CHAPTER II
THE JEWISH HOLYDAYS OF 1918 IN THE A. E. F.
My experiences as chaplain were as nearly typical as possible with any individual. A few of the Jewish chaplains saw more actual fighting than I did; a few were assigned to the Army of Occupation and saw the occupied portion of Germany. But for nine months I served as chaplain in the American Expeditionary Forces, first at the headquarters of the Intermediate Section, Service of Supply, at Nevers; then with the Twenty-Seventh Division at the front and after the armistice at the rear; finally at the American Embarkation Center at Le Mans. I worked in coöperation with the Jewish Welfare Board; I saw Paris in war time and after; I had two weeks' leave in the Riviera.
My commission as First Lieutenant Chaplain U. S. A. came to me on July 4th, 1918 at Great Lakes Naval Station, just north of Chicago, where I was then serving as Field Representative of the Jewish Welfare Board. Two weeks later I reported at Hoboken for the trip overseas. There I had the good fortune to obtain a furlough of ten days before sailing so that I was able to be back in Chicago just in time to see my newborn son and daughter. I left when the babies were a week old to report back to Hoboken again for my sailing orders and found myself at sea during the tense and crucial month of August 1918.
The trip was the usual one of those anxious days—thirteen days at sea, constant look-out for a submarine, but finally a mild disappointment when we sailed into harbor without even a scare. We carried our life preservers constantly and waited daily for the sudden alarm of a boat drill. Our ship, the Balmoral Castle, was one of a convoy of twelve, with the usual quota of destroyers accompanying us. Two days from England we met a flotilla of destroyers; later two "mystery" ships joined us and in the Irish Sea we were greeted by a huge Blimp or dirigible balloon. With this escort we sailed down the Irish Sea, had a glimpse of Ireland and Scotland and finally disembarked at Liverpool. Our first impression was the flatness of a European metropolis when viewed at a distance and its entire lack of the jagged sky-line of an American city.
Our pleasurable anticipations of a view of Liverpool and perhaps a glimpse of London were rudely disappointed. We disembarked about noon, marched through side streets, which looked like side streets in any of the dirtiest of American cities, lined up at a freight station, and were loaded at once on waiting trains and started off for Southampton. All that afternoon we absorbed eagerly the dainty beauty of the English countryside which most of us knew only through literary references. We were sorry when the late twilight shut off the view and we had to take our first lesson at sleeping while sitting up in a train, a custom which afterward became a habit to all officers in France.
Daybreak found us at Southampton in the rest camp; evening on the Maid of Orleans, bound across the channel. We had not seen England, we had no place to sleep and not too much to eat, even sitting room on the decks was at a premium, but we were hastening on our way to the war. At Le Havre we were again assigned to a British rest camp, where we appreciated the contrast between the excellent meals of the officers' canteen and the primitive bunks in double tiers where we had to sleep. After two days of this sort of rest and a hasty visit to the city in between, I received orders to report to the G. H. Q. Chaplains' Office at Chaumont.
My first train journey across France impressed me at once with the unique character of the landscape. The English landscape is distinguished by meadows, the French by trees. The most realistic picture of the English landscape is the fantastic description of a checker-board in "Alice in Wonderland." In France, however, one is struck chiefly by the profusion and arrangement of trees. They are everywhere, alone or in clumps, and of all kinds, with often a formal row of poplars or a little wood of beeches to make the sky-line more impressive. In northern France the houses and barns are all of stone, peaked and windowless, with gardens that seem bent on contrasting as strongly as possible with the grayness of the walls. It seems as though tiny villages are every few feet, and always with a church steeple in the middle.
In Paris the first man I met was my old friend, Dr. H. G. Enelow, of Temple Emanu-El, New York, who was standing by the desk in the Hotel Regina when I registered. As the next day was Sunday, Dr. Enelow was able to devote some time to me, taking me for a long walk on the left bank of the Seine, where we enjoyed the gardens of the Luxembourg and sipped liqueurs at a side-walk café at the famous corner of Boulevarde St. Michel and Germain. Paris in war-time was infinitely touching. It had all the marks of the great luxury center of the world: shops, boulevards, hotels, and show places of every kind. But many of the most attractive of its tiny shops were closed; the streets at night were wrapped in the deepest gloom, with tiny shaded lights which were not intended to illuminate but only to show the direction of the street. The crowds were only a little repressed in the day-time, for the extreme crisis of the summer had just passed, but with dusk the streets became entirely deserted. Through Dr. Enelow I met also Dr. Jacob Kohn, who with Dr. Enelow and Congressman Siegel constituted the commission of the Jewish Welfare Board to outline its program for overseas work. Dr. Enelow introduced me also to Mr. John Goldhaar, the secretary of the commission, afterward in charge of the Paris Office of the Jewish Welfare Board, to whom I shall refer more fully in another connection.
