Word: erma
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...Erma's Estonians...
...Estonians from Erma in Norfolk, read your article in last number of TIME [Jan. 7] and we feel our story sympathitically treated, which we appreciate very much. But there were some errors, from which at least one might give the wrong impression of us. Namely: we did not wish to return to a Soviet-Estonia, as the Swedish Government recommanded us. This is why we left Sweden five months ago. But none of us left Estonia after the country "was taken over by Russia." Vice versa, all of us left our native land when it was occupied, entirely or dealwise...
...sailing koster Erma, with 16 war weary Estonians (seven men, five women, four little children) aboard, made her way from the Swedish coast to the U.S. through the seam-starting seas of the winter Atlantic...
Food ran low; the Erma's passengers ate but one meal a day. To cook it, one woman held a Primus stove down on the deck, a second held a pan to the flame. Often the stove bounced and rolled; food and fuel spilled, threatening the boat with fire. Day after day the shivering women read aloud to quiet their shivering children; during the worst of the storms the men on deck sang to reassure them. Finally a U.S. destroyer sighted the dingy sailboat, pulled alongside. Her crew passed down food, cigarets, fuel. The Erma was 100 miles...
...morning, she tied up at the Army Mine Base at Little Creek, Va. The bedraggled, exhausted Estonians were hustled into the officers' club, given hot drinks, hot food, candy, cigarets. Hundreds of people called to bring toys for the children, gifts of clothes and money. But the Erma's people, like those who had crossed the Atlantic on many another sailing vessel, had come not for kindness. They wanted work and a chance to raise their children in a new land. At week's end they were waiting to see if the U.S. would have them...