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CHAPTER 6

Into the Army

On a brisk day just after Christmas — December 28, 1942 — I left Washington to report to the U.S. Army Chaplain School at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The motto of the Chaplain School was Pro Deo et Patria (“For God and Country”), a simple statement that would define my life for the next three years.

It was cold in Boston, with a few patches of snow on the ground. The size of our class — more than a hundred men — was surprising, and I was delighted that one of the chaplains was a fellow diocesan priest as well as a fellow North American College graduate, Father Jack Albert. Having been a chaplain for some time, he promptly offered some useful advice: “It’s easy to get overworked as a chaplain. There is too much to do. Don’t knock yourself out.” Being a popular, handsome priest, solid in his piety, I took his advice to heart.

I was billeted in Connate Hall, Room 44, along with seven other chaplains, Protestants of various denominations, all gregarious, friendly, and extremely interested in meeting a “Catholic priest.”

Classes began immediately on December 29 with an address by the commanding officer, Chaplain (Colonel) William D. Cleary, nattily attired in his uniform and the polished boots of a cavalry officer. Just as surprising, he spoke with an Irish accent — a congenial, but no-nonsense Catholic officer and priest.

In addition to relatively easy classes on military law, military sanitation, military courtesy, and protection against chemical warfare, we had drilling and hiking exercises to teach us the rudimentary phases of “close-order drill.” Thanks to my four years as a cadet at St. John’s College High School in Washington, the drilling — and hikes — were hardly taxing.

My academic background as a student at the Catholic University had prepared me for Chaplain School. Having gotten such a superior education from my professors, I wasn’t the least worried about embarrassing myself. In fact, my only difficult academic class was Graves Registration, involving, in case of significant casualties, laying out a cemetery on a map which required a solid knowledge of mathematics. Having studied algebra and trigonometry in high school, I tried to help chaplains with weak math backgrounds, since flunking Graves Registration might wash them out of school. On test day, after finishing the cemetery problems, I went to the bathroom, leaving my exam paper on my desk so that anyone needing to take a look could. I don’t know if it helped, but no one flunked. In the end, there was nothing to worry about because, as we later discovered, the Army forbade chaplains to bury any men killed in action. The ultra efficient Graves Registration Office had complete jurisdiction over the bodies of soldiers fallen in combat, securing and identifying the body as well as notifying the family.

Though we could have learned what we needed to know about being a chaplain in one afternoon, they dragged it out for three or four weeks, making sure we knew the drill. In the end, I think we got some kind of spurious recognition from Harvard University, allowing me to tell pals that I got through Harvard in four weeks.

Chaplain Philip M. Hannan

Personally, my only problem was the presence of some very pretty Irish cousins who, living in Boston, visited me on Sunday afternoons. Since I made the mistake of introducing them to my roommates, one young Presbyterian chaplain promptly asked if I could help him make a date with one of them. Since they, fortunately, all had steady boyfriends, I could say, with some mental reservation, that they were all engaged.

What we didn’t learn in classes we made up for in our interesting discussions, the Protestant chaplains eager to understand Catholic moral teaching in matters such as “use and abuse.” “How can you allow people to drink liquor?” they asked. “What do you think about smoking? Or gambling? Or dancing?” — a query from one handsome young man who, being a good musician and having an attractive wife, was forbidden to dance under penalty of discharge by his local authority. Carefully explaining the difference between properly acceptable versus sinful dancing, I saw relief flooding his face. In fact, he was so grateful — and scrupulous — that just before we completed our training, he approached me again: “Now, let’s go over this another time. I’ve got to be able to convince my superior that there is a moral way to dance.” Assuring him there was, I wished him well!

Having the utmost respect for each other, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish chaplains interacted easily. Though the Catholics held informal group meetings to strengthen our camaraderie and support for each other, Chaplain Cleary politely and firmly reminded us of our great opportunity to be of service to our Protestant and Jewish confreres. At one such Catholic chaplains gathering, I met my first Cajun priest, who flashed the daring, fun-loving attitude that I would see close up many years later as Archbishop of New Orleans.

