enormously relieved. The trip here was something - 29 hours on a "leave train". We were told we had reserved space, which proved to be wooden benches in a third cl ass coach - no lights. We left at midnight - slept as best we could on the wooden seats and were routed out at 4.30 A.M. in Augsburg and told to austiegen from our car and umstiegen into another - our car was kaput. There was no place to umstiegen - everything was full. First we landed in a baggage compartment back of the coal car - then I landed in a "female compartment" - a heaven - of upholstered seats and a seat to myself. Had 3 heavy bags to move so was de- pendent on outside help. All next day through lovely German country - rolling hills - toy villages - then mountains by a plain, the Black Forest, I think. Lunch, first meal, at Carlsruhe where the Army piled us standing into trucks and tóok us to the Red Cross. Train was full of 157 nurses going home - other eople male and female enroute to leave in Switzerland via Strasbourg - or leave in Paris. I picked up a Polish girl en route to Paris hoping to meether hus- banid, a London Pole who doesn'1 dare come home to Poland whom she hadn't seen for 62 years. "There is no 'friede' in Poland" she said. In the French Zone saw lots of Arab horses and white turbans. Supper à la GI out in the middle of nowhere - just piled out of the train and grabbed a tray (dipping it into a barrel of water) and going through a chow line in a shed. But the food was good p cold urkey-creamed potatoes-canned grapefruit. Then we washed our tray again. Arrived in Paris at 5.15. Three of us paid a porter 4 packs of ciga- rettes (we had no money I to bring us across town through the metro to the bil- leting office. Fresh grapefruit for breakfast and then to bed. Moved the next day to a better hotel where I have a private bath. The hotels are heated - whick seems selfish - the French have so little heat. And so little power. Lights off a great deal and the minute the theater is over or the shop closes. Xmas Eve we tried to get into the Madeleine, but we had no tickets and it was complet". We wanted to go to Notre Dame but it would have been too long a walk nome - the metro stops at 12. So we went to a dance at the George V Ho- tel and drank champagne. A strange Xmas eve. Xmas Day I went out to the Chalufours. Partly pleasant, partly not - as one of the sisters and a guest who came in in the afternoon were so bitterly anti-American. It was uncomfortable. But there was lovely, very very old priest there who was so thrilled because the College of Cardinals is no longer Italian and who does like Americans. Andre and family were not there. They gave me Cecile Thureau-d*Angin's address but I have not looked her up. Every- be i.e. Americans, is conscious of the bitterness, the edginess and the self- JIGY of the French. To go back to the Chalufours - their house was freezing - just a little stove in the livingroom. And one brother was sick in bear getti a APCHIVES ADMIN.' RECORDS AND E