Father Duffy's story

by Francis Patrick Duffy

Major Stacom is my parishioner and I am his recruit. He acquired his interest in soldiering as a boy at St. Francis Xavier College under the stalwart old soldier, afterwards the hero of Santiago—Captain Drum. He came to the Regiment as a boy out of college, an enlisted man, and the Irish lads, after guying the handsome youngster in his college clothes, learned to love and admire him for his knowledge and ability. When he became Captain of Company B he recruited it by his personal efforts, and on the Border he had one of the best companies in the Regiment. Colonel Haskell picked him from the Company Commanders as the first man to nominate for a Majority. He rules by reason and kindliness, and evokes the best co-operation of all under him—officers or men.

Major William J. Donovan, who commands the first Battalion was transferred to us from the Brigade Staff, but he is no stranger to us. On the Border when he was Captain of Troop I of the 1st Cavalry he was the best known man of his rank in the New York Division. It was almost certain that Donovan would be appointed our Colonel after the efforts to get Colonel Haskell had failed, as he was our next choice, and General O’Ryan knew that there were no politics about it, but a sincere desire to find the best military leader. General O’Ryan esteems Donovan as highly as we do. When we were selected to put the green in the Rainbow all the vacancies were to be filled by transfer, not by promotion. Donovan was a Major on the Staff of our Brigade. Everybody knew that he could get higher rank by staying with the 27th Division but he preferred to join in with us. He would rather fight with the 69th than with any other Regiment, especially now that it is to be the first in the fray, and he would rather be Major than Colonel, for in battles as now conducted it is Majors who command in the actual fighting.

Donovan is a man in the middle thirties, very attractive in face and manner, an athlete who always keeps himself in perfect condition. As a football player at Niagara and Columbia, he gained the sobriquet of “Wild Bill.” But that is tribute gained by his prowess rather than his demeanor. He is cool, untiring, strenuous, a man that always uses his head. He is preparing his men for the fatigues of open warfare by all kinds of wearying stunts. They too call him “Wild Bill” with malicious unction, after he has led them over a cross country run for four miles. But they admire him all the same, for he is the freshest man in the crowd when the run is over. He is a lawyer by profession, and a successful one, I am told. I like him for his agreeable disposition, his fine character, his alert and eager intelligence. But I certainly would not want to be in his Battalion.

Major George Lawrence of the Sanitary Detachment is one of the best acquisitions of our Border experience. When Major Maguire had to leave us, we all reached out for Lawrence, who was attached to the 12th, but was doing duty at the hospital there. He is well educated, a product of St. Francis Xavier and Pennsylvania, a competent physician and surgeon, a famous athlete in football and basketball in his day, and an athlete still; and one of the most devoted and most reliable men that God has made for the healing of wounds of mind or body. When I think of what we shall have to go through it makes me feel good to see George Lawrence around.

Captain Walter E. Powers of Headquarters Company is an old soldier though still a young man. He entered the Regular Army out of high school, out of short trousers, I tell him. He was Regimental Sergeant Major of the 7th Cavalry when Haskell was Adjutant of that famous Regiment. And when Haskell became Colonel he pulled Powers out of the Pershing Expedition and made him Adjutant of the 69th; and he was the best Adjutant on the Border. Latterly he has begun to pine for a Company and Colonel Hine gave him the Headquarters Company, the duties of which are so varied and so new that it will take a soldier-lawyer like Powers to organize it. He has the keenest dryest humor of any man I know. If he had not run away to be a soldier he would have made a successful lawyer or journalist.

Captain George McAdie of Company A is a Scotchman. We tell him that is the worst thing we know about him, which is our way of saying that we do not know anything bad about him. Personally I am very fond of our Scottish cousins, because I have known many real Scotchmen and not merely jokes about them. The jokes never give you a suspicion that Scotland idolizes Robert Burns, and produces fighting men as fine as there are in the world. George is my kind of Scot—like a volcano, rugged to outward view, but glowing with fire beneath. A good soldier and a true friend—you like him when you know him a while, and you find something new to like in him the longer you know him. If his health be as strong as his spirit he will do great things in the 69th.

Captain Thomas Reilley of Company B is an imposing being. He stands six feet three or so and fills the eye with seeing any way you look at him. He is also a college athlete, a football player of renown, of Columbia and New York Universities. A lawyer of real power and ability, he has not given himself time yet to reach his full stride in his profession. Since his college days he has been too much in demand for other services for which his endowments and instincts fit him—athlete, soldier, with a short course in political life, characteristically as an independent. He writes well and talks well—too well, sometimes, for the Irish in him makes him indifferent to the effects of what he has to say. It makes him indifferent to all other sorts of danger too; so with his great physical and mental powers and his capacity for organization he will render invaluable service to the work of the Regiment.

Captain William Kennedy of Company C is also an athlete, with the build of a runner, clean-cut, trim, alert. Brisk is the word that describes him, for the trait is mental as well as physical. He is a Company drill master in the best sense of the word. I have never seen anybody who could get more snap out of a body of men with less nagging, whether it was a parade or a policing detail than Bill Kennedy. I expect to see Company C the smartest Company in the Regiment.

Captain James A. McKenna of Company D is a lawyer—Harvard and Fordham produced him. He is a fellow of great ability, ambitious, energetic and enduring. He will go far in any line he may choose, and as a soldier he will score a high mark. He has fine ideals and fine sentiments which he chooses to conceal under a playfully aggressive or business-like demeanor. But his enthusiasms, patriotic, religious, personal, are the true fundaments of him, and everybody feels it. He lets himself out most in his affection for his men who reciprocate his devotion. Company D under Jim McKenna will play a big part in our annals of war.

Alexander E. Anderson of Company E is a 69th man by heredity. His uncle, Colonel Duffy, commanded the Regiment in 1898. His cousin, Major John Duffy, was in the Regiment when Anderson was old enough to join it—and he joined it as a private just as soon as they would let him. He is a soldier through and through. His family and his business are near to him, but the 69th is first in his thoughts. He has gone through all the stages from private to captain without any family favoritism and today he stands out as the keenest Captain in the Regiment. He went to an Officer’s Training School two years ago and graduated with a hundred percent. Sometimes they call him the 100 percent soldier, a title which grates on him exceedingly, for he hates such labels of praise, whether meant or not. Colonel Hine has asked me for the names of three Captains who might be recommended for Majors in emergency. I told him I would name only one, and after that one, half a dozen or more. “Oh,” he said, “you mean Anderson. That is what the Battalion Commanders all say.”