Father Duffy's story

by Francis Patrick Duffy

DENEUVRE

May 25th, 1918

Being made Senior Chaplain of the Division I judged that my first, if not my sole duty, was to give a dinner to the brethren. We had a meeting in the morning in a large room under the Curé’s hospitable roof, and everyone was there. Chaplains Halliday, Robb, Harrington, Smith and McCallum I had known since our first days in Camp Mills, and we had worked together ever since as if we belonged to one religious family. Those who were added to our body since we came to France impress us all as being first class men. Three of them I call the “Young Highbrows”: Chaplains N. B. Nash of the 150th F. A., who was a Professor in the Episcopal Theological Seminary at Cambridge, Charles L. O’Donnell, the poet priest of Notre Dame University, who is attached to the 117th Engineers, and Eugene Kenedy, who has been a professor in various Jesuit Colleges and who is now working with the 150th Machine Gun Battalion, after a month of breaking in with our regiment. Chaplain Ralph M. Tibbals, a Baptist Clergyman from the Southwest, and Chaplain William Drennan, a priest from Massachusetts, were new men to most of us, but made a decidedly favorable impression.

We discussed a number of matters of common interest and every single topic was decided by unanimous vote. The clergy discover in circumstances like these that their fundamental interests are absolutely in common. I do not mean to say that there is any tendency to give up their own special creeds; in fact, they all make an effort to supply the special religious needs of men of various denominations in their own regiments by getting the other chaplains to have occasional services or by announcing such services to the men. I told Bishop Brent that the way the Clergy of different churches got along together in peace and harmony in this Division would be a scandal to pious minds.

I think it would be a good thing if representatives of various churches would have a meeting every year at the seashore in bathing suits, where nobody could tell whether the man he was talking to was a Benedictine Abbot, a Methodist Sunday-School Superintendent or a Mormon Elder. They would all find out how many things of interest they have in common, and, without any disloyalty to their own church, would get together to put them over.

At this meeting there was one thing that I wanted for myself. Some day we shall have three Chaplains for each Infantry regiment, but the time is long in coming, and I am anxious to get someone to hold religious services for my Protestant fellows. I have asked the Division Secretary of the Y. M. C. A. to supply me with one of his Secretaries who is a clergyman, to be attached permanently to the regiment; promising that he would be treated as well as I myself. I have been after this for a long while but the Division Secretary has not too many men, and he is tied down in the placing of them by the canteen situation which makes it necessary to leave the same man in one place as long as possible. Chaplains Nash and Halliday, who are very close to me in all my counsels, are going with me to Chaumont to back me up in a request to the G. H. Q. Chaplains—Bishop Brent, Chaplain Moody and Father Doherty, to have them ask the chief officials of the Y. M. C. A. to assign one of their Protestant clergyman permanently to my regiment.

I had left the matter of dinner in the capable hands of the Regimental Supply Sergeant, Joe Flannery, so everybody went home satisfied.

During my stay at Deneuvre I have seen a good deal of Bishop Brent, formerly Episcopal Bishop in the Philippines and now Senior of the G. H. Q. Chaplains. He knew Colonel McCoy in the Philippines, and like everybody who ever knew him, is glad to have a chance to visit him. The Bishop and I have become good friends, the only drawback being that he talks too often about getting me with him at G. H. Q., while my battle cry is that of every member of the regiment, “I want to stick with my own outfit.” He is anxious to have some first-hand experience of work in the trenches and he has paid us the compliment of saying that if he can get away he will attach himself to the 165th. I hope he can come for I know that everybody will be as attached to him as I am myself, and he on his part will have some interesting experiences.

May 26th, 1918

I have just been talking with Donovan, Anderson, Mangan and others of the old timers and we all remarked on what a hold Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell had gotten on us during his short stay amongst us. He was assigned to us as a replacement and drifted in so unassumingly that we scarcely knew he had arrived until he was with us a week. But as he has gone about from place to place doing all kinds of jobs, —inspections, courtmartials, and the like, we have grown to know him better, and to like him more the more we know him. He is efficient without bustle, authoritative without bluster, never unreasonable and full of quaint native humor. His father was a Chaplain in the Army which is perhaps one of the reasons why the son and I are already like old chums.