At Chaumont the first man I met was my old class-mate of the Hebrew Union College, Chaplain Elkan C. Voorsanger, who was there temporarily detached from the 77th Division to arrange for the celebration of the Jewish holydays throughout France. He welcomed me, told me something of what my work was to be, and listened to my month-old news, which was all fresh to him. For a few days I lingered at the chaplains' headquarters at the old château of Neuilly sur Suisse, not far from Chaumont, where thirty chaplains received their gas mask training and instruction in front line work, and waited for assignments. The château was a queer angular mediæval affair, set off by lovely lawns, with the usual rows of straight poplars all about. A few steps away was a little village with a quaint old twelfth century church, beautiful in feeling, if not in workmanship. We chaplains newly arrived in France, most of us young, and all eager to be at work, hung on the words of our leaders fresh from the line. We talked much of our ideals and our preparation, as most of the men were graduates of the Chaplains' Training School at Camp Taylor, Kentucky. My assignment came very soon to organize and conduct services for the Jewish holydays at Nevers, headquarters of the Intermediate Section, Service of Supply.
The entire American area in France had been charted out for the purpose of holyday services and the central cities designated, either those which had French synagogues to receive our men, or those points like Nevers where Americans were to be found and had to be provided for. I quote the official order which carried authority for our arrangements.
"Tours, Sept. 1, 1918.
Wherever it will not interfere with military operations soldiers of Jewish Faith will be excused from all duty and where practicable granted passes to enable them to observe Jewish Holidays as follows: from noon Sept. 6th to morning of Sept. 9th and from noon Sept. 15th to morning of Sept. 17th. If military necessity prevents granting passes on days mentioned provision should be made to hold divine services wherever possible."
This meant that all those had leave who were not at the time in action or on the move. Chaplain Voorsanger, for example, was not able to have any service in the 77th Division as his troops were on the march on New Year's Day and in action on the Day of Atonement. Most of the central points designated for Jewish services were important cities with French synagogues,—Paris, Toul, Belfort, Dijon, Épinal, Nantes, Rouen, Tours, Bordeaux and Marseilles. Three of the chief American centers had none, so Dr. Enelow was assigned to Brest, Dr. Kohn to Chaumont, and I was sent to Nevers.
I spent a single busy day in Tours after leaving Chaumont. I met the wife and father-in-law of Rabbi Leon Sommers and inspected their little synagogue with its seventy-five seats. The Rabbi was on duty in the French army where he had been from the very beginning of the war. I went to the army headquarters and arranged for the proper notices to be sent out to troops in the district, then with two or three Jewish families whom I met I discussed arrangements to accommodate the large number of Jewish soldiers who would come in. I was empowered to offer them the financial assistance of the Jewish Welfare Board in providing such accommodations as were possible.
One surprise of a kind which I afterward came to expect, was meeting an old friend of mine from Great Lakes, a former sergeant in the Canadian Army, mustered out of service because of the loss of several fingers and now back in France again as a representative of the Knights of Columbus. When he left Great Lakes for overseas, I had parted with one of the two knitted sweaters I possessed, that if I did not see service at least my sweater would. Now I met the sweater and its owner again for a few brief moments. These fleeting glimpses of friends became a delightful but always tense element in our army life. Men came and went like an ever-flowing stream, now and then pausing for a greeting and always hurrying on again. A single day sufficed for my work in Tours and then to my own city for the holydays.
