I got a letter from Tom Reilley, who is back in New York, and disgusted with life because he is no longer with us; and he gave me some choice ammunition. “Father Duffy,” he said, “You are certainly a wonderful man. Your press agents are working overtime. Recently you have been called the ‘Miracle Man,’ thus depriving George Stallings of the title. In the newspaper league you have Bill Donovan beat by 9,306 columns. I wish you would tell me, How do you wade through a stream of machine gun bullets? And that little stunt of yours of letting high explosive shells bounce off your chest—you could make your fortune in a circus doing that for the rest of your life.”
It is all very amusing now, but it is going to be extremely embarrassing when we get back amongst civilians where people take these things too seriously. They kept me too long as a professor of metaphysics to fit me for the proper enjoyment of popularity. Donovan says that after his final duties to the regiment are finished he is going to run away from it all and go off with his wife on a trip to Japan.
On April the second we boarded our trains for Brest—the first leg on the way home. We had a happy trip across France in the most comfortably arranged troop trains that Europe ever saw; remained three or four days at Brest, and sailed for Hoboken, the regiment being split up on two ships. Our headquarters and the first six companies were on the Harrisburg, formerly the City of Paris in the American Line. Jim Collintine used to sail on it and is very enthusiastic in his praises. It is funny to hear him telling a seasick bunch “Ain’t it a grand boat! A lovely boat! Sure you wouldn’t know you were aboard her. And she’s the woise ould thing. She’s been over this thrip so often that if niver a man put a hand to her wheel she’d pick her own way out and niver stop or veer till she turned her nose into the dock, like an ould horse findin’ its way to the manger.”
After the men had found their sea-legs we had a happy trip. We spent Easter Sunday aboard, celebrating it in holy fashion.
It was a happy throng that stood on the decks of the Harrisburg on the morning of April 21st, gazing at the southern shores of Long Island, and then the Statue of Liberty, and the massive towering structures that announce to incoming voyagers the energy and daring of the Western Republic. Then down the bay came the welcoming flotilla bearing relatives, friends and benefactors.
The number of our welcomers and the ampleness of their enthusiasm were the first indications we had of the overwhelming welcome which was to be ours during the following two weeks. I do not intend to speak here at any length, of these events, as the gentlemen of the press have described them better than I could ever hope to do. The freedom of the city was conferred upon Colonel Donovan and his staff by Mayor Hylan and the Board of Alderman; and a dinner was given to the officers by the Mayor’s Committee headed by the genial Commissioner Rodman Wanamaker. Our own Board of Trustees, the most generous and efficient lot of backers that any fighting outfit ever had since war began, gave the whole regiment a dinner at the Hotel Commodore which set a new record in the history of repasts. Our brethren of the 69th New York Guard also gave a dinner to the officers of the 165th. And Colonel Donovan and I enjoyed the hospitality of the Press Association and the Lamb’s Club. Another big baseball game, through the good will of the owners of the Giants, added fresh funds to the money at my disposal for needy families. My own fellow townsmen in the Bronx prepared a public reception, for which every last detail was arranged except the weather; but I was prouder than ever of them when they put the thing through in good soldier fashion, regardless of the meanest day of wind and rain that New York ever saw in the month of May.
There was nothing that imagination could conceive or energy perform that our Board of Trustees was not willing to do for us. Dan Brady, who has neglected his business for the past two years to look after the 69th, and all the rest of them, devoted themselves entirely to furthering our well-being and our glory. The only thing I have against Dan is that he makes me work as hard as himself, and bosses me around continually. At one of the dinners I said that if Dan Brady had taken up the same kind of a job that I had, he would be a bishop by now; but if he were my Bishop I’d be a Baptist or a Presbyterian; in some Church anyway, that doesn’t have Bishops.
The part of our reception which I enjoyed most of all was the parade up Fifth Avenue. The whole regiment shared in it, including the extra battalion, seven hundred strong, of men who had been invalided home, and others of our wounded who had a place of honor on the grandstand. Archbishop Hayes, who had blessed us as we left the Armory, Mayor Hylan, men prominent in State and City, in Army and Navy affairs, united to pay their tribute of praise to the old regiment. And thousands and thousands of people on the stands cheered and cheered and cheered, so that for five miles the men walked through a din of applause, till the band playing the American and Irish airs could scarce be heard.
It was a deserved tribute to a body of citizen soldiers who had played such a manful part in battle for the service of the Republic. The appreciation that the country pays to its war heroes is for the best interest of the State. I am not a militarist, nor keen for military glory. But as long as liberties must be defended, and oppression or aggression put down, there must always be honor paid to that spirit in men which makes them willing to die for a righteous cause. Next after reason and justice, it is the highest quality in citizens of a state.
Our fathers in this republic, in their poverty and lowliness, founded many institutions, ecclesiastical, financial, charitable, which have grown stronger with the years. One of these institutions was a military organization, which they passed on to us with the flag of the fifty silver furls. To these we have added nine more in the latest war of our country. As it was borne up the Avenue flanked by that other banner whose stars of gold commemorated the six hundred and fifty dead heroes of the regiment, and surrounded by three thousand veterans, I felt that in the breasts of generous and devoted youths that gazed upon them there arose a determination that if, in their generation, the Republic ever needed defenders, they too would face the perils of battle in their country’s cause.