Finally, completing our initial training, we received our first assignments as rookie chaplains — our own preferences not part of the equation. With my fluency in Italian and knowledge of Europe, I expressed my desire to be assigned to a combat group, but the Army had other ideas, sending me instead to a basic training center of the Army Air Corps in Florida. “Well,” I thought ruefully, “at least my parents will like the appointment.” My older brother Frank, a doctor, who had no children, and my younger brother Denis were both in tough combat groups, so my safety was naturally of deep concern to my parents and family.

Basic Training Center, Miami Beach

My assignment was Basic Training Center No. 7 of the Army Air Corps in Miami Beach. At that time, Miami Beach was an exotic amalgam of humanity that only the frenetic haste of a world war could create, with at least one hundred thousand recruits packed into hotels built for winter snowbirds from the North. Moreover, there were no billets for chaplains. Fortunately, the senior Catholic chaplain, Father John Green from Philadelphia, invited me to move into the house that he and two other officers had rented at 5786 Pine Tree Drive. I gladly accepted and met the two other tenants, Captain Ed Hartung and Captain John Farrell. Their advice proved to be even more valuable than the living quarters.

Father Green informed me that forty-two thousand of the one hundred thousand recruits were Catholics, most drawn from large Eastern cities with substantial Catholic populations. Besides me, there was only one other Catholic chaplain, a brawny, athletic priest of Lithuanian descent who had his own apartment at the end of the beach. Since all accommodations were “war-time crowded,” my office was the former “ladies room” in the Shelburne Hotel, where my first two visitors turned out to be the embarrassed female secretaries to a couple of high ranking officers. Except for a desk, the furniture had been removed, leaving me to scavenge for chairs and a typewriter not in use by other offices. Eventually, I got an assistant, a man in his thirties from Boston whose principal asset was that, being Catholic, he could serve Mass.

Meanwhile, Chaplain William H. Howell, a Methodist from Texas and the Protestant chaplain of Training Center No. 7, informed me that my first duty the next day would be to give an orientation talk, following his opening remarks, to a thousand new recruits gathered in a large hall. Sitting in the back of the room the following morning, I watched Chaplain Howell quickly enter the stage, salute smartly to the sergeant in charge and begin. Near the end of his talk, he said, “I wish you to remember this rule of sexual morality: Whatever I do not wish anyone to do to my mother or sister, I shall not do to any woman.” In front of me, a recruit whispered to his neighbor, “I’m lucky. I don’t have a sister or mother.”

My speech emphasized the Ten Commandments for both Christians and Jews. Catholic soldiers were obligated to attend Mass on Sunday, confess their sins, and receive Holy Communion. For those with no religion, I stressed the voice of conscience as their rule, quoting St. Paul’s famous instructions on this matter in 2 Corinthians 3:3 that the law of conscience is “written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” Ending with the advice to “be honest in writing your letters back home. Don’t tell them that everything in the Army is wonderful. They’ll know that you’re lying and won’t believe anything you write”; I also admonished the soldiers “not even to consider marriage until the war is over.” Talk about an unpopular remark!

My chief duty and problem was how to properly celebrate Mass for the thousands of Catholics in my training center. Fortunately, there was a Catholic Center, located on Collins Avenue within my territory, where daily Mass, confessions, and small events could be held. Also within our territory was an imposing Catholic Church, dedicated to St. Patrick and pastored by Monsignor William Barry, who also had a filial chapel dedicated to St. Joseph.

In the final analysis, however, the beach, though less than ideal due to the relentless trade winds constantly blowing sand, was the only location large enough to accommodate several thousand Catholics for Mass. Besides having sand blown in their faces, the recruits had difficulty concentrating on their devotions thanks to the distraction of an endless parade of beachcombers and female sunbathers. Though able to secure a wooden altar with a cover, I had no public address system. Since there were no “extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion,” later made possible by the Second Vatican Council, giving Holy Communion to two thousand men with sand blowing in their faces was challenging indeed.

On Sundays, there was an early morning Mass in St. Joseph’s Chapel, a 10:00 a.m. Mass on the beach, and a noon Mass inside a theater. At the beginning of every beach Mass, I cautioned the relatively informal congregation to try not to ogle the girls in their swimsuits. Despite my former practice of shouting in the woods behind the Sulpician seminary to strengthen my vocal cords, no voice was strong enough to convey a sermon to a congregation that size on a beach. Finally, an industrious sergeant came to my rescue. Though lacking public address systems, the Army did have copy machines. As a result, printing my sermons in huge numbers, I distributed them on the beach, which paid off. Some soldiers even mailed them home, prompting nice notes from their appreciative folks.