Nevers is a historic town of thirty thousand on the banks of the River Loire. The streets are as wide as alleys and the sidewalks narrow and haphazard, so that usually one walks in the street, whether it goes up hill, down hill, or (as frequently) around the corner. But the parks and squares are frequent and lovely, and the old buildings have a charm of their own, even if it is chiefly in the quaintness of their outlines and the contrast of their gray with the sunny skies of autumn. The air was always cool and the skies always bright. I stayed at the Grand Hotel de l'Europe, a rather small place, which one had to enter by a back door through a court. With the men at war, all the work was being done by women, while most of the guests were American officers on temporary or permanent duty at the post. The cathedral (every French city seems to have one) is interesting chiefly to the antiquarian, as it has several different styles combined rather inharmoniously, and the tower is not at all imposing.
Of course, a great many Americans were stationed in or near the city—railroad engineers, training camps of combat units newly arrived in France, construction engineers, quartermaster units, and two great hospital centers. Every company I visited, every ward in the hospitals, had at least a few Jewish boys, and all of them were equally glad to see me and to attend my services. In fact, my first clear impression in France was that here lay a tremendous field for work, crying out for Jewish chaplains and other religious workers, and that we had such a pitiful force to answer the demand. At that time there were over fifty thousand Jewish soldiers in the A. E. F. at a very conservative estimate, with exactly six chaplains and four representatives of the Jewish Welfare Board to minister to them. When I took up my work at Nevers, I was simply staggered by the demands made on me and my inability to fulfill more than a fraction of them.
At first came the sudden rush of men into the city for the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The hotels filled up almost at once; then came others who could not find accommodations, and still others who had been confined to hospitals, had drawn no pay for several months, and could not pay for a hotel room or even a shave. The problem was solved by two very helpful officers who stayed up most of the night until they had provided enough room on the barrack floors and enough blankets for all who needed them. The accommodations were crude, but the men were soldiers and glad to get them. I was doubly proud, therefore, that this crowd of ours, without official control, coming for the festival and therefore released from the incessant discipline they had become used to, never once took advantage of their privileges. We troubled the authorities for their sleeping quarters and for special permission to be on the street after nine at night—but that was all. Many of the boys may have appreciated their leave more than the festival, but all justified the confidence shown in them by their conduct.
Imagine the difference between our services in France and those to which I have been accustomed in our rather tame and formal civilian congregations. My congregation there was composed almost entirely of men, and those men all very young. We were meeting in a strange land, amid an ancient but alien civilization, which some of us liked and some disliked, but which none of us could quite understand. We had no scroll of the Law, no ram's horn, not even a complete prayerbook for the festivals. We had no synagogue, and the places we used were lent us by people of another faith, friends and co-workers, indeed, but with little interest in our festivals or our religious needs.
Our services were held in the large Y. M. C. A. hut at the chief barracks. The large, bare room was turned over to us for certain hours; the workers closed the canteen and attended the services. And in return I concluded one of the evening services fifteen minutes early so that the regular clientele would not miss their semi-weekly motion pictures. In fact, I found the Y. M. C. A. here, as everywhere, most eager to coöperate with me and to serve the Jews as well as the Christians in the army. My cantor for most of the services was Corporal Cohen of New York, although several other men volunteered for certain portions of the prayers. The head usher was Sergeant Wolf, who looked after the hall and the seating with the thoroughness characteristic of sergeants everywhere. Among the congregation were ten officers, two nurses, and three families of French Jews, as well as a mixed group of enlisted men from every branch in the army, from every section of America and every group of Jewry. The festival had caught us in a foreign land, in the service of America, and it had brought us together as nothing else could have done.
We wore our hats during the service because that was the natural desire of the majority, who were of orthodox upbringing. Of course, a soldier naturally wears his overseas cap under any circumstances and it would have needed a special ruling to bring them off. The service was read out of the little prayer book circulated by the Jewish Welfare Board, with which about a fourth of the congregation were already provided from the camps in the States. We read the abbreviated Hebrew service, then about half of the prayers in English, and had an English sermon. The only objection to these innovations came from the cantor, Corporal Cohen, a young man with a traditional Jewish background, who had gathered the other Jews in his company every Friday evening for a brief service and was generally looked up to (although not always followed) as a religious leader. My only way of convincing him was to inquire among some of the other men as to the number who did not understand Hebrew. When he saw that over half of the Jewish soldiers had no understanding of the Hebrew service he withdrew his insistent request for a strict traditionalism and I was saved the necessity of falling back on my military rank.
