| Original caption: “American and Canadian troops crowd the deck of the Queen Mary as she moves up the harbor.” This photo, made from a United States Coast Guard helicopter from Brooklyn, New York, shows some of the 14,526 United States soldiers — United States Army, Air Forces, Navy, Women’s Army Corps, Medical Corps — on board Royal Mail Steamer Queen Mary, an 81,237 ton Cunard Line ocean liner converted to a troopship. Aboard was 1st Lieutenant John Winant (February 3, 1922 – October 31, 1993), whose Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was shot down in October 1943 over Münster, Germany. Held in Stammlager Luft III until January 1945, he was forced marched through a series of camps until he was liberated at Stammlager VIIA on April 29, 1945. After treatment in he vast but now empty Combat Personnel Replacement Depots on the French Channel Coast, former Prisoners of War like Winant were sent home. Upon arrival in New York, the press thought he was engaged to a United States Army Nurse named Lieutenant Marilyn Miller (???? – ????), but they had just met on RMS Queen Mary a few hours before disembarkation. Queen Mary, built to carry 2,000 civilian passengers in style, carried up to 15,000 soldiers, sometimes sleeping on deck in the summer. They were fed twice a day, 10 hours apart. They slept in bunks stacked 5 high, that folded up during the day. It took hours for the passengers to file off the ship. When Queen Mary docked in New York in June 1945, it was the 1st time her schedule was announced to the public since the war began. She usually left in darkness with her passengers embarking from blacked-out trains; this time she arrived to lights and music. RMS Queen Mary and her sister ship, RMS Queen Elizabeth, also converted into a troopship, together carried 1,243,538 soldiers across the Atlantic from 1940 to 1945. This photo appeared in the July 12, 1945, edition of the New York Times. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0941.jpg |
| Image Size | 943.85 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2415 x 1835 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | United States Coast Guard |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | July 11, 1945 |
| Location | |
| City | New York |
| State or Province | New York |
| Country | United States |
| Archive | Museum of Modern Art |
| Record Number | 2230.2001 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
Author of the World War II Multimedia Database