At Chaumont the first man I met was my old class-mate of the Hebrew Union College, Chaplain Elkan C. Voorsanger, who was there temporarily detached from the 77th Division to arrange for the celebration of the Jewish holydays throughout France. He welcomed me, told me something of what my work was to be, and listened to my month-old news, which was all fresh to him. For a few days I lingered at the chaplains' headquarters at the old château of Neuilly sur Suisse, not far from Chaumont, where thirty chaplains received their gas mask training and instruction in front line work, and waited for assignments. The château was a queer angular mediæval affair, set off by lovely lawns, with the usual rows of straight poplars all about. A few steps away was a little village with a quaint old twelfth century church, beautiful in feeling, if not in workmanship. We chaplains newly arrived in France, most of us young, and all eager to be at work, hung on the words of our leaders fresh from the line. We talked much of our ideals and our preparation, as most of the men were graduates of the Chaplains' Training School at Camp Taylor, Kentucky. My assignment came very soon to organize and conduct services for the Jewish holydays at Nevers, headquarters of the Intermediate Section, Service of Supply.
The entire American area in France had been charted out for the purpose of holyday services and the central cities designated, either those which had French synagogues to receive our men, or those points like Nevers where Americans were to be found and had to be provided for. I quote the official order which carried authority for our arrangements.
"Tours, Sept. 1, 1918.
Wherever it will not interfere with military operations soldiers of Jewish Faith will be excused from all duty and where practicable granted passes to enable them to observe Jewish Holidays as follows: from noon Sept. 6th to morning of Sept. 9th and from noon Sept. 15th to morning of Sept. 17th. If military necessity prevents granting passes on days mentioned provision should be made to hold divine services wherever possible."
This meant that all those had leave who were not at the time in action or on the move. Chaplain Voorsanger, for example, was not able to have any service in the 77th Division as his troops were on the march on New Year's Day and in action on the Day of Atonement. Most of the central points designated for Jewish services were important cities with French synagogues,—Paris, Toul, Belfort, Dijon, Épinal, Nantes, Rouen, Tours, Bordeaux and Marseilles. Three of the chief American centers had none, so Dr. Enelow was assigned to Brest, Dr. Kohn to Chaumont, and I was sent to Nevers.
I spent a single busy day in Tours after leaving Chaumont. I met the wife and father-in-law of Rabbi Leon Sommers and inspected their little synagogue with its seventy-five seats. The Rabbi was on duty in the French army where he had been from the very beginning of the war. I went to the army headquarters and arranged for the proper notices to be sent out to troops in the district, then with two or three Jewish families whom I met I discussed arrangements to accommodate the large number of Jewish soldiers who would come in. I was empowered to offer them the financial assistance of the Jewish Welfare Board in providing such accommodations as were possible.
One surprise of a kind which I afterward came to expect, was meeting an old friend of mine from Great Lakes, a former sergeant in the Canadian Army, mustered out of service because of the loss of several fingers and now back in France again as a representative of the Knights of Columbus. When he left Great Lakes for overseas, I had parted with one of the two knitted sweaters I possessed, that if I did not see service at least my sweater would. Now I met the sweater and its owner again for a few brief moments. These fleeting glimpses of friends became a delightful but always tense element in our army life. Men came and went like an ever-flowing stream, now and then pausing for a greeting and always hurrying on again. A single day sufficed for my work in Tours and then to my own city for the holydays.
Nevers is a historic town of thirty thousand on the banks of the River Loire. The streets are as wide as alleys and the sidewalks narrow and haphazard, so that usually one walks in the street, whether it goes up hill, down hill, or (as frequently) around the corner. But the parks and squares are frequent and lovely, and the old buildings have a charm of their own, even if it is chiefly in the quaintness of their outlines and the contrast of their gray with the sunny skies of autumn. The air was always cool and the skies always bright. I stayed at the Grand Hotel de l'Europe, a rather small place, which one had to enter by a back door through a court. With the men at war, all the work was being done by women, while most of the guests were American officers on temporary or permanent duty at the post. The cathedral (every French city seems to have one) is interesting chiefly to the antiquarian, as it has several different styles combined rather inharmoniously, and the tower is not at all imposing.
Of course, a great many Americans were stationed in or near the city—railroad engineers, training camps of combat units newly arrived in France, construction engineers, quartermaster units, and two great hospital centers. Every company I visited, every ward in the hospitals, had at least a few Jewish boys, and all of them were equally glad to see me and to attend my services. In fact, my first clear impression in France was that here lay a tremendous field for work, crying out for Jewish chaplains and other religious workers, and that we had such a pitiful force to answer the demand. At that time there were over fifty thousand Jewish soldiers in the A. E. F. at a very conservative estimate, with exactly six chaplains and four representatives of the Jewish Welfare Board to minister to them. When I took up my work at Nevers, I was simply staggered by the demands made on me and my inability to fulfill more than a fraction of them.
At first came the sudden rush of men into the city for the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The hotels filled up almost at once; then came others who could not find accommodations, and still others who had been confined to hospitals, had drawn no pay for several months, and could not pay for a hotel room or even a shave. The problem was solved by two very helpful officers who stayed up most of the night until they had provided enough room on the barrack floors and enough blankets for all who needed them. The accommodations were crude, but the men were soldiers and glad to get them. I was doubly proud, therefore, that this crowd of ours, without official control, coming for the festival and therefore released from the incessant discipline they had become used to, never once took advantage of their privileges. We troubled the authorities for their sleeping quarters and for special permission to be on the street after nine at night—but that was all. Many of the boys may have appreciated their leave more than the festival, but all justified the confidence shown in them by their conduct.
Imagine the difference between our services in France and those to which I have been accustomed in our rather tame and formal civilian congregations. My congregation there was composed almost entirely of men, and those men all very young. We were meeting in a strange land, amid an ancient but alien civilization, which some of us liked and some disliked, but which none of us could quite understand. We had no scroll of the Law, no ram's horn, not even a complete prayerbook for the festivals. We had no synagogue, and the places we used were lent us by people of another faith, friends and co-workers, indeed, but with little interest in our festivals or our religious needs.