War Service
On 31 July 1941 President Pierce was taken over for the US Army, which renamed her USAT Hugh L. Scott after General Hugh L. Scott, who was Army Chief of Staff 1914–17. She made four voyages to the Far East before sailing to the US East Coast in July 1942.
On 14 August 1942 she was transferred to the US Navy and Tietjen and Long of Hoboken, New Jersey converted her into an attack transport. on 7 September 1942 she was commissioned as USS Hugh L. Scott, under the command of Captain Harold J. Wright.
Hugh L. Scott took part in Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa. As part of Transport Division 3 (TransDiv 3) she sailed on 24 October after intensive amphibious training. She approached the beaches at Fedhala, French Morocco, early on the morning of 8 November and — after bombardment by surface ships — landed her troops. She then cleared the immediate invasion area and did not return until 11 November, when she entered the refueling area and then anchored in the exposed Fedhala roadstead to unload her supplies.
Read more about this topic: USS Hugh L. Scott (AP-43)
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or service:
“It is the women of Europe who pay the price while war rages, and it will be the women who will pay again when war has run its bloody course and Europe sinks down into the slough of poverty like a harried beast too spent to wage the fight. It will be the sonless mothers who will bend their shoulders to the plough and wield in age-palsied hands the reaphook.”
—Kate Richards O’Hare (1877–1948)
“Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)