If I was overwhelmed by anything, it was the ambition of the officers and recruits. Determined to succeed, especially those who wanted to become pilots, their spiritual development was considered an essential element of their preparation. When they flunked a critical test, they turned to me as their sounding board, claiming they “deserved another chance. I was sick and nervous when I took the test, so worn out from physical training that I couldn’t concentrate.”

Among the officers was a large number of West Pointers who, setting a strict code of conduct, insisted on a high moral code. When an officer was found guilty of sexually abusing a young boy, they printed the story on the front page of the local newspaper and dismissed him from the service.

Although many questioned our alliance with Communist Russia, none questioned the morality of a war against Nazism — a sentiment I used to prod recruits who had slipped in their Mass attendance to return to church. “Hitler at least was honest when admitting that he disregarded the Church,” I told the absentees, “but what excuse do you have for not attending Mass?”

Though officers generally cooperated with chaplains in setting aside reasonable time for recruits to attend church, there were exceptions. One former National Guard colonel ordered training marches on Sunday mornings, with the peculiar explanation that, “If you were on Guadalcanal, you wouldn’t have a chance to go to church.” “If you were on Guadalcanal,” I answered, “you wouldn’t be wearing that shirt or pants,” which got me nowhere. So I turned to Army regulations, namely AR210-10, December 20, 1940, which stated: “Commanders will reduce military labor and duty on Sunday to the measure of strict necessity. Such duties will, if practicable, be so scheduled as not to interfere with attendance at services of worship.” It got his attention.

One day in the officer’s mess, an “old Army” officer wanted to know how the men were doing. “Chaplain, how is the morale of the men?” I answered honestly, “Great. They can’t wait to get out of here to go where the action is.” No more conversation.

Occasionally, we chaplains got together socially. Arriving early at one gathering, I found the only Jewish chaplain, Chaplain Harold Gordon, already there. “I have an extra bottle of Jewish wine, Manischewitz,” he said. “Would you like it?” Thanking him, I put the bottle into a box. When everyone else arrived, a Protestant chaplain showed a short movie demonstrating the evils of even a tiny amount of alcohol. On screen, a scientist poured the amount of alcohol contained in a 3.2-percent bottle of beer into a goldfish bowl. At first swimming furiously, the fish suddenly turned belly up. As he did so, Chaplain Gordon flashed me a smile.

Challenges on the Beach

Of course, given the immense number of soldiers and officers on the beach, I knew as a chaplain I would have to deal with men involved in sinful sexual relations. In one case, a splendid lawyer, Herbert J. Kenarik of Newark, New Jersey, spent a long time at his expense searching for a soldier who had convinced a nineteen-year-old woman to back out of her wedding and then subsequently had gotten her pregnant. The soldier had used an assumed name, but Mr. Kenarik somehow traced him to Miami Beach. I was delighted to help the attorney find the soldier and confront him.

In another case, a woman from Chicago came to Miami Beach with her godchild, who had become pregnant after having relations with a soldier. When I discovered that the soldier had been shipped out to a camp in California, the godmother asked, “When does the next train leave for California?” That young lady was in good hands.

War puts emotional stress on everyone, and one recruit told me he had felt pressured to marry a girl he had only been friendly with before shipping off to basic training. “We dated occasionally, but I certainly was not in love with her,” he explained. “The newspaper carried stories about draftees getting married to their sweethearts. The girl and her parents talked with my folks about a marriage. My folks agreed because they liked the girl, and then they urged me to marry her. Frankly, I didn’t want to argue or hurt my parents or hers. So I got married, but I did not have the intention of getting married. What should I do?” I advised him, “Be careful of how you write to her. Avoid saying that you love her. After the war bring your case to the Catholic tribunal in your diocese and explain the case to them. You have a good case.” War is never an excuse for a quickie marriage.

Some recruits were so anxious to pass their physicals they temporarily developed high blood pressure. My standard advice was, “Put yourself in the hands of God, and also say a prayer for the intercession of the Blessed Mother.” The prayer worked well. But one day a Jewish soldier named Brock asked for advice because his sinuses would get inflamed as soon as he started the physical exam. “I need rest to control it,” Brock said. “All right,” I replied. “Here’s the key to my apartment. Take a nap.” That also worked.

