One more point must be noted with regard to these Jewish boys who served America so bravely and so effectively. Many of them showed in their sacrifices the true Jewish spirit of Kiddush ha-Shem, sanctification of the name of God. Time and again have I heard men give such a turn to their speech, as when I asked a boy from one of our machine gun battalions why he had led a group of volunteers in bringing from an exposed position some wounded men of another regiment, an act in which the only other Jew in the company had been killed and for which my friend was later decorated. "Well, chaplain," he answered me, "there were only two Jewish boys in the company and we'd been kidded about it a little. We just wanted to show those fellows what a Jew could do." Dr. Enelow tells a similar story of a boy dying in a hospital, who gave the rabbi a last message to his parents, saying: "Tell them I did my duty as a soldier and brought honor to the Jewish name."
Once again, in the American forces during the World War, the Jew has proved himself a devoted patriot and a heroic soldier, and this time he has done so in broad daylight, before the eyes of all the world.
CHAPTER IX
JEW AND CHRISTIAN AT THE FRONT
To those of us who served with the United States Army overseas, religious unity, coöperation between denominations, is more than a far-off ideal. We know under what circumstances and to what extent it is feasible, and just how it deepens and broadens the religious spirit in both chaplain and soldier. We have passed beyond the mutual tolerance of the older liberalism to the mutual helpfulness of the newer devoutness. Our common ground is no longer the irreducible minimum of doctrines which we share; it is the practical maximum of service which we can render together. I was in a critical position to experience this as the only Jewish chaplain in the Twenty-Seventh Division; my duty was to minister to the men of the Jewish faith throughout the various units of our division, with the friendly coöperation of the twenty other chaplains of various faiths. And I was able to do my work among the Jews, and to a certain extent among the Christians also, simply because these Protestant and Catholic chaplains were equally friendly and helpful to me and my scattered flock. Not by mutual tolerance but by mutual helpfulness we were able to serve together the thousands of soldiers who needed us all.
It is a commonplace that as men grow acquainted they naturally learn to respect and to like one another. When a Jew from the East Side of New York, who had never known any Christian well except the corner policeman, and a Kentucky mountaineer, who had been reared with the idea that Jews have horns, were put into the same squad both of them were bound to be broadened by it. And, provided both of them were normal, average boys, as they were likely to be, they probably became "buddies" to the great advantage of both of them. Often such associations would bring about the sort of a friendship which death itself could not break.
One of the Jewish chaplains tells an incident of the first night he spent in the training camp at Camp Taylor, Ky. The candidate for chaplain in the cot next to his was a lanky backwoods preacher from one of the southern States. The two met, introduced themselves by name and denomination, and then prepared to "turn in" for the night. The rabbi noticed that his ministerial neighbor sat about, hesitated, and played for time generally, even though it was fully time to turn out the lights. Finally the matter became so obvious that he could not resist inquiring the reason for this delay. The answer came, a bit embarrassed but certainly frank enough: "I don't want to go to bed till I see how a Jew says his prayers."
On the whole, considering the many individual differences in an army of two million men, religious prejudice was not engendered by the army; some persisted in spite of it, and much was lessened by the comradeship and enforced intimacy of army life. In most commands prejudice against the Jew was a very small item indeed. It was so rare as to be almost non-existent in places of responsibility. It was often overcome by the acid test of battle when men appeared in their true colors and won respect for themselves alone. It was occasionally the fault of the man himself, who turned a personal matter into an accusation of anti-Semitism, and sometimes without cause. One Jewish corporal complained to me of discrimination on the part of his commanding officer, who had recommended his reduction to the ranks. On investigation, I found that the officer might have been unfair in his judgment, but had recommended the same for two non-Jews at the same time; the case may therefore have been one of personal dislike but was certainly not a matter of religious prejudice. When I found authentic cases of discrimination, they were usually in the case of some ignorant non-commissioned officer, who presumed on his scanty authority at the expense of some Jewish private. Or it might be a sort of hazing, when a group of "rough necks" selected a foreigner with a small command of English as the butt of their jokes. When men complain of prejudice against Jews in the army, it usually means that they met there a group of prejudiced people with whom they would not have come into contact in civil life. The tendency of the American army during the World War was definitely against prejudice of any kind; prejudice made against efficiency, and the higher one went the more difficult it became to find any traces of it.