Father Duffy's story

by Francis Patrick Duffy

March 27th, 1918

Dropped over in the morning to call on the First Battalion. I found them in the field, where Donovan had had them lined up for a cross country run. I prudently kept out of his way until he was off with his wild youngsters, and then I looked up George McAdie, who had a stay-at-home duty. Reilley and Kennedy and McKenna were cavorting cross country with the rest. Good enough for them—athletics is a big part of their lives. But George and I are philosophers. So while Donovan led his gang across brooks and barbwire fences and over hills and through woods, George and I sat discussing the most interesting beings in the world; soldier men—their loyalty, courage, humor, their fits of laziness and sulkiness. He pointed out to me a dark Celt who had been discontented with the mean drudgery of a soldier’s life and was hard to manage. Different methods had been tried to jack him up. All failed until the Captain gave him a chance to go over in the Lunéville raid. At last he found something the lad was eager about. He went through the training with cheerfulness, distinguished himself under fire for his cool alacrity, and is now playing the game like a veteran.

Finally the harriers got back, the Major the freshest man amongst them. “Oh, Father,” he said, “why didn’t you get here earlier? You missed a fine time.” “My Guardian Angel was taking good care of me, William,” I said, “and saw to it that I got here late.”

In the afternoon the band came over and we had a band concert in the church square and afterwards a vaudeville show given by the men. The Major was asked to say something and he smilingly passed the buck to me. I got square by telling the story of a Major who had been shot at by a German sniper while visiting one of his companies in the trenches. He made a big fuss about it with the Captain, who in turn bawled out an old sergeant for allowing such things to happen. The sergeant went himself to settle the Heinie that was raising all the trouble. Finally he got sight of his man, took careful aim and fired. As he saw his shot reach home, he muttered, “Take that, confound you, for missing the Major.”

BACCARAT

Easter Sunday Night

Yesterday we were at Xaffévillers, Magnières and St. Pierremont. For my Easter celebration I picked Magnières, as the whole 2nd Battalion was there and two companies of the 1st in St. Pierremont, only ten minutes away. For confessions I set up shop in the street at the crossways, and I had a busy day of it. There was always a long file waiting, but when nobody has much to tell the task is soon sped.

I stayed with Stacom. It is always a pleasure to be with Stacom and his officers. He has a way of kindly mastery that begets affectionate loyalty. A man likes Stacom even when he is getting a call down from him. At supper with Doc Houghton, Joe O’Donohue, Arthur Martin, McDermott, Fechheimer, Landrigan, Ewing Philbin, Billy Burns Guggenheim, and Joe McNamara. A man might search the list of all his acquaintances and not find a set of men so congenial and happily disposed.

I looked up the Curé, an alert slender youngish man with a keen intelligent face, a soldier just back that day en permission to keep the old feast with his own people. The Germans had held him as a hostage in 1914 and had thrice threatened to shoot him, though he had looked after their wounded. If thoroughness was their motto they would have been wiser to do it, I reflected as I talked with him; for he was a man that would count wherever he went, and he certainly had no use for Germans. “Too big a man for this place. We won’t be able to keep him long,” said Stacom’s landlady, a pleasant thoughtful woman, whose son of seventeen was just back for the holidays from some college where he is beginning his studies for the priesthood.

The village church was a ruin. Both sides had used it to fight from and both sides had helped to wreck it. The roof was gone and most of the side walls. The central tower over the entrance still stood, though the wooden beams above had burned, and the two big bells had dropped clean through onto the floor. The Curé used a meeting-room in the town hall for his services, but that would not do for my congregation. The church faced a long paved square, so I decided to set up my altar in the entrance and have the men hear Mass in the square. The church steps served excellently for Communion. It is one of the things I wish I had a picture of—my first Easter service in France; the old ruined church for a background, the simple altar in the doorway, and in front that sea of devout young faces paying their homage to the Risen Savior. My text lay around me—the desecrated temple, the soldier priest by my side, the uniforms we wore, the hope of triumph over evil that the Feast inspired, the motive that brought us here to put an end to this terrible business of destruction, and make peace prevail in the world. Here more than a thousand soldiers were present, and the great majority crowded forward at Communion time to receive the Bread of Life.