Father Duffy's story

by Francis Patrick Duffy

The principal sight of Useldingen is the ruins of a very extensive medieval castle, standing on an elevation in the middle of the town. I wandered through it with Vandy Ward and Read of H. Q. Co., trying with the aid of the Curé to get an idea of its original plan and the sort of life that was led there by other soldiers a thousand years ago.

Thanksgiving Day came round while we were here and everybody worked to celebrate it in proper fashion. There is a fair supply of food in the country, though one has to pay high prices for it, all the higher because the national currency is in marks and the people demand the old rate of 100 francs for 80 marks. But, like all Americans, we want what we want when we want it, so the canny Luxembourgeois get what they ask for. Our religious services were in thanksgiving for peace. In the church we had a solemn high mass and Te Deum and I preached, Father Hanley singing the Mass. As Chaplain Holmes had not yet returned, I unfrocked myself of my papistical robes and went out to hold general services in the romantic courtyard of the old Schloss, using a breach in the fortifications as a pulpit. My friend Chaplain Halliday of the Ohios came along and added a few words in his earnest, sensible style.

There is great joy in the regiment, for Captain Hurley is back. He looks thin and none too fit, and I know he is with us, not because the hospital authorities thought that he should be, but through his own strong desire and pleading eloquence. We had a visit from Donovan also—on crutches. The Provost Marshal General had him transferred to his department while he was in the hospital, and now he is touring the country in a car, performing his new services. It is not a bad sort of a job at all—with headquarters in Paris, and a chance to tour all over France in a first-class automobile, with the best billets and the best food wherever he goes—but not for Donovan. No one of our enlisted men marooned in a casual camp with a lot of absolute strangers ever uttered with greater longing and pathos the formula, “I want to be back with my old outfit.” For Donovan’s case I shall omit the pathos. When that young man wants anything very bad he gets it. I expect to see him back on duty with us in a very, very brief time.

My mail is a very full one these days. All of our old-timers back in hospitals and camps are clamoring to return to the regiment, and they think that if I only speak to somebody, a word from me will manage it. I went to Mersch to see my ever kind friend, Colonel Hughes, our Divisional Chief of Staff, to inquire if some general arrangement could not be made for the return of all men in combat divisions who had been evacuated from the line through wounds or sickness. I found that he was doing everything that he possibly could to get our Rainbow fellows back, and he promised to work for an order along the lines I proposed.

The regiment marched on the 1st of December, Headquarters passing the night at Mersch; and on December 2nd to Waldbillig. December 3rd was the day on which we finally accomplished what we had started out to do—make our invasion of Germany. We crossed the border by a bridge over the Sauer river into the village of Bollendorf. Captain John Mangan, who had come to the regiment on business from the 2nd Army, George Boothby of the New York World and myself crossed the bridge ahead of the others, very curious to see what reception we would get in the land of the enemy. The first indication of the sort of reception we were to have came from an invitation from an old farmer and his wife whose house stood at the end of the bridge to step inside and have a glass of schnapps; when we prudently declined this, we were offered apples, but not being there as visitors, we felt it proper to say no. The proffered kindnesses were inspired partly no doubt by a desire to propitiate, but nobody could doubt that it was largely the decent impulse of a nice old couple. We rejoined the regiment for the march across.

The column came down along the river, the band in front playing “The Yanks Are Coming” and, as we turned to cross the bridge, the lively regimental tune of “Garry Owen.” In front of us, above the German hill, there was a beautiful rainbow. As we marched triumphantly onto German soil, nothing more hostile greeted us than the click of a moving-picture camera. Every soldier in the line was glowing with happiness except myself, perhaps. On occasions like this of glory and excitement my mind has a habit of going back to the lads that are gone.

We marched, with advance and rear guards, as if entering a hostile country, our first stop being at Holsthum. We had hopes that our line of march would take us down the Moselle Valley towards Coblenz, but instead we struck off to the north and northeast, through the rough Eiffel country, along mountain roads that were badly worn down by the traffic of war. Our Headquarters for December 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th were Blickendorf, Wallerschein, Hillesheim (a romantic spot), Weisbaum and, after a desperate hike, Wershofen.

The greatest surprise of our first week in Germany was the attitude of the people towards us. We had expected to be in for an unpleasant experience, and I have no doubt that some of our fellows had a picture of themselves moving around in German villages with loaded rifle and fixed bayonet ready to repel treacherous attacks. We were received very peacefully, one might almost say, cordially. Farmers in the fields would go out of the way to put us on the right road, children in the villages were as friendly and curious as youngsters at home; the women lent their utensils and often helped soldiers with their cooking, even offering stuff from their small stores when the hungry men arrived far ahead of their kitchens. There were many German soldiers in these towns still wearing the uniform (they would be naked otherwise), and they, too, were interested, curious, almost friendly. Some of them had been against us in battle, and with the spirit of veterans in all times and places, they struck up conversation with our men, fighting the battles over again and swapping lies. I talked with the priests in the different towns—one of them a Chaplain just returned from the Eastern front. Like all the others that we meet, they say that their country had the French and British licked if we had stayed out; to which I make the very obvious retort that they had followed a very foolish policy when they dragged us in.

But it is only occasionally that this note is struck, the attitude of most people being that the war is over and they are glad of it. In fact, a surprising number have wanted to have it over for a considerable time past. No doubt the historical background of life in these countries makes them able to take defeat with more philosophy than we could ever muster up if foreign troops were to occupy our country. As for us, we are here in the rôle of victors, and our soldiers are willing to go half way and accept the attitude that for them also (unless somebody wants to start something) the war is a past issue.

Civilians hold grudges, but soldiers do not; at least the soldiers who do the actual fighting. The civilian mind is fed up on all sorts of stories about atrocities, most of which I believe are fabricated to arouse decent human beings up to the point of approving of this rotten business of war. We fought the Germans two long tricks in the trenches and in five pitched battles and they never did anything to us that we did not try to do to them. And we played the game as fairly as it can be played. We followed their retreat through three sectors, in two of which they had been for years, and we never witnessed at first hand any of the atrocities we read about. A church burned at St. Benoit without any good military reason that I could see; the shelling of the hospital in Villers sur Fere, in which case there was no way for them to know it was a hospital; some valuables piled up for carrying away—that is the whole indictment. But no crucified soldiers, no babies with their hands cut off, no girls outraged in trenches, to provoke our soldiers to rush on to death to rescue them, no poisoned food or wells (except of course through gas shells), no women chained to machine guns, and no prisoners playing treachery.