Father Duffy's story

by Francis Patrick Duffy

I don’t mind rumors in the army. They are part of the game. With eating and growling, they constitute our chief forms of recreation. Fact is, I am made the father of most of them in this regiment. When some lad starts his tongue going, and everybody tells him just what kind of a liar he is, he says that Father Duffy said so, and Father Duffy got it straight from Secretary Baker or General Pershing, or, who knows?—by revelation. It is a great compliment to me, but a left-handed one to my teaching.

At home, though, rumors don’t just interest—they hurt. I know how much they hurt, for my pile of “agony letters” keeps mounting up with every mail. And I can’t answer them all at length, as I would wish—not if I want to do anything else.

First-class mail is the bane of my life as Chaplain. Like everyone else, I don’t mind reading it, but I know what it means when it comes to answering it. Gosh! how I hate that. I like to keep on the go. I have to keep on the go to get anything done, with the regiment scattered in five different villages, miles apart, and outside work to do in the other outfits for men that want the sacraments, and hospitals to visit. And to have to stick a whole day at a table to soothe sorrows that don’t exist, or oughtn’t to—whew!

The letters I am most ready to answer are from those who have gotten real bad news from Washington. God be good to them. I’d do anything for them. And the ones I am glad to get—if I don’t have to answer them myself—are those that put me onto something I can do for the men—see that Jimmy keeps the pledge, or that Tom goes to Church, or find what’s the matter with Eddie who lost his stripes, or break bad news to Michael, or see that Jack doesn’t fall in love with any of those French hussies, but comes back to the girl that adores him. These all help, and I get round to them in time—and make the victim write a letter, to which I put my name as censor—a proof of my efforts.

But the biggest bulk of my mail consists of inquiries why no mail has arrived from Patrick for three weeks—and is he dead—or why Jerry’s allotment had not been made. When I interview Patrick, he informs me disgustedly that he has written home every twenty minutes. And I know that before any letter of mine can get there, the Sullivans will have received a bunch of mail that will make them the gossips and the envy and the pride of the parish till they begin to get worried and write to me again.

As for the allotments, the nearest I come—don’t ask me how near—to falling into the sole vice of our army of using strong language is when I get a letter from some poor mother or wife about their non-payment. Our men have been extraordinarily decent about helping out the folks at home. But it has been new forms to make out, or the demand for a change of the name of Mrs. Michael J. Farrell to Mrs. Mary Farrell—and all the time decent folks going short at home, and the best men we’ve got fretting in the trenches. That’s the way these fountain-pen soldiers are helping to win the war. How have they kept it so secret? Even men like those that make up our Board of Trustees have written me that our men are slack about making allotments. And the poor fellows in most cases have stripped themselves to ten dollars a month, and are scudding along on bare poles half way between paydays—I know all about that, and the Trustees, all good men and true, will hold back their language when I report that I had to use their money for lads that had left themselves destitute for their folks, while their folks were being left destitute by those people in Washington.

You ask me to tell you about my work here. Well, in the main it is what I did at home, though under different circumstances. The old Sixty-Ninth is a parish—an itinerant parish. Probably a sixth of the “parishioners” do not look to me for dogmatic instruction, but you know how much that counts for in my ordinary relations with them. Remember the afternoon last Spring, when Father Prunty went into the play-hall to get helpers from my gang for his patriotic gardening and found afterward that his five volunteers consisted of two Protestants, two Jews and Andy O’Hare.

I have this class of parishioners very much on my conscience. I can’t get the other chaplains to help except on the few occasions when regiments, or parts of them occupy the same place. Every chaplain has five times what he can do to supply Sunday services for his own scattered command.

At any rate, I can assure you that the different elements in the old regiment have fused properly. By the way, I cannot remember anything that delighted me more than when I heard Sergeant Abe Blaustein was to get the Croix de Guerre—he was recommended for it by Major Donovan and Major Stacom (the pride of our parish) and Lieutenant Cavanaugh. He is a good man, Abe, and the 69th appreciates a good man when it sees him. John O’Keefe’s poem made a hit with all of us.

That reminds me of something at my expense. Captain John Prout approached me with a genial grin to tell me that at our Christmas Mass he had seen a Jew boy present, and later on he asked him “What were you doing at Mass?” “Oh, Captain,” he said, “you know I’d go to Hell with you.” Prout said to me, “The compliment to myself is very obvious, Father,—I hope that you will be able to find in it one for yourself too.”