Young, lovelorn soldiers were a special problem. One forlorn soul told me he had to go AWOL (absent without leave) because his girlfriend was being wooed off her feet by a neighbor. “I can’t write well and tell her how much I love her,” he pleaded. “Well,” I replied, “sit down here and tell me how much you love her, and I’ll tell you how to phrase it.” He obeyed. A week later he came back, all smiles — and I discovered that writing an effective love letter and an inspirational homily isn’t all that different, except for the audience.

An older soldier had a different problem. His wife left him, and he found, in searching her belongings, that her baptismal certificate indicated she was sixteen years older than she had admitted. “You mean to tell me you couldn’t tell that she was sixteen years older than she claimed?” I asked. “No,” the soldier replied sheepishly. “She was sunburned.”

Some of the recruits were illiterate, and were taught to read, count, and write in an elementary manner. There were a few Catholics among them, but they all seemed to know that the Catholic chaplain could help them. Unfortunately, some “barracks lawyer” told them that if they were completely uncooperative, they would be dismissed by the Army and allowed to go home. A gullible victim of that nonsensical advice came to my office, disheveled and thoroughly dirty. “I’m sorry to tell you that the advice you got is all wrong,” I said. “Let me explain how you can get a whole new life if you follow the recommendations of the Army.” Surprisingly, my guidance worked.

Unbecoming Conduct

In general, the civilian population of Miami Beach generously provided volunteers for our Catholic Center (USO) as well as supplies for the use of the chaplains. There was, however, one group of storekeepers who gouged the soldiers for their ordinary needs. One of these was the Pancoast Drug Store, which sold soft drinks, sandwiches, and toiletries. I lodged a formal complaint with the Office of Price Administration but got nowhere. I concluded some direct action was needed.

I spoke to Chaplain McClay, the commanding officer of the men in the immediate area of the Pancoast Drug Store, and asked if he would give me permission to suggest to the men that they not patronize the store. Then, early in the morning, I stood in front of the store, diverting all the soldiers from entering. The effect was immediate. About ten thirty in the morning, trucks came to haul out their perishable goods. Shortly thereafter, I received a telephone call in the store asking me to picket another store. The news spread.

While I was speaking to the store manager, an officer of the Provost Marshall arrived and hustled me off to his office. Chaplain Salango, a Protestant chaplain, had joined me, and so he came along. The Provost Marshall summarily ordered us to stop the boycott and said nothing could be done to put the store “off limits.” At lunch, I was told to report to Colonel Parker, the elderly commanding officer of the entire operations at Miami Beach. He told me, “This is the most disgraceful exhibition of an officer I have ever seen in my life. Go down and be judged by your immediate commanding officer.” I reported to Colonel Claggett, who chewed me out a bit, but did nothing further. A few hours later, I was ordered to report to the Air Corps Inspector General, who informed me that I had been accused of starting a riot. I knew I had to be clear about what had happened, so I signed an affidavit stating the exact chain of events.

That night a young, polite officer of the Judge Advocate General’s Office came to my apartment and told me, “I approve of what you did today, but I’m sorry to inform you that you are charged with conduct unbecoming an officer.” I related what had happened. The boycott was so controversial that the newspaper carried an article about it. I decided to visit Monsignor William Barry, the courageous and effective pastor of St. Patrick Parish on the beach, who was considered by the mayor and chief of police as the unofficial manager of the bustling area. Whenever anything unusual happened on the beach, Monsignor Barry was there to offer advice to city authorities. A few years earlier Monsignor Barry had been offended by a drug store’s practice of advertising that it had contraceptives for sale, and when he appealed to the pharmacy to remove the storefront ads, it flatly refused. On the following Sunday, he asked all of his parishioners to boycott the drug store. Very quickly, the drug store pulled the advertising. Monsignor Barry was equal to the task in defending my actions. He explained the situation to a colonel friend, and the colonel quashed the case.

Somehow, the word of what I had done got back to Archbishop Michael Curley in Baltimore, and he paternally ordered me to be more prudent in the future, pointing out that a charge of “conduct unbecoming an officer” could be very maliciously interpreted. I also received a letter from Father John Cronin, in charge of the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Council in Washington, D.C. — which later became the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Catholic Conference — inviting me to join him in his labor union work after the war.

