Finally my work in France drew to a close. On the first of May, 1919, I received the orders for which I had been hoping so long. I was to be relieved and sent home to America. Rabbis in the uniform of the Jewish Welfare Board were now at hand, the number of men in France was decreasing, and my request to be relieved could at last be granted. A final two days in Paris for a conference with the heads of the J. W. B., Chaplain Voorsanger and Colonel Harry Cutler, another day at Le Mans to turn my records and office over to Rabbis Kaufman and Leonard Rothstein, and then I was off to Brest. I had the special good fortune of being held in that busy and rather uninviting place for only four days and then finding passage assigned me on the slow but comfortable Noordam, of the Holland-American Line. My last duty in Brest was to conduct a funeral, in the absence of the post chaplain, of four sailors drowned in an accident just outside the harbor. We had a guard of honor, a bugler, all naval, and I had the rare experience of an army chaplain conducting a navy funeral, as well as of a rabbi burying four Christian boys.
We were at sea twelve days altogether, being delayed by a gale of three days and also by a call for aid, which took us a hundred miles out of our course without finding the sender of the message. We entered New York harbor late one evening, and anchored off Staten Island for the night. There was little sleep that night; the officers danced with the cabin passengers, while the men sang on the decks below. The next morning early every one was at the rail as we steamed in past the Statue of Liberty, which stood for so much to us now, for which we had longed so often, and which some of our company had never expected to see again. After the customary half day of formalities at the dock, we were directed to different camps for discharge according to our branches of the service. I reported at Camp Dix, New Jersey, where I was mustered out of service, receiving my honorable discharge on May 26th, 1919, eleven months from the date of my commission, nine of which were spent with the American Expeditionary Forces.
CHAPTER VI
THE JEWISH CHAPLAINS OVERSEAS
My experiences, which were fairly typical throughout, showed clearly the great need for Jewish chaplains in the army overseas. Even my trip on leave to the Riviera was typical, showing the effect of release from discipline combined with a pleasure trip on thousands of our soldiers, most of whom needed it far more than I; for the privileges of a chaplain, just a little greater than those of most officers, certainly had prevented my morale falling as low as that of many of the enlisted men. The Jewish chaplain was not only a concession to the very considerable body of Jewish citizens who felt that they should be represented in the military organization as well as men of other faiths; he had a definite contribution to make to the moral and spiritual welfare of the forces. We had to conduct Jewish religious services for both holydays and ordinary seasons, to assist the dying Jew, and to pray for him at his grave. We had to defend the Jewish boys in the rare cases of prejudice against them, or, what was just as important, to clear up such accusations when they were unfounded. We had to serve the special needs of the Jewish soldier, whatever they might be, at the same time that we did the chaplain's duty toward all soldiers with whom we might be thrown.
The American Expeditionary Forces never had sufficient chaplains at any time for the work that was planned for them. The proportion desired by the G. H. Q. Chaplains' Office and approved by the war department was one chaplain to every thousand men, or one to an infantry battalion, besides those assigned to administrative work as senior chaplains of divisions and areas, and the very large number detailed to hospitals. The total number of chaplains who went to France was 1285, just half the number needed by this program, and from this total we must subtract a considerable group of deaths, wounds and other casualties. The chaplains' corps was undermanned at all times,—we Jews were simply the most conspicuous example. Compared to the general proportion of one chaplain to every two thousand men, and the ideal one of a chaplain to every thousand, we had one chaplain to every eight thousand men, and those tremendous numbers were not even concentrated in a few units but scattered through every company, every battery, and every hospital ward in the army.
The British forces contained one Jewish chaplain for every army headquarters, or nine in all. I had the pleasure of meeting Rabbi Barnett, the chief Jewish chaplain in the B. E. F., although I never met his predecessor, Major Adler. Through their long experience and the coöperation of the Chief Rabbi of England, the English chaplains were well equipped with suitable prayerbooks and other material, which I obtained from one of them for the use of our men while I was on the British front. Still, even with their larger proportion of chaplains to the Jews in service, the lack of transportation facilities and the tremendous rush of war-time, especially at the front and in the hospitals, made their actual duties impossible of complete fulfillment.
To cover the enormous field before us was plainly impossible. The chaplain could only work day by day, clearing a little pathway ahead of him but never making an impression on the great jungle about. When I first reached France, I grew accustomed to the greeting: "Why, you're the first Jewish chaplain I've met in France!" That was hard enough then, but it grew harder when the same words were addressed me in Brest just before sailing and on shipboard on the way home. And yet it was inevitable that twelve chaplains could not meet personally the hundred thousand Jewish soldiers scattered through the two millions in the American uniform through the length and breadth of France. Under these circumstances we all feel a natural pride at the work accomplished against adverse conditions. I for one feel that we did all that twelve men similarly situated could possibly have done, and I gladly bring my personal tribute to those others, chaplains, welfare workers, officers, and enlisted men, whose coöperation doubled and trebled the actual extent and effectiveness of our work. This includes especially the Christian chaplains and welfare workers; their own field was great enough to take all their time and energy, but they were always ready to turn aside for a moment to lend a hand to us, in order that the labors of twelve men serving their faith in the great American army might not be quite futile.