A Jewish Chaplain in France

treets, its fairly intact houses, its few tiny shops, as the height of luxury. Here and there a roof was destroyed or a wall down, for the enemy had come within three miles of Corbie in their drive

as, nor slept in cellars. I was even lucky enough to capture a thick spring mattress which, with my blankets, made a bed that even a certain staff colonel envied me. A home-made grate in the fire-place fitted it fo

when it rained, so that we had to cover ourselves with our rubber shelter-halves when we slept at night. The shell-hole, however, was a constant source of fuel, and we burned the laths and wood-work, of which small pieces were lying all about t

water he offered them from his canteen. On another day the old woman who owned the house came in with her son, a French lieutenant, to take away her furniture. We did not mind losing the pretty inlaid table-we were soldiers and could stand that-but our mattresses and chairs were a different matter. None of us could argue with

. I remember the quiet, gray square one day with the American band playing a medley from the "Chocolate Soldier," for all the world like a phonograph at home. I remember the great memorial review of the division by General O'Ryan in honor of our men who had fallen;

ck the fifty miles or more by automobile for this duty. It happened that it rained that day, as on most days, and the car was an open one. So the few soldiers still about in that deserted region had the rare sight of three cold and dripping chaplains standing out in the mud and rain to read the burial services, one holding his steel helmet as an umbrella over the

thusiasm. We were under orders to move toward the front again on the 9th of November and to enter the lines once more on November 14th. The men had had very little rest and no fresh troops had come up to fill the losses made by wounds, exposure and disease. Our men could never hold a f

had returned by that time, the few restaurants were crowded and gaiety was unrestrained. I heard a middle-aged British lieutenant sing the "Marseillaise" with a pretty waitress in the "Café de la Cathédral" the following evening, and respond when asked to repeat it in the main dining room. He retu

s work became much the same as it had been in training camp in the States. A few differences persisted; in France the chaplain was without the magnificent backing of the Jewish communities at home, which were always so eager to assist in entertaining and helping the Jewish men in the nearby camps. The Jewish Welfare Board with its excellent workers co

nning, and found a ride back in an empty ambulance which had brought patients to the evacuation hospital. The villages were almost deserted, and were in rather bad condition after their nearness to the German advance of 1918, so that the men could be crowded together and were very easy to reach in a bod

on, prices were extreme even for France in war-time. The great cathedral was piled high with sandbags to protect its precious sculptures, but it stood as always, the sentinel of the city, visible ten miles away as one approached. The Church Army Hut of the British forces afforded separate accommodations f

from a visit to Paris several weeks previously. Our mess, officers' mess number two of division headquarters, had an international character through his presence and that of Captain Jenkins of the British army, and a spec

of struggle. I felt then that my grief was but a part of the universal sacrifice. With all these other parents, whose older sons died at the front in actual fighting, or whose younger ones were caught denuded of medical protection at home, I hoped that all this sacrificial blood might bring an end to war. To-day that faith is harder and that consolation seems a mockery, for we se

eople, with one long street which runs up the hill and down the other side. The hill is crowned with a typical village church and a really fine chateau, where the General made his headquarters. The tiny gray houses seemed all to date from the time of Henry of Navarre; my billet was a low cottage with stone walls over three feet thick,

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 coul

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 am

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 so

o 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

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 t

as 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 th

tenant 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 co?peration of the various chaplains and line officers, he was able to inspect and certify to the valuab

d 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

e 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 in

evented 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 Fr

had little taste for the wonderful architectural and historical treasures of the country; he could not speak the language b

ch country people. Then, talking only a few words of French, the American naturally left out phrases like "monsieur" or "s'il vous plait," and he was considered to be ignorant of ordinary politeness, a wild Indian, the brother of the savage still supposed to be thronging ou

ders to move toward Brest brought it suddenly up again. As the first division in the American Embarkation Center on the way home, we had to suffer for the later units, all of which had a program of athletics, entertain

of gasoline held out. With this car I was able to visit the artillery in the Laval area, about fifty miles from our headquarters, and conduct one service in each of their regiments. The artillery had not been on the British front at all, but on the American, so they had quite different adventures from ours. They had supported several other American infantry units in the St. Mihiel sector and north of Verdun, and had received mercifully few casualties compared with our infant

rench Jewry to-day. To tell the truth, neither I nor the average Jewish soldier received a very flattering impression. The shadow of the Dreyfus case seemed still to hang over the Jews of France. They feared to speak a word of Yiddish,

e little synagogue of Tours, with its seventy-five seats. Le Mans possesses an old street named "Rue de la Juiverie," so that at one time there must have

rents of liberal movements, Jewish or Christian, in France are usually entirely alienated from religion. The liberals are intelligent but weak in numbers. As a converse of this, the synagogue is largely content with past glories, making little effort to adjust itself either in thought or organization to the conditions of the time. The American Jews were always interested to hear about the Jews of Fr

signed to the Le Mans area, under the senior chaplain of the American Embarkation Center. Naturally, I regretted deeply seeing my old comrades go without me. I reported at Le Mans, obtained fourteen days leave to the Riviera, which had been due me for over two months, and said good-by. The Twenty-Seventh was the first di