ABSTRACT
Riding the waves of Pacific victory, the Jeremiah OBrien finished the war afloat. On her last wartime voyage home she carried Australian war brides to the United States. The robust trio of North American subjectssoldier, ship, and spiritshad met a quintet of natures forcessky, sand, snow, sea, and shoreunder wartime conditions. They survived to tell their own tales, augmentation to the larger story of twentieth-century warfare. As for the aftermath, at Germanys expense the allies compensated Poland for land it lost to the Soviet Union, divided what remained of German territory into four occupation zones, brought to trial war criminals, executed some, and began a period of denazification. Dislodged from the role of colonial masters, the war-torn western European economies experienced a release of energy that led to a dramatic recovery. Unfortunately, the North Atlantic people had only two years of jittery peace before strife began again, the long-lasting Cold War, round three of this centurys political war.
