USAT America
On 22 September 1919, shortly after America completed that voyage, the Chief of the Army Transportation Service (ATS), Brigadier General Frank T. Hines, General Staff, U.S. Army, contacted the Navy, expressing the Army's desire to acquire America and Mount Vernon ". . . to transport certain passengers from Europe to the United States." Four days later, America was decommissioned while alongside Pier 2, Hoboken, and transferred to the War Department. Capt. J. Ford, ATS, simultaneously assumed command of the ship.
USAT America conducted two more voyages between Hoboken and Brest. Trouble highlighted her second voyage under the Army colors. An unruly crew at Brest on 4 December 1919 prompted Capt. Ford to appeal to the colonel commanding Base Section Number Five, at Brest, for an armed guard, fearing mutiny. Apparently, the Army matter was resolved, for the ship reached Hoboken five days before Christmas 1919.
On 20 December, the day America was scheduled to arrive at the port of debarkation, arrangements were made to turn America and two other Army transports, President Grant and George Washington, over to the USSB for operation while they were being carried on the roll of the Army Transport Reserve. However, before the year 1919 was out, events in a faraway land caused a temporary change in this plan.
A glance back at developments on the Eastern Front during World War I may clarify the transport's new mission. When it mobilized for war, the Austria-Hungarian Empire conscripted countless Czechs. Upon reaching the front, these men, long restive under Austrian rule, deserted in droves and then were organized by Russian officers to fight their former masters. However, the war sapped away the strength of the Russian government more rapidly than it weakened those of the other belligerents and thus encouraged rebellion. One revolution early in 1917 toppled the Czar and a second in the Autumn placed a Bolshevik regime in power. The communist leaders quickly negotiated with Germany the treaty of Brest-Litovsk which took Russia out of the war and allowed the Central Powers to concentrate their resources on the Western Front.
This development left the Czech Legion—some 40,000 strong— stranded in Russia with hostile forces separating it from its still oppressed homeland. Allied leaders hoped to use these dedicated and highly disciplined fighting men to bolster their own embattled troops on the Western Front and encouraged the Czechs to move east on the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok where they could be embarked in transports for passage to France.
However, before this could be accomplished, the Czechs, who had tried to remain aloof from Russia's internal struggles, incurred the hostility and opposition of the Bolsheviks and found themselves involuntarily embroiled in the Russian Civil War as something of a rallying point for various counterrevolutionary forces. Moreover, prior to the armistice, some factions within the Allied Powers hoped that the Czechs might be used to reopen the fighting on the Eastern front against the Central Powers. As a result, some two tempestuous years passed before the entire Czech Legion finally assembled at Vladivostok ready for evacuation.
On 30 December 1919, a representative of the War Department contacted the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations stating that Army transports America and President Grant "were to go on a long secret trip as soon as possible." He emphasized the urgency of the situation and requested that the New York Navy Yard give the highest priority to repairing the two transports for sea. The Navy carried out the repairs, including dry-docking, at top speed and completed the work by 21 January 1920. Two days later, America shifted to Hoboken and sailed for the Pacific on 30 January.
America reached San Francisco on 16 February and remained there a week before clearing the Golden Gate on the 23d. Sailing via Cavite, in the Philippines (where she tarried from 15 to 23 March), and Nagasaki, Japan, America reached Vladivostok soon thereafter.
While the transport had been on her way to the Russian Far Eastern port, the situation in Russia had deteriorated markedly. Bolshevik armies had driven the White Russian forces back into Siberia, and the collapse of the White government, headed by Admiral Alexander Kolchak, sounded the death knell of the western attempt to intervene in the Civil War. By the time the ship arrived at Vladivostok, the evacuation of the Czech Legion was well underway. Adding to the number of people to be transported were the several hundred wives and children of Czech soldiers, since some 1,600 men had married during the period of the "Czech Anabasis" in Russia. By 20 May, the last of the Czech troops had arrived in Vladivostok. Five days later, the United States consul in that port estimated that some 13,200 remained to be repatriated in the five or six remaining transports, which included America. Ultimately, Thomas and America reached Trieste on 8 August, disembarking their contingents of Czechs without incident.
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