Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1945, The British Commonwealth, The Far East, Volume VI

841.241/10–545

The British Prime Minister (Attlee) to President Truman ⁶⁴

No. 15

[London,] October 3, 1945.

The British Cabinet have recently given the most urgent and earnest consideration to the need to speed up the return of British Servicemen from overseas in the period before Christmas of this year. Many of these men have been on active service and away from their homes for five or more years, and the demand by the people of this country for their early return now that hostilities are over has become loud and insistent.

2. Even after eliminating or deferring movements which would normally command a high priority, we cannot with our present allocation of personnel shipping, achieve the minimum repatriation programme at which we have hitherto aimed, let alone achieve any acceleration.

3. In these circumstances, I have no alternative but to remind you that the arrangement to loan you the two Queens⁶⁵ and the Aquitania until the end of 1945 was conditioned solely by the urgency of redeploying American Forces for the war against Japan. With the unexpectedly early termination of the Japanese war, these conditions have for some time now ceased to exist.

4. It is our desire that the two Queens and Aquitania should continue in your service for a period, and we fully realise the desire on the part of the United States to welcome back their soldiers and airmen who have been fighting in Europe. Our own urgent necessities, however, have compelled us to request that you should loan us in return for the Queens and Aquitania an equivalent personnel lift in American-controlled troop ships with a view to their being used on the main British trooping routes, i.e. from India and Australia to the United Kingdom. It will be understood that help on the North Atlantic route would not solve our problem.

5. Our Combined Chiefs of Staff have discussed this question between them but have failed to reach agreement. Your Chiefs of Staff “regret that the necessity to return United States Forces from Europe as expeditiously as possible requires all lifts scheduled under present agreements to December 1945, and that therefore they are unable to provide assistance in United States controlled troop shipping before the end of 1945”. Your Chiefs of Staff go on to say that “action on certain of the captured German passenger ships will in part, fulfil the need for additional troop lift as expressed by the British Chiefs of Staff.” This latter statement may be true for some time in early 1946, but the captured German passengers ships will not alleviate the position in the all important period before the end of this year.

6. Your Chiefs of Staff seem to think that this question, which is absolutely vital to us, can await discussion at an overall personnel shipping review to be held some time this month, the results of which could not possibly take effect till very nearly the end of the year.

7. I shall speak with the utmost frankness. While so many of our troops overseas are awaiting repatriation after nearly six years of war and of separation from their families, I cannot continue to justify to the British public the use of our three biggest ships in the American service. I am reluctant to suggest the return of the Queens and Aquitania. I must, however, ask you most earnestly, Mr. President, to provide us in the immediate future with an equivalent lift for these three ships.⁶⁶

64. Copy transmitted to the Acting Secretary of State by the British Ambassador (Halifax) under date of October 5, 1945.
65. The Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary; see Conference of Berlin (Potsdam), vol. ii, p. 1192.
66. Upon receipt of this message, identical letters were drafted and signed by the Secretary of State addressed to Secretary of War Patterson and Admiral Leahy suggesting that the Aquitania or its equivalent in tonnage be turned over to the British. According to a memorandum of October 15 by Under Secretary of State Acheson (not printed), before these letters could be transmitted, word was received that President Truman had acted on the matter through the War Department. The Queen Elizabeth and Aquitania were returned to British service, while the Queen Mary remained temporarily in use as a U. S. troopship.