I was much amused after the several services at the number of young men who came to me, complaining about Cohen's rendering of the services and boasting of their own ability. I was able to give several of them the chance in the ensuing days and found out that it is easy to get a Hebrew reader, quite possible to find one who reads with feeling and understanding, but utterly impossible to pick up in the army a cantor with a trained voice.
Our arrangements were made under the approval of my commanding officer, the senior chaplain of the post, and few features of our service were more appreciated than the address of Chaplain Stull at our services on the second day of the festival. I had hesitated to invite him, and was therefore doubly surprised when he assured me that this was the third successive year that he had preached at a Jewish New Year service: two years before on the Mexican Border, the year before in training camp in the States and now in the American Forces in France, Chaplain Stull was a regular army chaplain of eighteen years standing, and his membership in the Methodist Episcopal church was less conspicuous in his makeup than his long experience in army life. His sermon was one of the outstanding events of our holy season. His explanation of the vital importance of the Service of Supply to the army at the front came with personal weight for he had just come back from the fighting forces to take a promotion in the rear. His moral interpretation of the significance of each man to the whole army was the sort of thing that the soldier needs and likes.
These services were unusual in that they were the first holy season which most of the men had spent away from home. The war was still on then; the St. Mihiel drive took place the day after Rosh Hashana; the news from the front was usually good and always thrilling. We at the rear were deeply stirred. Some of us had been wounded and were now recovering; some were in training and were soon to leave for the front; some were in the S. O. S. permanently. But the shadow of war was dark upon us all. We were in the uncertainty, the danger, the horror of it. We felt a personal thrill at the words of the prayers,—"Who are to live and who to die; who by the sword and who by fire." We recited with personal fervor the memorial prayer for our fallen comrades. Many among us were eager to give thanks at recovery from wounds. Therefore, the desire for a religious observance of our solemn days was all the greater. Men came in from a hundred miles, often walking ten miles to a train before they could ride the rest.
Brothers, long separated, often met by chance, soon to separate again for an unknown future. I remember two—one a veteran of two battles, now convalescing at a hospital, the other newly arrived from the States and still in training. They met on Rosh Hashanah, each ignorant of the other's whereabouts and the veteran not even knowing whether his brother had arrived in France. The touching scene of their reunion had its humorous side too, for the wounded soldier from the hospital naturally had not a franc in his possession, and the boy from the States had enough money for a real holiday and had reserved a hotel room with a luxurious French bed. He was thus able to act as host for two happy days and nights. But on Yom Kippur when the wounded soldier came again his brother was not there. His unit had been ordered to the front and I do not know whether they ever met again.
War had us all in its iron grip. I, for one, expected soon to have my request granted that I be assigned to a combat division. Not that I overlooked the need for Jewish work in the S. O. S., but the most pressing need at that time was at the front, and I was looking forward to taking up the more exacting duties there.
The three Jewish families of the city added a pathetic touch, for they were glad indeed to attend a Jewish service and for the sake of the soldiers were willing to sit through our English additions. Their situation seemed similar to that of most recent immigrants of the United States; the parents spoke both Yiddish and French, the young people like ours in America, spoke chiefly the language of the country. It was both ludicrous and touching to see American soldiers competing to exchange the few French words they knew with the two or three Jewish daughters. It was often their first chance for a word with a girl of their own class, certainly with a Jewish girl, since they had left America. And the fact that the girl with her familiar appearance could not communicate with them on a conversational basis, did not seem to impede their relations in the least. The isolated condition of these French Jews in a city of 30,000 can only be compared to that of American Jews in a country village.
While at Nevers I could not overlook the opportunity to visit the two great hospital centers at Mars and at Mesves sur Loire. I visited from ward to ward in both of them, paying special attention to the Jewish boys and finding always plenty of occasion for favors of a hundred different kinds. At that time we were short of chaplains of all denominations in the army, so that even the hospitals had not enough to minister fully to their thousands of sick and wounded, while the convalescent camps with their hundreds of problems were almost uncared for in this respect.
