A Jewish Chaplain in France

by Lee J. Levinger

The surrounding country was rolling, with charming little hills and constant knots of woods. The division, as we had known it on the British front, was housed in forty villages, widely scattered about the countryside, and our artillery, which had fought in the American sector, was contained by ten more, located near Laval about fifty miles away. The men lived chiefly in barns, as the houses were occupied by peasants, who needed their own rooms. As far as the enlisted men were concerned, living accommodations were better in partially ruined territory, where they could at least occupy the houses, such as they were. Because we were in a populous region, only smaller units could be billeted in a single village, which meant less access to places of amusement. The typical French village has no single room large enough for even a picture show, except the one place of assembly, the church; apparently the farmers and villagers have no amusements except drinking, dancing (in tiny, crowded rooms) and church attendance.

Such cheerless lives hardly suited the Americans. Often the men had to walk a mile or more to the nearest Y. M. C. A. canteen, and those were improvised on our arrival by our own divisional Y. M. C. A. staff, which we had been permitted to bring with us on the earnest request of the chaplains of the division. After our long sojourn in the area, we left a completely equipped series of canteens and amusement buildings for the following divisions. The nearest available place for light and warmth, out of the mud and chill, was usually the French café, and that was available only when the men had money.

The greatest handicap on any effort for the morale of the men at the outset was the uncertainty of our situation. We were semi-officially informed that our stay in the area would be for only a few weeks, and that no formal program of athletics, education or entertainment could be arranged. When life grows dreary and monotonous, as in the Embarkation Center, the chief diet of the soldier is such rumors of going home. In our case three orders were promulgated for our troop movement, only to be rescinded again while the wounded, sick and special small detachments went ahead.

Another difficult problem was the one of covering ground. At the front it had been easy because the division was concentrated for action and because of the constant stream of trucks with their readiness of access. Even in the Corbie area the division had been so crowded together that seven services would reach every man who wanted to attend one or to meet me. At the rear the division would be billeted in villages, scattered about over twenty miles of countryside; it was impossible to get from place to place without transportation, and that was very scarce. The army gave the chaplains more encouragement and friendship than actual facilities for work; the chaplains' corps was just making its position strong at the end of the war. Fortunately, the Jewish Welfare Board came to the rescue here. It procured Ford cars for the Jewish chaplains about the first of the year 1919, thus doubling their scope for work and making them the envy of all the chaplains in France.

My work became a matter of infinite details, with little opportunity for organization but plenty for day labor. I arranged as many services as possible, getting to the various units by train, side-car, or walking until I obtained my own machine for the purpose. These services, from one to ten a week, were arranged through the battalion chaplains as a rule, though sometimes I established connections with some of the Jewish boys or with the commanding officer, especially in cases of detached companies without any chaplain at hand. Every service had its share of requests for information, advice, assistance, even for errands, as the men had difficulty in getting to the city to have a watch repaired or in reaching divisional headquarters for information. Some men would want to know about brothers or friends who had been wounded. Many had difficulty with their allotments, in which case I worked through the army, Red Cross, and Jewish Welfare Board. Others wanted information about relatives in Poland or Roumania, or to be mustered out of service that they might join and assist their parents in eastern Europe; unfortunately, neither information nor help was possible during the time we were in France. Some men wished to remain for the Army of Occupation or other special service; far more were afraid they might be ordered to such service and wanted advice how to avoid it and return home as soon as possible. Citizenship papers, back pay, furloughs,—the requests were legion, and the chaplain had no difficulty in being useful.

Naturally, one of my tasks was to gather accurate statistics of the 65 Jewish boys in our division who had been killed, to find exactly where they were buried, have their graves all marked with the Magen David, the six-pointed star, and keep the list for the benefit of their families when I should return. I even made one trip to Tours to discuss the possibility of making such a list for the other divisions which came into the area, though the task was too complicated to carry out completely in any but my own. Often men were lost to view entirely when they went to hospital; sometimes it transpired months later that a certain man had died or been assigned to another unit or sent back to the States. But little by little the facts all came to light. Even here humorous incidents would occur, such as the time when I read a list of dead from their unit at one battalion service, only to have one of the men on the list speak up: "Why, I'm not dead, Chaplain!" It transpired that this man had been wounded on the head in an advance and had been reported as dead by two comrades who had seen him fall. So I had him in my records as "killed in action—grave unknown," when he was actually in the hospital, recovering slowly but completely. If he had been returned from the hospital to another division, as was often the case, I might never have known his fate.

In spite of such conditions I found the exact graves of all but three of the men on my list, and in the entire division, with its almost 2,000 dead, only fifteen graves were unknown at the time we returned. This was largely due to the untiring efforts of Lieutenant Summerfield S. Curtiss, the Division Burial Officer, who was my room-mate in Corbie and with whose methods I became familiar at that time. With the coöperation of the various chaplains and line officers, he was able to inspect and certify to the valuables left by men killed in action, to record every grave, and in the few instances where both identification tags and personal acquaintances were lacking, to take the finger-prints of the men before burial and thus preserve the only remaining traces of identity.

At this time I had the opportunity of seeing our division reviewed by General Pershing. The review was held at the Belgian Camp near Le Mans in massed formation. The men marched by in heavy masses; the General bestowed decorations on over a hundred heroes, including six Jewish boys; at the end he gave the officers an informal talk, telling us of the special need that existed for keeping up morale during the tedious period of waiting to go home.

That very subject had been discussed only a few days before by the chaplains of the division, meeting with General O'Ryan for the purpose. Chaplains' meetings were frequent, under the call of the Senior Chaplain, Almon A. Jaynes, where we took up not only details, such as arrangement of services in the various units, but also the broader moral and educational problems. The General's interest in our work and our aims was evident in every word spoken at the meeting, especially his searching queries as to drunkenness, dissatisfaction, and remedies for such evils as we brought out.

The three months of waiting had been in many ways harder than the previous months of battle. Interest in our military purpose was gone; the men had few amusements and much work to fill in their time. We had very little athletic or educational effort; that was prevented by our constant expectation of an early departure. Mail service was often bad, especially for the men who had been transferred repeatedly. Pay was unreliable when a man had been transferred or sent to hospital and his records lost or mixed up. And the French winter is a rainy season, with occasional days of clear cold. No wonder that the soldiers were disgusted with France, war, army and everything else. In the midst of this growing irritation, their pet phrase became, "Little old U. S. A. is good enough for me."