A Jewish Chaplain in France

by Lee J. Levinger

We saw the heavy guns lumbering on their way to the front, the aëroplanes humming overhead like a swarm of dragon-flies. Day and night we could hear the rumble of guns like distant thunder, while at night the flashes showed low on the horizon like heat lightning. Our salvage depot was at Tincourt at the foot of the hill, and when I went over there Corporal Klein and Sergeant Friedlander were quick to repair gaps in my equipment. One night I witnessed the division musical comedy (the "Broadway Boys") in an old barn at Templeux le Fosse, where we walked in the dark, found the place up an alley and witnessed a really excellent performance with costumes, scenery and real orchestra. In the middle of an act, an announcement would be made that all men of the third battalion, 108th Infantry, should report back at once, and a group of fellows would rise and file out for the five-mile hike back in the darkness: they were to move up to the front before morning.

My chief effort during those few hurried days was to get into touch with the various units so that I could be of some definite service to them when they went into action. Unfortunately, almost every time I arranged for a service and appeared to hold it the "outfit" would already be on the move. The best service I held was at the village of Buire, where about forty boys gathered together under the trees among the ruined houses. They were a deeply devotional group, told me about their holyday services conducted by a British army chaplain at Doulens, about their fallen comrades for whom they wanted to repeat the memorial prayers, and about their own narrow escapes for which they were eager to offer thanks. They had the deep spiritual consciousness which comes to most men in moments of great peril.

I managed to reach most of the infantry regiments, however, by hiking down from the woods and sometimes catching a ride. Everywhere was action. It was the breathing space between our two great battles of the war. Every unit was hoping and expecting a long rest. But that hope could not be fulfilled. The intensity of the drive against the entire German line was beginning to tell and every possible unit was needed in the line to push ahead. So the rest of the Twenty-Seventh Division was brief indeed. Every regiment was starting for the front with no replacements after the terrific slaughter of two weeks before, with very little new equipment and practically no rest. And the front was now further away than it had been. The success of the allied forces meant longer marches for our tired troops.

All the villages were devastated in this area. It was the section between Peronne and the old Hindenburg Line. Not until we came to the German side of the Hindenburg Line did we find the villages in any sort of repair. The men lived in cellars without roofs, in rooms without walls or sometimes in barracks which were constructed by either of the opposing armies during the long years of the struggle. Of course, many shelters existed such as our "elephant huts" in the woods or the perfect honeycomb of dugouts in the sides of the quarry at Templeux le Gerard.

One day I "lorried" up to the division cemeteries near the old battlefield, which were being laid out by a group of chaplains with a large detail of enlisted men. I saw the occasional Jewish graves marked with the Star of David and later was able to complete the list and have all Jewish graves in our division similarly marked. I got to know the country about Bellicourt and Bony, where our heaviest fighting had taken place. I heard the story of the eight British tanks, lying helpless at the top of the long ridge near Bony, where they had run upon a mine field. I got to know the "Ausies," always the best friends and great admiration of our soldiers, with their dashing courage and reckless heroism, and the "Tommies," those steady, matter-of-fact workmen at the business of war, whom our boys could never quite understand.

Finally our headquarters moved forward, too. I jumped out of a colonel's car one dark night and hunted for an hour and a half among the hills before I found the chalk quarry where they now were hidden from prying air scouts. At last, finding the quarry, I met a boy I knew, who took me to the dugout where the senior chaplain was sleeping. I crawled into a vacant bunk, made myself at home and left the next morning for good. The quarry did not appeal to me when wet; one was too likely to slide from the top to the bottom and stay there; and I had no desire to test its advantages when dry. The next time I came back to headquarters they were in the village of Joncourt, beyond the Hindenburg Line, in territory which we had released from the Germans. The chief attraction of Joncourt was an occasional roof—of course, there were no windows. The cemetery had been used as a "strong point" by the retreating Germans, who had scattered the bodies about and used the little vaults as pill-boxes in which to mount machine guns. And our message center was located in a German dugout fully fifty feet underground; evidently plenty of precautions had been taken against allied air raids. In fact, from this point on every house in every village had a conspicuous sign, telling of the Fliegerschutz for a certain number of men in its cellar. In addition, the placard told the number of officers, men and horses which could be accommodated with billets on the premises. Evidently, the Germans in laying out their permanently occupied territory, went about it in their usual business-like fashion.

But between my glimpses of these various headquarters, I was at the front with the troops going into the trenches and had had a glimpse of war. My first experience under fire was in some woods near Maretz, where I spent part of the night with one battalion, as they paused before going into the trenches. I finished the night on the floor of a house in the village, having grown accustomed enough to the sound of the shells to sleep in spite of it. Like most people I had wondered how one feels under fire, and experienced a queer sensation when I first heard the long whine of a distant shell culminating in a sudden explosion. Now I realized that I was under fire, too. But I speedily found that one feels more curiosity than fear under long-distance fire; real fear comes chiefly when the shells begin to land really near by. I was to experience that, too, a little later. In fact, I found out soon that every soldier is frightened; a good soldier is simply one who does his duty in spite of fear.

Then a report came in that Chaplain John Ward, of the 108th Infantry, had been seriously wounded and I was sent to take his place with the unit. In a push the chaplain works with the wounded; after it, with the dead. Of many sad duties at the front, his is perhaps the saddest of all. My first station was with the third battalion headquarters and aid post in a big white house set back in a little park in the tiny village of Escaufourt, a mile or so behind the lines. Captain Merrill was in command of the battalion and one could see how the work and responsibility wore on him day by day, reducing the round, cheerful soldier for the time almost to a whispering, tottering old man. But his spirit held him to the task; he slept for only a few minutes at a time, and then was back at work again. A conscientious man can have no more exacting duty than this, to care for the lives of a thousand men.

We were under constant fire there, though not under observation, but the little ambulances ran up to the gate of the château for the wounded, who had to walk or be carried in and out from the house to the gate. We ate upstairs in the stately dining room at times, though we usually ate and always slept in the crowded cellar where the major and his staff were housed. There eight or nine of us would sit on our brick seats and sleep with our backs against the wall, being awakened from time to time by a messenger coming in or by the ringing of the field telephone in the corner. The telephone operator was always testing one or another connection, day and night, for the emergency when it would be needed.

One night companies H and I of the 108th Infantry were almost completely wiped out by gas. They were in low lying trenches by the side of the canal under a constant fire of gas shells, while the damp weather kept the dangerous fumes near the ground. They had no orders to evacuate to a safer post and no human being can live forever in a gas mask, so one after another the men yielded to temptation, took off their masks for momentary relief, and inhaled the gas-laden air. All evening and night they kept coming in by twos and threes to our aid post, the stronger ones walking, the rest on stretchers. Their clothing reeked of the sickeningly sweet odor. The room was soon full of it, so that we had to blow out the candles and open the door for a few minutes to avoid being gassed ourselves. There were three ambulances running that night to the Main Dressing Station, and I made it my task to meet each car, notify the doctor and bring the gassed and wounded men out to the ambulance. Most of them were blinded for the time being by the effect of the gas. No light was possible, as that would have drawn fire at once. Every ten minutes through the night our village was shelled, and in walking the forty or fifty yards through the park to the gate, I had to make two detours with my blinded men to avoid fresh shell-holes made that very afternoon. I admit feeling an occasional touch of panic as I led the big helpless fellows around those fresh shell holes and helped them into the ambulances. The final touch came when a youngster of perhaps seventeen entered the aid post alone, walking painfully. "What outfit are you from, sonny?" was my natural greeting. "I am the last man left in Company H," was the proud reply.