Father Duffy's story

by Francis Patrick Duffy

The soldiers were happy too at having a chance to fight something. Colonel Barker gave orders in his quiet way, which Captains Anderson and Mangan put into execution. The fountain ran out and bucket lines were formed. I am afraid that some of the contents instead of getting to the fire was dumped on the gaudy uniforms of the funny old pompiers, who insisted upon running around giving orders that nobody could understand. This is the second French fire we have witnessed and the general verdict is that our moving picture people have missed the funniest unstudied episode left in the world by not putting a French village fire department on the screen. It was a good show in every way—but incidentally the building was a total loss.

LONGEAU

January 25th, 1918

I walked over to Cohons today and dropped in on Company H. Instead of having to make my visit through the scattered billets that line the entrance to the valley I found what looked like the whole Company along the roadside in vehemently gesticulating groups. I hurried to find what the trouble might be. “What’s the matter here,” I asked. Val Dowling, the supply Sergeant, picked a uniform out of a pile and held it up. “Look at the damn thing? Excuse me, Father, but you’ll say as bad when you look at it. They want us to wear this.” He held it out as if it had contagion in it, and I saw it was a British tunic, brass buttons and all. I disappointed my audience—I didn’t swear out loud. “Got nice shiny buttons,” I said. “What’s the matter with it?” What was the matter with it? Did I know it was a British uniform? Frank McGlynn of Manhattan and Bill McGorry of Long Island City were as hot as Bill Fleming or Pat Travers or Chris O’Keefe or William Smythe. “They look a little betther this way,” said John Thornton, holding up one with the buttons clipped off. “That’s all right,” I said, “but don’t get yourselves into trouble destroying government property.” “Throuble,” said Martin Higgins. “What the blazes do they mane by insultin’ min fightin’ for thim like this. I’d stand hangin’ rather than put wan of thim rags on me back.”

I went home in a black mood, all the blacker because I did not want to say what I felt before the men; and when I got to mess I found Lawrence, Anderson and Mangan and young McKenna as sore as myself. We all exploded together, and Colonel Barker, at first mildly interested, seemed to get worried. “Well,” he said, “at least they wouldn’t object if they had to wear English shoes, would they?” “No,” I said. “They’d have the satisfaction of stamping on them.” The laugh at my poor joke ended the discussion, but I waited after supper to talk with Colonel Barker. I didn’t want him worried about us, and he naturally couldn’t know; but I felt he could appreciate our attitude from his own very strong anti-German feelings. “Colonel,” I said. “We do not want you to feel that you have a regiment of divided loyalty or dubious reliability on your hands. We are all volunteers for this war. If you put our fellows in line alongside a bunch of Tommies, they would only fight the harder to show the English who are the better men, though I would not guarantee that there would not be an occasional row in a rest camp if we were billeted with them. There are soldiers with us who left Ireland to avoid service in the British Army. But as soon as we got into the war, these men, though not yet citizens, volunteered to fight under the Stars and Stripes.

“We have our racial feelings, but these do not affect our loyalty to the United States. You can understand it. There were times during the past two years when if England had not restrained her John Bull tendencies on the sea we might have gotten into a series of difficulties that would have led to a war with her. In that case Germany would have been the Ally. You are a soldier, and you would have fought, suppressing your own dislike for that Ally. But supposing in the course of the war we were short of tin hats and they asked you to put on one of those Boche helmets?”

The Colonel whacked the table, stung to sudden anger at the picture. Then he laughed, “You have a convincing way of putting things, Father. I’ll see that they clothe my men hereafter in American uniforms.”

And though, as I found later, many of the offensive uniforms had been torn to ribbons by the men, nobody ever made any inquiry about “destruction of government property.”

PERCEY

February 2nd, 1918