Father Duffy's story

by Francis Patrick Duffy

Jack Mangan has left us to take charge of the organization of the Headquarters Battalion of the new Second Army at Toul. Colonel Haskell, who is assistant Chief of Staff in the 2nd Army, visited us during our journey from Baccarat to Chalons and got a great reception from the old-timers. Even then, he had his eye on Mangan and wanted him to come with him. There is nothing that so much impresses me as a proof of the absolute sense of duty and loyalty of our old officers to this regiment as the attitude which they invariably take concerning invitations to improve their rank and fortunes by going elsewhere. The younger officers have no choice in the matter. We have been sending home as instructors a few of them each month, and have lost a large number of very efficient lieutenants. But those who are free to exercise any choice invariably view the opportunity as a question of conscience and put the matter up to me. Major McKenna (then Captain) did this in the Lunéville area when he had a chance for the office of Judge Advocate. In the same spirit Mangan said he would not quit to join Haskell unless I decided that the Regiment could spare him. My decision was that he could not go until Kinney was made a Captain, as I knew that the latter could fill admirably the extremely important post of R. S. O.

The hardest battle of all has been to keep Donovan with the Regiment, but he has made that fight himself, as there is no place else in the world that would tempt him for a minute. He has dodged orders to send him to Staff College (which would inevitably mean a transfer after he was finished), orders to go on special duties, invitations or suggestions to receive promotion by transfer. General Menoher and Colonel MacArthur have been always alert to take up the battle to retain him with us. He and I tramped the muddy road tonight while he disburdened himself of a new worry. The Provost Marshal General wants an assistant who is at once a good lawyer and a keen soldier, with a knowledge of French, and he has demanded that Donovan be sent to him. Colonel Hughes, our new Chief of Staff, has done his best to block it; but he has been informed by General Headquarters that the authorities of the 42nd Division have managed to evade the wishes of military authority in Colonel Donovan’s case six times already and that this order is peremptory. All that General Menoher has been able to do is to hold him until the next battle is over. Donovan is disgusted and sore for the first time in my knowledge of him.

Every now and then there is some desultory shelling in the woods, but the only sight of warfare that we get is in the sky. Our balloons must be well placed, because the German flyers have been very persistent in their attempts to bring them down, and their efforts are too often successful. Today, we saw a German aviator perform a feat which was one of the most daring things that any of us has seen during the war. The rapid and sustained discharge of anti-aircraft guns (which have their own unmistakable note) brought everybody to the edge of the woods. Guided by puffs of white or black smoke which dotted the sky above us, we were able to detect a single German plane headed unswervingly towards us, and not flying very high either. Our own planes were swooping towards him, but he came right on, without any change of altitude or direction. He passed over our line of balloons, and then turned abruptly and dived towards the one nearest us, throwing his dart and passing on. The flames did not show at once, and evidently noticing this, he checked his flight and started back to finish the job. Just then the flames burst up, and he wheeled in air to make his escape. Soldiers in combat divisions are the best sports in the world. There must have been twenty thousand of them watching this daring exploit of an enemy, and I feel certain there was not a man amongst them who did not murmur “I hope to God the beggar gets away.” There were a dozen of our planes after him by this time and before he reached his own lines they forced him to earth, landing in safety.

As I make my rounds amongst the men scattered through the woods, I find many whose names I do not know. In the original regiment I knew practically everyone by his name; but through a variety of causes half of those men are no longer with us and their places have been taken by others, with whom, on account of our constant motion, it has been impossible to get acquainted.

The wearing down of a regiment, even outside of battle, is constant. Brigade and Division Headquarters select those that they want for their own work, bright sergeants are sent off to Army Candidate’s School to be trained for officers, and are invariably sent to other divisions. There is a constant trickle of sick men to hospitals, from which many never return to us; and most of all, there are the tremendous losses that a regiment, particularly an infantry regiment, has to pay in battle. Our total losses in action of killed, wounded and missing up to the present are about 2,600 men. Taking all causes into consideration nearly 3,000 of our original men have been dropped, at least temporarily, from our rolls since we came to France. If none of them had returned there would be now only 600 of them left, but as a matter of fact, nearly all of our wounded who have graduated into the “Fit for Service” class have insisted on their right to come back. So about half of our present total of 2,983 men are of the original outfit. It is easy to pick them out by glancing down a company roster, because our serial numbers are all under 100,000 while the new men have numbers running into the millions.

I do not find that the spirit of the regiment as a whole has changed on account of these fresh accessions. A regiment is largely what its officers and non-coms make it. Practically all of our present officers have been through all the fights with us and have gained their present ranks in battle, and the non-coms are naturally men of the original regiment who have earned their stripes by good soldiering in camp and in the field. These men are the custodians of regimental pride and regimental tradition, and their spirit is communicated to or imposed upon the newcomers.

Most of these newcomers moreover, have proved themselves excellent material. The first few that were sent us in Lunéville were poor foreigners from the coal mining districts who could scarcely speak English, but in Baccarat we got three hundred men from Camp Devens who were a fine lot of fellows, and, now that they have gone through the big fights with us, are not to be distinguished in any way from the original volunteers. We received a lot of first class men also from the Kentucky-Tennessee and the Texas-Oklahoma National Guard organizations, among the latter being a number of Indians. All of these replacements who have gone through battles with us are now absolutely part and parcel of the 165th Infantry and have created bonds of battle friendship with our Irish and New York lads which are closer than any family tie can be.

In any extended campaign it is a very rare soldier who does not get the experience of being in a hospital at least once; although we could not possibly spend as much time in them as rumors that they get at home make our people think we do. I myself have been killed or wounded at least a dozen times. The other day Lester Sullivan, who comes from my parish, looked up from a letter he was reading and said to me “Father Duffy if you had ten thousand dollars insurance for every time you were killed you’d never need to work for the rest of your life.”

After battles of course they are being sent back by hundreds and thousands. Jim Healey was telling me a yarn which hits off a type of humor that is characteristic of the American. A hospital train pulled into a French station with its doors and windows and platforms crowded with “walking cases” and stopped on a track alongside a similar train with the same kind of a crowd looking out. “Where are youse guys from?” shouted one of the soldiers. “Fohty-second Division. Whey you all from?” “De rest of de Forty-second Division” came the reply—everybody shouting with laughter at this bit of delicate and tender humor.

Hospitals thus become, like London coffee houses in the 18th century, the clearing houses of news and the creators of public opinion. They are the only place where soldiers meet men who do not belong to their own Division; in fact, soldiers seldom meet anybody outside their own regiment and many a man’s friendships do not extend beyond his company. But in hospitals, and more particularly in convalescent and casual camps, where they are able to move around, they come into touch with the whole American Expeditionary Force. Battles are discussed, organizations criticized, reputations of officers made or unmade.