A Jewish Chaplain in France

by Lee J. Levinger

The control of the minutiæ of daily life together with the influence over the minds of men in the army should have enabled the authorities to suppress vice almost entirely. Unfortunately, this was never accomplished. Lectures, severe penalties for disease "incurred not in line of duty," and liberal provision for "early treatment" all together did not work the miracle. The prophylactic stations for so-called "early treatment" directly after exposure were patronized by a number of men, but never by a very large proportion of the number who were certainly exposed. The venereal hospitals where sufferers underwent both treatment and punishment had their full quota from every division which remained long in back areas, and most divisions left behind as many as two hundred and fifty men for further treatment after the thorough inspections preceding their departure for home.

Drink was a less serious, though more prevalent danger. The law had prevented men in uniform from drinking in the United States; in France it forbade only their use of spirituous liquors, and even those were often available. So there was a good deal of beer and wine drinking, and some of cognac. The last was apt to result in drunkenness and disorder, but our military authorities had always the power to declare certain cafés, which had violated regulations, "out of bounds" for Americans, and as a last resort the French police would close such a place altogether. Gambling was the most prevalent vice of all, and one which was never, to my knowledge, controlled anywhere. It lacked gravity in so far as the soldiers had very little to gamble, and could incur no great losses. But it was always an easy resort to break the monotony of army life in training or rest areas, and always a menace to the type of manhood which we wanted to see among our American fighting men.

The reliance on penalties as the chief mode of controlling young Americans was fundamentally unsound both in theory and practice. The warnings against sexual vice lost half their effectiveness because they were usually given by company officers, who emphasized the danger of disease and the military penalties rather than the appeal of loyalty or self-respect. Medical officers and chaplains were certainly better equipped for such special work, although probably no human being and no appeal can solve the entire problem.

All these facts came slowly to the fore within the few months following the armistice, and we were able to observe them very clearly in the 27th Division while in the Montfort area. While we wintered there, from November 1918 to February 1919, the morale of our troops, which had never weakened at the front even under the most terrible conditions, went down steadily during those three weary months. For one thing, we were constantly expecting orders to leave for home and constantly disappointed. We were inspected and reinspected, drilled and drilled again. Warned not to begin an elaborate program of athletics, education or amusement, we worked from week to week and never instituted one-third of the work which we had planned and ready. Meanwhile there was the café and the danger of vice and drink, so the men were kept drilling through the winter rains to keep them busy during the day and make them tired at night. This attempt was neither humane nor possible and had only the worst effects.

The failure with our division brought the possibility of a constructive program before the higher command of the army, which inaugurated one just about the time our division left the area. Large schools were started in each permanent division in the district, giving both common school and technical branches, with the army university at Beaune as the head of the educational structure. Such a school was established in the Forwarding Camp, near Le Mans, where I saw it in busy operation. Athletic meets were arranged in each division, with larger ones at Le Mans and other central points for the best men in the separate units. More welfare huts of different agencies were established, with more canteen supplies from the States and more women workers for canteen service and dances. Each division devoted more attention to its "shows," usually a musical comedy troupe, with very clever female impersonators to make up for the lack of chorus girls. Some of these shows had tours arranged by the Y. M. C. A. or other agency, and a few of them even had gala performances in Paris. Regular religious services and other appointments with the chaplains were instituted and advertised, although we had always done this for ourselves in our own units. Leave areas were designated in the most beautiful sections of France, as well as permission for a few furloughs in Italy and England. The Stars and Stripes, always a valuable organ as the soldiers' newspaper, became the constant instrument of propaganda to upbuild morale. Finally, the army took over official control of education, entertainment and athletics from the civilian agencies, designated a Welfare Officer to control them all, and asked the agencies formerly in control to coöperate with the newly appointed officials. All these were steps in the right direction, although at times such work was partially nullified by the choice of the wrong man as Welfare Officer. This was a position which only a professional educator could fill at all; even an expert could hardly influence actively a hundred thousand minds at once. Hardly any professional soldier, business man or engineer could have the breadth of view and technical knowledge to approach them. Of course, when army regulations prescribed a major for a particular position and only a lieutenant was available with the proper training, an untrained major was appointed and the lieutenant left in command of a platoon. Promotions were naturally few after the armistice, and the table of organization had to be complied with at all costs.

