The first session of the United Nations Organization's General Assembly took place at Central Hall on Parliament Square in London on January 10, 1946.
Mr. Ernie Raber, 18 years old of Sugarcreek, Ohio, was on a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration 10,000 mile trip.
SUGARCREEK - Ernie Raber, 18, son of Mrs. Tracy Raber, Route 1, Sugarcreek and an All-County and District Guard on last year's Sugarcreek-Shanesville High School Basketball Team, has just returned after a 10,000-mile, 2-month trip on a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) boat that delivered cattle and horses to war-ravaged Poland.
Raber volunteered to be a cattle tender on a cattle boat to Poland when UNRRA issued an appeal for workers to help get the cattle to Poland. He sailed from Baltimore on December 27th on the Victory ship Park Victory and anchored in the Straits of Dover January 7 after a stormy crossing during which 17 horses and 13 head of cattle were lost. Incidentally, Raber said that he suffered from mal de mare himself during the trip.
They then sailed to Germany, crossed the Kiel Canal into the Baltic Sea and docked in the Polish port of Danzig where the cattle and horses were unloaded. The ship carried 835 horses and cattle and 2,500 tons of phosphate. The cattle and horses were supplied with a month's feed and would be fatttened up before being turned over to the Polish farmers.
Ernie's impression of Poland during the week he stayed there was that the mature people seem to be fairly well fed, but the children are all undernourished and in a bad state of health and that the people do not have adequate cflothing for the severe Europenan winter. Thirty cattle men made the trip including Paul Hershberger of Walnut Creek. Several of the men were injured and bitten by the horses which were unbroken.
Raber left Danzig January 17th and sailed through the North Sea and then around Scotland after stopping at Copenhagen for a day. The ship was supposed to dock in New York, but due to the tug boat strike, was forced to sail down the Atlantic Coast around Florida, through the Gulf of Mexico and finally landed at Houston, Texas on February 1. The trip totaled over 10,000 miles, 4,300 of which were traveled during the trip to Poland.
Raber, who is 6-2, was a member of the Sugarcreek-Shanesville Pirate Team that won 26 games in a row in 1944 and then won the District Class B Title last year. He would like to make another trip to Europe and intends to attend college in the near future.
Friday, March 15, 1946
The Daily Reporter
Dover, Ohio
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