That experience demonstrated I should be very careful about promoting any ideas to better the lives of the recruits except through my spiritual ministry, although there often is a political or social component to spreading the Gospel. I had my hands full in fulfilling my spiritual ministry on the Beach. The three Catholic chaplains decided to offer a weeklong “mission” for all the military personnel and any other Catholics who lived on the beach. We delivered a mission sermon every night at eight o’clock, followed by Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. We heard confessions before and after the homily. At the solemn closing of the mission on Sunday afternoon, Monsignor Barry offered Benediction. It was very successful — about twelve thousand soldiers attended.

In the week leading up to Christmas in 1943, we heard confessions practically all day. I remember leaving the confessional on Christmas Eve at 11:50 p.m., just in time to put on the vestments for Midnight Mass. The reward was infinitely worth the effort. There was an intense feeling of family and religious unity among the men. I tried to tie it all together with my homily, which focused on unity with Christ in the Holy Family. I asked the men to remember their families at home and the families of all engaged in the war effort. After Mass, the soldiers were so enthralled they gathered in groups to continue singing Christmas hymns for hours. We really had the Christmas spirit. Many of the men were away from home for the first time, and they enjoyed our efforts to make this Christmas special. A soldiers’ choir set an excellent tone for the Mass and led the caroling after Mass. We foraged for extra food to provide snacks for everyone after the Midnight Mass.

We priest chaplains were so busy that I was very happy when additional priests joined us as reinforcements. Father Edward Trower, a Redemptorist, reported in and was assigned officially to take care of the hospitals, but he generously gave us help at any time he could spare. A Carmelite priest from Chicago, Father Robert Burns, arrived and quickly became a great favorite with the enlisted men. He had taught English and coached the football team at a Catholic high school in Chicago. Father Burns was very zealous but refused to celebrate Mass on the beach, saying, “I can’t stand seeing those lousy beachcombers gawking at the congregation of soldiers and making sneering remarks.”

Father Burns was extremely athletic and devoted to physical training. Once, when he was forced to go to the hospital for an illness, he did his exercises in the bed. A sergeant made the mistake once of challenging him about his physical fitness, and he made the sergeant count the number of push-ups, sit-ups, and other exercises he could do. The test took so long the sergeant appealed to me to try to stop him. “Look, he’s done over a hundred push-ups alone, and that’s way above 100 percent of what we require. Now he’s doing sit-ups, and I don’t know how long this will go on. Can’t you stop him?” My pleas to Father Burns fell on deaf ears until I told him, “Father, you have worn out the seat of your shorts, and you’re showing.” That did the trick!

Father Burns physically could outperform every man in his unit and was regarded as the champion of the enlisted men. He was equally strict about religious duties and had a very powerful effect on the soldiers’ religious observance.

Father Burns also solved an unusual problem for a young married officer who had asked me, “I’m being sent overseas, and the hurricane season is approaching. I rented a house with two apartments. Could you find me somebody who is strong and reliable and who could live in the other apartment and who could help my wife in case of trouble?”

“I’ve got exactly the right man,” I said, and I introduced him to Father Burns. A couple of weeks later I called the wife to ask how things were. “Wonderful,” she said. “Father Burns came and introduced himself to me and gave me a bouquet of flowers and a quart of ice cream. The only trouble is that I tried to clean his apartment when he was on duty, but I couldn’t move the heavy weight equipment he has. I couldn’t even budge it.” I told her not to worry: “He’d be disappointed if you could move it.”

Another priest, Father Leo J. Schafer of Indianapolis, arrived about the same time, and he was accompanied by his widowed father. The two of them were a fantastic team. Father Schafer was a great asset, a very quiet and zealous priest. His father helped out in any way possible. He was a good juggler and entertained every new group of inductees.

I was even more thankful for the reinforcement of our chaplain ranks when I received an official order that I was to take care of the psychiatric patients at the huge Coral Gables Hospital, “in addition to my usual duties.” The “hospital” was a converted massive hotel and was filled with wartime psychiatric cases. I soon discovered that it was best to visit the overworked staff and the struggling patients in the evening. A clever doctor determined that having them tend “victory gardens” could help many of the less troubled patients. There is no less likely site for a successful garden than the sand of Coral Gables, but the idea worked. The cycle of nature — the fascination of seeing the sprouting and growth of vegetables — had a very calming effect on the patients.