At Mars I held a service on Friday night which was fairly typical of conditions in France. The service was announced as a Jewish religious service, but on my arrival I found the Red Cross room crowded with men of every type, including four negroes in the front row. Evidently it was the only place the men had outside the wards, so they came there every night for the show, movie, or service which might be provided. They were not merely respectful to the service and the minority of Jews who took part in it. They were actively responsive to the message I brought them of conditions in America and the backing the people at home were giving them in their great work abroad. These wounded men from the lines, these medical corpsmen who might never see the front, were alike eager to feel the part they personally were playing in the great, chaotic outlines of the world-wide struggle. And they responded to a Jewish service with an interest which I soon found was typical of the soldier, in his restless attention, his open-mindedness, his intolerance of cant but love of genuine religion.
The meetings and partings of war-time came home to me several times at Nevers. I was called to see a young man in the hospital, suffering from spinal meningitis. I found him a highly intelligent boy from Chicago who knew a number of my old friends there. I was able to do a few minor favors for him such as obtaining his belongings and notifying his unit that he was not absent without leave, but simply locked up in the contagious ward. But on his recovery the news went to his family in Chicago to get in touch with my wife and a friendship was established on a genuine basis of interests in common. At another time I was approached at the Y. M. C. A. by one of their women workers who had heard my name announced. She turned out to be a Mrs. Campbell of my old home town, Sioux City, Iowa, and an acquaintance of my mother through several charity boards of which they both were members. She was acting as instructor in French and advisor to the American soldiers in Nevers, while her husband, Prof. Campbell of Morningside College, was on the French front with the French auxiliary of the Y. M. C. A.
Another interesting incident was my meeting with Mr. Julius Rosenwald of Chicago, then touring France as a member of the National Council of Defense. The Y. M. C. A. secretary asked me to introduce him to a soldier audience in one of their huts. The first day I came, however, Mr. Rosenwald was delayed and the boys had to put up with a new film of Douglas Fairbanks in his stead, like good soldiers accepting the substitution gladly enough. On the second day Mr. Rosenwald himself was there and I had the pleasure of introducing him to an audience of about five hundred soldiers, as varied a group as ever wore the American uniform. His simple personal appeal was a direct attempt to build up the morale of the troops through a hearty report of the interest and enthusiasm of the people at home. He called for a show of hands of the home states of the different men, then responded by reading letters and telegrams from governors and other local officials. Mr. Rosenwald was one of the very few official travelers in France whose trip was not merely informative to himself but also valuable to the army. We in the army grew to dislike "joy riders" so heartily that it is a positive pleasure to mention such a conspicuous exception.
Another duty typical of the variety of tasks which welcomed me as a chaplain, was to conduct the defense of a Jewish boy at a general court martial. He asked to see me during the holydays, told me his story, and I stayed over in Nevers a few days to act as his counsel. Since that time I have frequently been called on for advice in similar cases, for an army chaplain has almost as many legal and medical duties as strictly religious ones. In this particular case circumstantial evidence seemed to show that the young man had stolen and sold some musical instruments from an army warehouse where he worked. He was only a boy, a volunteer who had falsified his age in order to enlist. According to his own story he was partially involved in the case, acting ignorantly as agent for the real criminal.
The trial was quite fair, bringing out the circumstantial evidence against him, and his sentence was as low as could possibly be expected. So, with memories of friendships made, of work accomplished, of a new world opening ahead, I left Nevers on September 20th after only eighteen days of service. I had to report at Chaumont again to receive my orders to join the 27th Division.
For two months after that no Jewish chaplain was stationed in the Intermediate Section, which covered the entire central part of France and contained many thousands of American troops, including everywhere a certain proportion of Jews. Then Chaplain Rabinowitz reported at Nevers temporarily and served for his entire time in France in various points in the Intermediate Section, at Nevers, Blois and at St. Aignan.
I had been thrust into the midst of this tremendous, crying need for service of every kind, religious, personal and military. I went to my division to find the same or greater need, as the situation was always more tense at the actual front. For three weeks I had ministered as much as I could to the Jewish men scattered about Nevers and all through the central portion of France. Now I left them for good. Their usual greeting on meeting me had been, "You are the first Jewish chaplain or worker we have met on this side." And unfortunately, the same greeting was addressed to me every time I came to a new unit or city until the very day I left France. The need among these two million soldiers was so tremendous that a hundred times our resources would not have been sufficient. As it was, we made no pretense at covering the field, but simply did day labor wherever we were stationed, serving the soldiers, Jews and Christians alike, and giving our special attention to the religious services and other needs of the Jewish men.