I have found an old friend in Camp in the person of Mike Donaldson of Company I. Mike was an altar boy of mine in Haverstraw not long after I was ordained. We both left there, I to teach metaphysics and Mike for a career in the prize-ring, in which he became much more widely and favorably known to his fellow citizens than I can ever hope to be. One of his titles to fame is that he was sparring partner to Stanley Ketchell. He has brought me a set of battered boxing gloves which he presented to me with a very moving speech as relics of that departed hero. I do not know exactly what he expects me to do with the relics but I rather feel after his speech of presentation that it would be considered appropriate if I suspend them reverently from the rafter of my chapel like the ex voto offerings of ships that one sees in seaport shrines.
I have become a marrying Parson. Love and fighting seem to go together—they are the two staples of romance. I have had a large number of marriages to perform. In most cases the parties enter my church tent from the rear and are quietly married before the simple altar. We have had a few weddings however on the grand scale. Michael Mulhern of the Band had arranged for a quiet wedding with a very sweet little girl named Peggy O’Brien. This afternoon at four o’clock when I was ready to slip over with the young couple and their witnesses to my canvas church I saw the band forming. “What is this formation for, Michael. You don’t have to be in it, do you?” “Ah, Father,” said Michael, with a blush, “the boys heard somehow what was going to happen and they’re going to serenade us.” We had to parade over to church behind the band playing a wedding march, with 10,000 soldiers and visitors following curiously in the rear. So Michael and his bride were united in matrimony before a vast throng that cheered them, and showered them with rice that soldiers brought over from the kitchens, many of the lads battling with the groom for the privilege of kissing the bride.
October 15th, 1917
We will soon be off to the war and I have been looking over the Regiment, studying its possibilities.
About the enlisted men I have not a single doubt. If this collection of hand-picked volunteers cannot give a good account of themselves in battle, America should keep out of war. The men will fight no matter who leads them. But fighting and winning are not always the same thing, and the winning depends much on the officers—their military knowledge, ability as instructors and powers of leadership. The Non-coms are a fine lot. The First Sergeants as I run over the list are a remarkable body of good old-time soldiers. Starting with Company A, we have John O’Leary, John O’Neill, William Hatton, Tom Sullivan, William Bailey, Joseph Blake, John Burke, Jerome O’Neill, Patrick McMeniman, Tim Sullivan, Eugene Gannon, John Kenny; with Denis O’Shea, A. McBride, J. Comiskey, and W. W. Lokker, for H. Q. M. G. Supply and Medical. All of these men have been tried out in the eight months of Border service and we are sure of them. Under Colonel Haskell the hard driven Company Commanders had to break their Sergeants in, or break them—life was too strenuous for favoritism. In fact, except for recruits, it is surprisingly Haskell’s regiment that is going to the front; Haskell’s, that is, with the reservation that his work was done on the basis of Colonel Conley’s selection and promotion in the more difficult period of peace service. When we were selected for immediate over-seas service the authorities were free to make what changes they would, and they left the regiment intact except for the transfer of one Major and one Captain. The M. G. Company was vacant by resignation. All other officers remained at their posts, though we have been assigned a large number of newly created Lieutenants to correspond with the new tables of organization for a regiment of three thousand six hundred.
Francis P. Duffy
Chaplain 165th Inf.
69th N.Y.
We like our new Colonel, though he was a total stranger to us before the day he came to command us. He is a West Pointer, and went into railroading after some years in the army as a Lieutenant; but he has loyally reverted to the army whenever there was a real call to arms. In 1898 if I had achieved my desire to go out as Chaplain of the 1st D. C. I would have had him as one of my Majors. He came into this conflict as organizer and commander of trains, a work for which his experience fitted him. He is a man of middle height with a strong body and an attractive face, healthily ruddy, strongly featured, with a halo of thick grey hair above. He is a man of ideas, of ideas formed by contact with life and business. He is a tireless worker, and demands the same unflinching service from every man under him. He has confidence in his men, especially the tried soldiers, and he has a strong liking for the Regiment and its traditions. The Regiment will do good work under the leadership of Colonel Charles Hine.
Lieutenant Colonel Reed I like better and better every day I am with him. I did not take to him at first and I think he was largely to blame. He kept himself too much aloof. The fault, however, was partly ours. He came to us at a time when we felt suspicious that it was the intention to destroy our character as an Irish organization, and we owed too much to the men who had created the Regiment and made its reputation with their blood to submit tamely to such a scheme as that. Colonel Reed was not used to being where he was not wanted, and his attitude was the result of this decent feeling. When the task of forming a war strength regiment fell to him he took hold and worked with single-minded vigor, and he then found that everybody was anxious to work with him loyally. He discovered, what I could have told him, that one thing the Sixty-ninth admires is a good soldier. And Reed is a good soldier, keen, active, and aggressive. He learned at once to love the regiment and is as enthusiastic as myself in his regard for it. We spend a great deal of our free time together, for we have much in common.
The senior Major, Timothy J. Moynahan, is the ideal of the Irish soldier, as he comes down to us in history and in fiction. He inherits from Patrick Sarsfield’s cavaliers, from the regiments of Dillon and Burke at Fontenoy, from the Connaught Rangers at Fuentes d’Onoro. A soldier born—trim, erect, handsome, active in his movements, commanding and crisp in his orders. And a soldier bred—he lives for the military game, devotes his life to his work as military instructor in colleges, and to the old 69th. He is ready with a toast or a speech or a neatly phrased compliment, and equally ready to take up the gage of battle, if anyone should throw it down. A vivid interesting character in our drab modern life. He has one fault—a flaring Irish temper when military discipline is violated or high ideals belittled. A fault, yes, but I feel there will be tense moments of life for anybody with Tim Moynahan when the time comes for a death grapple with the Germans. Phil Sheridan would have delighted in him.