Some of the psychiatric cases were far more difficult. One young man was catatonic and impossible to make contact with. I was asked to help him. I thought that maybe he, like others, had found the effect of combat, including dropping bombs, to be shattering. He was a bed patient. I bent down and started to recite the Lord’s Prayer in Latin. I saw his lips begin to quiver, then to fashion words. Next I said the Hail Mary in Latin. Finally, he responded. Those timeless words had broken through. I soon discovered that he was a former seminarian.

Breaking down barriers with another patient required my knowledge of Italian. The “patient” was a very healthy young foreigner who could not speak a word of English. After trying several phrases in the few languages I knew, he seemed to understand a bit of Italian. Soon I discovered he was a sailor from the Dalmatian coast who had been working on a freighter that had been sunk by a German submarine. He swam ashore and was picked up by the local police and taken to the local draft officer, who drafted him and dispatched him to the Army. Anything to fill the quota!

I tried to capitalize on the increased attendance at Mass for the feast days to teach Catholic doctrine about many matters. Whenever two or more soldiers are gathered during wartime, the discussion invariably centers on two topics: religion and sex. I redoubled my efforts to instill a better understanding of our Christian faith and the Sixth Commandment — “You shall not commit adultery” — including the dangers of venereal disease and infidelity. I also touched on stealing and the treatment of prisoners of war, as well as the Geneva rules of warfare. I found soldiers coming to me more often for Confession.

Naturally, my preaching also produced a large number of requests by soldiers to see me about their problems. Most of the problems dealt with their parents, or wife, or girlfriend back home. The most peculiar case was that of a married soldier from New York who was convinced that his wife was unfaithful. He secured a furlough, found indeed that his wife was unfaithful, and went to see a lawyer. The lawyer told him he did not have witnesses for a divorce. The soldier spied on his wife, saw a man entering his wife’s apartment, and called the fire department. The firemen discovered the couple in bed — and no fire. The soldier secured the names of the firemen who saw the infidelity, paid the fine for a false alarm, and went to the lawyer with the names of the witnesses.

In one day, I received five applications for “shotgun” marriages. Despite the entreaties of the girls, I always investigated the circumstances to see if the marriage had a probability of success.

I had other minor difficulties, including correctly pronouncing Slavic names in marriages. An excellent young fellow came in for a marriage application and smiled as he wrote his name. “I dare you to pronounce it,” he said. It was Szuszczewicz.

Then there was the poor fellow who could not stand the heat in Miami but who had made arrangements for his marriage. He landed in the hospital with heat exhaustion but still insisted on being married. He fainted three times after leaving the hospital to go to the church, went back to the hospital, was given two shots to stabilize him, and finally got to the church for the wedding. I was very pleased I was not the priest for the wedding.

Soldiers tried every trick in the book when it came to finding a way to get back home for an “emergency.” One soldier asked me to recommend his application to go home “because my father needs me badly.” I asked where his father was. “He’s in the penitentiary,” the soldier replied. “He needs me to cheer him up.” I asked how long he had been in prison and how long his sentence was. He told me he’d been there for ten years and was sentenced to one hundred years for a murder. “I think he’ll still be there when the war is over,” I said. “He’ll also need cheering up then.” After listening to these inventive arguments, I always hoped the soldiers would expend as much energy and creativity in fighting the enemy.

Of course, I recorded all of these activities in my monthly reports to the military command and to the Military Ordinariate in New York City. I never knew if anyone read the reports until one day when an affable Protestant chaplain came to my office with an unusual offer. “My commanding officer has learned about all your activities, including the large number of confessions you have been hearing,” he said. “He told me to help you out. I’ll be glad to hear some confessions for you if you tell me what to say.” I explained politely that I could not give him permission to hear confessions because it was a sacrament that required ordination to the priesthood. That explanation didn’t stop him. “Well, I’d like to see the words you use,” he said. “Maybe I could change them and use them with our Protestant men.” I showed him the words in Latin and firmly, but politely, asked him not to offer “confessions” to his men. We remained good friends.

