Father Duffy's story

by Francis Patrick Duffy

This is the way some Company Commanders reasoned. And as a result, the 69th Regiment found that among its new members were some Sergeants and Corporals whose military knowledge included little more than the manual of arms, and privates who were physically, morally, and mentally unfit for the service. It was not to be expected that these men would be received with overwhelming enthusiasm.

Many of the soldiers received from other regiments—most of them in fact, were valuable additions to the 69th and at once proved their usefulness by merging with the rest of the outfit and working for the soldierly perfection of the whole body. Of the others—well, some of them were reformed by thorough disciplinary action, and others were allowed to drift back into civilian life by means of liberal use of dependency and surgeon’s certificate of disability.

So many soldiers were lost of those acquired from other regiments that although the time for sailing was almost at hand it was considered advisable to institute another recruiting campaign. There was no difficulty in gaining the desired number of recruits; the prospect of immediate service in France with the most famous regiment in America brought to the Armory doors three times as many candidates as could be accepted.

Now the wives and mothers who thronged the dusty Company streets on Saturday and Sunday afternoons began to show stronger anxiety, to look with new intensity into the eyes of their soldiers as they bade them farewell and returned to the city. For the time for sailing was at hand—no one knew just when or just where the Regiment was going, but all felt it was a question only of days or hours.

Twice secret orders to sail were received at Regimental Headquarters, and twice these orders were hastily countermanded. The suspense began to tell on officers and men, to tell even more, perhaps on those to whom they had again and again to say good bye. At last, on the night of October 25th, Major Donovan led the first battalion through the dark camp and down the silent lanes to the long train that was to take them to Montreal.

And now there were no crowds, there was no music. It was a journey more momentous, greater in historical importance, than the Regiment’s triumphant return from the Border, than its flower and flag decked setting forth for Camp Mills. But it was not, like those memorable events, a time for music and pomp. The feeling of the officers and men was one of stern delight, of that strange religious exaltation with which men of Celtic race and faith go into battle, whether the arena be Vinegar Hill, Fontenoy, or Rouge Boquet. As the trainful of happy warriors steamed through the first leagues of the journey to the Front, Father Duffy, the Regiment’s beloved Chaplain, passed from car to car hearing confessions and giving absolution. Rosaries—the last dear gift of mothers and sweethearts—were taken out and by squads, platoons and companies the soldiers told their beads. There was little sleep on the 69th special for Montreal that night—officers and men were too excited, too exalted for that. They had entered at last on the adventure of their lives.

General O’Ryan had said that a soldier is a man who always wants to be elsewhere than where he is. This is not true of soldiers of the race to which General O’Ryan’s name indicates that he belongs. They want to be elsewhere—only when they are in some peaceful place. If the Regiment had been restless before, the second and third Battalions were doubly so after they had seen four companies of their comrades go away.

But they had not long to wait. On the night of October 29th, the America (formerly the Amerika of the Hamburg-American line) pulled out of New York Harbor. There was no khaki on her decks; the only figures to be seen were sailors and deck-hands. But as soon as the vessel was out of range of spying Teutonic eyes, soldiers poured out of every hatchway. And as they thronged the deck-space available and looked their last for a long time at the lights along the fast receding shore, they showed a contentment, a mirth that amazed the crew, long accustomed to transporting troops.

“What’s the matter with you fellows?” asked one sailor. “Ain’t you sorry to be leaving your homes? Didn’t you ever hear there was such things as submarines?” He had helped carry over all sort of soldiers, he said, Regulars, Marines and Guardsmen, but he had never before seen passengers so seemingly indifferent to the grief of leavetaking and the perils of the wartime sea. He couldn’t understand it.

He might have been able to understand it if he had read Chesteron’s “Ballad of the White Horse.” For in that wise poem is an explanation of the psychology of the 69th New York, an explanation of the singular phenomenon of soldiers leaving their dear ones and setting out over menacing seas to desperate battle in a strange land as merrily as if they were planning merely an evening at Coney Island. Chesterton wrote: