The voyage was not one continual round of pleasure. The Graf Waldersee was undertaking her first trip to America since the armistice, and was not in the condition usually expected of a palatial transatlantic liner. She "made haste slowly" ; she had been stripped of most of her decorations and movable equipment before being leased to the United States government; she was dirty and out of repair; and her facilities for preparing food were entirely inadequate. But all the discomforts of the voyage were endured with a commendable degree of fortitude, and the weather conditions were fortunately generally propitious. Things might have been worse.

At five o'clock in the morning of April twentieth, Easter Sunday, a pilot boat came alongside the vessel and a pilot climbed aboard; and a little later the Statue of Liberty loomed out of the morning mists. Cheer upon cheer rose from the soldiers on the ship, and these were answered by the welcoming shouts of those who had come down the harbor to greet the returning troops. Bands played stirring airs, and eager relatives on the harbor crafts recognized their loved ones among the soldiers on board and gave vent to their emotions by wild gesticulations, tears, and a bombardment of their heroes with fruit and candy.

The Graf Waldersee docked at 10:30 o'clock, and by a strange coincidence, forty-three of the original Forty-Four nurses, in charge of Capt. Belding, arrived on the Zeppelin and landed at the same pier at about the same time. A real American mess was served, the chief features of which were "bot-dogs," pie and apples; and the men did justice to these long absent delicacies by consuming "seconds" liberally.