Despite my overcrowded schedule, I intermittently tried to secure a decent portable altar for the Masses on the Beach. I finally located an “official artist” for the Army by the name of Guranowski. He had been brought over from Poland to decorate the Polish Pavilion for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York and never found his way back to Poland. Guranowski said he needed an assistant to help him, and I suggested a number of men who were registered as artists. Guranowski brushed aside all the suggestions and said decisively, “There is only one artist here. He is Max Schnitzel.” Max was an abstract painter who had painted enough “moods” to get him into our “Who’s Who.”

I accepted Max and then went to the office of engineers. The post engineer was Igor Polevitsky, who approved the sketch for the altar but insisted on some changes. I asked him to confer with Guranowski, but then a hitch developed. Schnitzel demanded that, before he begin the work, an application be submitted to the Smithsonian Institution to accept the altar as an exhibit there after the war. At that point, I decided to leave the project in Polevitsky’s hands. The altar was finished and delivered just two weeks before I was given orders to leave.

In the midst of these negotiations, the Catholic chaplain for the Officers’ Candidate School was changed and sent to another post, which gave me the added task of caring for the Catholic men in that school. The most demanding aspect of that appointment was taking care of the marriages of the newly commissioned officers immediately after their inductions as officers. This was no cursory task. There were fifteen marriages to be conducted in one afternoon. The marriages were scheduled to begin at fifteen-minute intervals. The men were inducted into the Army as officers in the morning, married in the afternoon, and left that night. Any couple that was late for its scheduled time was obliged to wait until all the other marriages were completed. True to their Army training, all were completed on time.

Meanwhile, I was growing increasingly restless about not being with a combat unit. I wrote on several occasions to the Chief of Chaplains of the Army Air Corps, and also to the Military Ordinariate, expressing my burning desire to join a combat unit in light of my European education and knowledge of foreign languages. Again, I received only negative replies. Finally, a wonderful Franciscan chaplain in the Chief of Chaplains Office, Lieutenant Colonel Constantine Zielinski, replied and assured me that my request had been received and that I would be given another assignment. I never forgot Father Zielinski, and after the war, when his Franciscan religious superior wished him to return to the Franciscans, I helped him to be formally accepted in the Diocese of Richmond, which allowed him to continue to be a chaplain in the Army.

In view of this good news, I decided I should get into better physical condition. My tonsils needed attention. I went to see an excellent young surgeon from the Boston area. He took a look and said, “They’re hanging so loose that you don’t need to go to the hospital.” The next day, I returned, and the doctor seated me in a chair, gave me a local anesthetic and proceeded to extract the tonsils. Well, it didn’t happen as expected. After a half hour of cutting, tugging, and additional shots of anesthetic, he said, “The complication is that you have some infection that I did not expect. I’ll be finishing soon.” In about fifteen minutes, he was finished, and so was I.

The doctor put me in the hospital to recover. It was late in the evening by the time I was bedded down and given a shot to put me to sleep. The next morning, I was awakened by a supervising nurse, who sternly informed me that I had broken a regulation by not having made my bed! Fortunately, I recovered rapidly and asked to be released. I received a flat denial. The hospital was scheduled for closing because of a low patient count — and I had to stay to bolster the count. We made a compromise. I agreed to return to my bed at night for the count while I returned each day to my work.

To my great surprise, I received a communication from the commanding officer that I was obliged to undergo training to become a rifle marksman. Of course, this was contrary to the Army regulations that forbade a chaplain to carry weapons. Nonetheless, I was not about to begin a discussion with the commanding officer about this matter. I dutifully reported to the commanding officer in charge of the shooting range, and on my first try succeeded in hitting the bull’s eye, thus qualifying to be a marksman. I hope no record was ever made of my effort.

Finally, the time came for a reduction in the number of chaplains and, by attrition, I became the Chief Chaplain for the Training Center. My principal duty was to notify the chaplains of their orders to report to other posts, many of them being in foreign lands. Naturally, I appealed again for a new assignment. At last, there arrived a notice that a Catholic chaplain was needed in a “rainy, cool area,” which meant England.

Promptly, I made out the order and delivered it to myself, glad to be leaving Miami Beach and hoping that I could somehow be assigned to a division bound for combat on the European continent. That U.S. Army Chaplain School motto, Pro Deo et Patria — “For God and Country” — was ringing in my ears.