The Stars and Stripes demands a few words in itself, both because of its excellent articles and cartoons and for its unique position as "the soldiers' newspaper." It was a well-written weekly publication, which could command the services of many of the best of the younger writers and cartoonists in America. The knowledge that the Stars and Stripes was semi-official, being published under military censorship, made its news material very influential on morale. Men believed anything they read there about the work of the various divisions, special distinctions, or the date of the homeward troop movement. But that very factor made the articles it published more or less suspected by the men. They knew they were propaganda, written for the benefit of morale, and they therefore read them, but derived much less effect from them than would otherwise have been the case. Still the writers, themselves soldiers, expressed the soldiers' view often enough and clearly enough to lend some value even to the suspected material from General Headquarters.

After all, amusements, education and athletics were only palliatives in a confessedly irksome situation. They did not touch the heart of that situation any more than really excellent welfare work satisfies a group of employees in civil life who consider themselves underpaid and overworked. The essentials of morale were the elements which approached the soldiers' welfare most nearly—food, pay, mail and daily military routine. Army food was notoriously bad, army cooks famous for lack of skill. Part of this, like other complaints, lay in the chronic grumbling of the soldiers. Obviously, they did not receive the kind of meals that "mother used to make" or the product of a famous hotel. The food itself was usually of excellent quality but coarse, the menus well balanced but monotonous. This last was the chief grievance and one that was largely justified. Most of our food had to be brought overseas in cans, and it took a skillful cook to disguise "corned willie," "monkeymeat" or "goldfish" day in and day out. Yet corned beef, stew and salmon, to use their civilian names, were staples in the army diet. It became a question among us officers whether we preferred to drink good coffee, ruined by army cooks, or the excellently prepared chicory of the usual French restaurant. I, for one, preferred the British ration as superior in variety to that we received after we came into the American area, although it was normally not as large in amount as the ration of the American soldier.

Pay and mail were notoriously unreliable in the A. E. F. Pay was regular for officers, of course, who could swear to their own pay vouchers, but not always for enlisted men, who required a service record to have their names put on the pay roll. When a man is a patient in nine hospitals within four months, we cannot expect his mail to follow him, nor his service record to stay at hand. These grievances were later remedied, the mail through the Main Post Office, the pay question by means of pay books and supplementary service records. Still, at one time it was by no means uncommon to meet men just out of the hospital who had received neither mail nor pay for three months, or to find a man who had been shifted so often from one unit to another that his pay was six months in arrears. When we remember the little money at hand for any purpose whatever, when we bear in mind the loneliness of these boys so far from home, loved ones, even from common sights and familiar speech, we can imagine what a deprivation such troubles brought, and how deeply they effected morale. Of course, as I have mentioned before, the soldier never made allowances either for the difficulty of the task or the comparative success with which it was accomplished. The soldier merely suffered and complained.

I shall never forget the incessant complaints about that very necessary institution, the censorship of letters home. The last hope of the soldier was for glory in the eyes of the people at home. At least he would be a hero to them. But here the censor lifted his terrible shears. Stories of heroism, true or false, could not be told. Weeks after an action the soldier's family might read that he had taken part in it and even then the censor might return his letter if he mentioned any details. For many of the soldiers this was more than annoying; it was serious. They were often not educated, had written perhaps three or four letters in their lives, and could hardly face the task of writing a second letter if the first was condemned. In any case no American wanted to submit his personal letters for his wife or sweetheart to a superior officer for approval. Add to this the fact that the officer could sign for his own mail without other censorship except the possibility that the letter might be read at the base port, and censorship became another grievance to the enlisted man.

Finally, the greatest factor in morale, good or bad, was that intangible but very real entity, military discipline. The American boy hates to be under authority; to ask for leave to speak to his captain; to request permission to go for a few hours' leave after his day's duties are over; to address an officer in the third person: "Is the captain feeling well this morning, sir?" Most American officers were human enough, with little of the class feeling of the British army. For that reason the soldier rarely hated his own officers, and often was heard to boast of "my lieutenant" or "my captain." The soldier merely hated authority in general, as represented largely by the necessity to salute any unknown officer whom he might meet. He never understood the lectures about the manliness of saluting or its military necessity; he knew only that it was the sign of authority, to which he was subjected.