A Jewish Chaplain in France

by Lee J. Levinger

A constant worry of mine were the weapons which the wounded men dropped in front or within the aid post. Knowing that all army supplies would be reissued to them on release from the hospital, the soldiers did not care to carry heavy rifles or even revolvers and bombs back with them. The result was a pile of weapons at just the point where my prisoner stretcher-bearers could have easy access to them. I kept an M. P. busy much of the time removing these to a place of comparative safety.

Behind the aid post we found a shed which served as temporary morgue for the men who died before we could give them emergency treatment and rush them off in the ambulances. The extreme tension of the actual fight and the tremendous pressure of administering to the living calloused the heart for the moment to these horrible necessities, which come back to memory in later days with the full measure of ghastly detail.

The chaplain is the handy man at the front, one of the few who is not limited by special duties or confined to a particular spot. He works forward or backward as the need exists. He ladles out hot chocolate with the Red Cross, carries a stretcher with the Medical Corps, ties up a bandage when that is needed, and prays for Jew and Christian alike. I ministered to a number of Jewish and Christian soldiers who were dying, leading the Jews in the traditional confession of faith, and reading a psalm for the Protestants. One of the surgeons came to me and said, "Captain Connor here is dying, and Chaplain Hoffman our priest is at Battalion Headquarters acting as interpreter to examine some prisoners. What can we do?" So I borrowed the surgeon's rosary and held the cross to the lips of the dying Catholic. This incident, so impossible in civil life, is really expected among soldiers,—it has been repeated so many times and in so many different ways.

We were constantly under heavy shell fire, as our place at the cross roads was not only convenient of access, but was also the only route for bringing supplies and ammunition to our part of the front. Once as I was in the middle of the road with several prisoners loading stretchers on an ambulance, a shell burst in a pool about twenty feet away, covering us with a shower of mud. My prisoners, who had a wholesome respect for their own artillery, could hardly be prevented from dropping the stretcher. However, we were too near the explosion to be hurt, as the fragments flew over our heads, killing one boy and wounding four others across the street. One of the wounded was an American runner from the front, who was enjoying a hasty bite at the army field kitchen around the corner. He came over in a hurry to have his cheek tied up and then went calmly back to the field kitchen to finish his interrupted lunch. The man who was killed was standing about seventy-five feet from the spot of the explosion beside the motor-cycle which he drove, waiting for his commanding officer to come and use the side-car. He pitched forward as though falling to avoid the explosion, just as we would have done if we had not been holding a stretcher. When he did not rise, Father Kelley and I went over to him and found that a fatal bit of metal had struck him in the head just below his steel helmet.

And so the work went on. The next day we heard of some wounded who had not yet been brought in from Bandival Farm. Chaplain Burgh of the 107th Infantry and I gathered together a few volunteers of our ambulance men and several prisoners to go out and carry them in. It was about a mile and a half out across the battlefield under intermittent shell fire. I placed my captured Luger revolver, which one of the boys had brought me the day before, in a conspicuous position with the handle projecting from my front pocket. I had had the thing unloaded as soon as I got it because I preferred not to run any unnecessary risks. Being a non-combatant both by orders and inclination, I was afraid it might go off. But my prisoners did not know that and so I had no difficulty in silencing their muttered protests against such a hard and dangerous hike. Working prisoners under fire like this was strictly against international law, but that sort of a provision we violated frankly and cheerfully. On the way back with our wounded across the muddy and shell-pitted fields, we passed German machine gun emplacements with the dead gunners still beside the guns, Americans lying with their faces toward the enemy, and constant heaps of supplies of all kinds strewn about. One of our stretchers was put down for a moment's rest near such a scattered group of German knapsacks. One of the prisoners asked if he might help himself, and when I nodded all four made a wild dash for the supplies and each man came back carrying an army overcoat and a bag of emergency rations, the little sweetish crackers which they carried instead of our hard tack.

On the third day of the attack I joined two men of the Intelligence Department in walking out to the front line, then over five miles from the village. It was a hard hike through the mud and about the shell holes. Finally we found our friends dug in (for the fourth time that day) on a little ridge. Each time their temporary trenches had been completed orders had come either for a short retreat or a further advance, and now by the middle of the afternoon the boys were digging another at the place where they were to stay till the next morning. Across the ravine in a little wood the Germans were hanging on for the time being until their artillery could be saved. I visited the 108th Infantry in reserve and emptied my musette bag of the sacks of Bull Durham which I had brought along from the Red Cross. Then the boys wanted matches, which I had forgotten, and their gratitude was lost in their disgust.

I found Captain Merrill with his staff inspecting two captured German 77's, on which they had just placed the name of their unit. By that time, after three consecutive battles without replacements, our units were so depleted that a regiment had only 250 rifles in the line instead of the original 3,000. Captain Merrill's battalion consisted on that day of 87 riflemen. Just as we finished our inspection of the guns the enemy artillery started "strafing" again, so we jumped into a shell-hole which had been hollowed out into convenient form and finished our conversation there. I then visited some of the 107th Infantry in the front line rifle pits, one hundred yards or so ahead, and turned back again toward the village.

I was just losing my way among the hills with approaching twilight, when I met an Australian artillery train on their way back for supplies, and climbed on a limber to ride into town. It was a wild ride, with the rough roads and the drivers' habit of trotting over the spots where shell-holes showed that danger might linger. I held on in quite unmilitary fashion and wondered if the horse behind would be careful when I fell. But they brought me in safely and added one more means of locomotion to the dozens which I had utilized at various times: ammunition "lorries," ambulances, side-cars and even a railway locomotive—everything in fact except a tank.

The next day we breathed more freely again. Our tired boys, reduced in numbers, weakened in physical resistance, but going forward day after day as their orders came, were at last to go out of the lines. Their job was done; they had reached the Sambre Canal; and though we did not know it, they were not to go into battle again. I lorried back to Joncourt, the temporary division headquarters, for the night, changed my clothes, slept in a borrowed cot, read a very heartening pile of home letters which had accumulated for some weeks, and returned to St. Souplet the next day for the burial detail. It was the 21st of October; while the division as a whole marched back to the railhead, five chaplains with a detail of a hundred and fifty men stayed behind for the sad work that remained to be done.

At this time I stopped off at the 108th Infantry for a few minutes, as they halted for a meal after coming out of the lines, and had my orderly, David Lefkowitz, detached from his unit to serve with me for my entire remaining period with the division. I had become acquainted with him during my first few days in the division and found that he would be interested to work with me as orderly and assistant. The order assigning him to this special work was made out before we left the woods at Buire. But our various units were so depleted at the time that I arranged to leave him with his "outfit" for the battle. It was a serious deprivation to me, as Lefkowitz had been through the earlier battle at the Hindenburg Line and could have given me much assistance and advice in the front line work. Now that the fighting was over, he left his company to go with me and enjoy the comparative luxury of division headquarters until he rejoined his company to sail home from France. He was one of the many Jewish soldiers who welcomed the presence of a chaplain and gladly coöperated in every possible way to make my work successful.