Читать книгу The Archbishop Wore Combat Boots - Nancy A. Collins - Страница 13

CHAPTER 7

England and Combat

My transfer orders called for me to leave Miami for the embarkation camp at Taunton, Massachusetts, near Boston. While awaiting further orders, I was asked to celebrate Mass on Sunday at the coastal defense post guarding the Welland Canal. My curiosity was piqued as I spotted the gun emplacements on the coast. Were they there to repel Nazi submarines? I found that the coastal guns originally were placed to ward off invasion by the British fleet in 1812! Of course, now they would repel anything that the Nazis could send.

The crew at the coastal defense post was very friendly and appreciated my celebrating Mass. I had breakfast with two young officers, who complimented the crew. But one of the officers had an elitist complaint about the breakfast: it seems the sergeant in charge of the mess hall did not know how to properly “shirr” the eggs he had ordered. I was never more eager to serve my country — outside of the United States.

I was with a group of hastily trained, undisciplined infantry troops, and our hiking exercises took us across a pontoon bridge that crossed a small lake. The soldiers in front of me began to horse around on the bridge and their weight snapped the connection between two of the bridge sections, throwing me and another soldier into the lake. He screamed that he couldn’t swim, so I pushed him onto the broken pontoon section, which could support only one person. Then I had to strike out for shore on my own. I certainly learned that boots and a field uniform are a poor swimsuit. I didn’t complain about the incident because I feared any complaint might lead to a hearing, which would delay my embarkation.

Finally, we got the alert to board the Mauritania, a converted transatlantic passenger boat, for the voyage to England. At one time the Mauritania had held the speed record for crossing the North Atlantic; therefore, it required no armed convoy. It was supposed to be capable of outracing any German U-boat.

We had been told to expect cold and rainy conditions in the North Atlantic the next day, but when it turned out sunny and warm — and when we saw dozens of flying fish — we discovered that we had taken a circuitous route that brought us just north of the Bahamas, apparently to outrun a pack of German submarines.

The military had a solution for everything, especially for completing distasteful tasks. To ensure that every soldier received his proper shots before landing in England, medics would approach us with their loaded needles while we lined up in the mess hall for our two daily meals. That was a pretty efficient system.

In due time, we arrived in Liverpool. A group of dirty, hungry children gathered around us as we left the ship. As we stood in line for assignment to our camp, a Red Cross nurse went along the line cautioning us, “Don’t touch the children. They all have lice.” Well, we didn’t think giving them some candy would give us lice.

Liverpool was an industrial port city that looked grimy from years of war and aerial bombardment, but there was a feeling of dogged and unflagging determination. There was no trace of defeatism, although the people looked tired. They were “bloody, but unbowed.” The wartime atmosphere was completely different from that of the United States, where the rationing of some supplies and blackout regulations were daily inconveniences but not real privations.

To maintain their long-term resolve, the English were intransigent in holding onto their daily customs, such as a “spot of tea” in the afternoon. They were absolutely unrelenting in maintaining secrecy about anything relevant to the war. At times, they were even hesitant to tell you the distance to a port or an important manufacturing town. And, they didn’t answer any questions or speculate about the timing or the method of attack that the Allies were certain to launch on the continent at some point in the coming months. We Americans experienced a bracing feeling that we were close to participating in the war, and we looked forward to making our contribution, big or small.

I was assigned to an airfield near Wantage, Oxfordshire, about ten miles southwest of Oxford: a small town graced by an imposing statue of King Alfred the Great, who was born there in the ninth century. I was assigned to serve the airplane maintenance mechanics, test pilots, and pilots for special bombing targets. I was given an assistant, Tom Getty, an excellent Catholic who was likable and very popular with all the men.

I hit it off immediately with the commanding officer, Colonel Harris, a solid, practicing Baptist from Montgomery, Alabama. Colonel Harris was a member of the old breed. He was extremely worried that his soldiers would become engaged to the local ladies. When he learned I demanded solid proof from the men of the prospects for an indissoluble marriage by both parties, he appointed me the investigator for all marriage applications. Army regulations required that permission for marriage be given by the commanding officer of the unit. I insisted on genuine proof from the men that they had prudently thought out their decision, and I devised a simple test that would indicate how well the soldier knew his fiancèe. I had the soldier fill out a marriage application in triplicate, and often he would spell the name of his fiancèe differently on each copy. That was an immediate red flag. If that happened, I would present the three copies to Colonel Harris and note the disparity. That was the end of that application.

One nineteen-year-old soldier was so convinced his rights were being infringed by these regulations that he bugged the Colonel for days about the supposed injustice. But the Colonel remained firm. Three weeks later, the soldier came back with an application to marry another girl!

The Catholic men regularly practiced their faith, and the Baptist colonel certainly encouraged them. “You can stop your work any time to go to religious services,” he told his men. That standing order paid off in the soldiers being even more dedicated to their work.

The lack of immediate danger for our men at the airfield could have created a lethargic attitude among the troops. I decided to give the men lectures on the Catholic faith and encouraged them to get involved in helping a local beleaguered Catholic pastor. He had only a storefront for a church, and he needed help. As a preliminary step, I took up a collection of money among the men for his parish. It was a godsend to him and to his parish, as well as for our men. One week’s collection by our soldiers was equal to a year’s collection in his small parish.

Part of my duty was addressing the spiritual needs of the men when there was a plane wreck, and there were plenty of those. The airmen and aircrews had a Catholic chaplain at the airbase, but wrecks happened all over the area because of the frequently impenetrable fog conditions.

On my first night on duty, I was baptized into the life of an air chaplain. I received word that a bomber had crashed in pea soup fog while making an airfield approach. It was so foggy we couldn’t even find the crash site. My jeep driver, Tommy Getty, and I started out on an invisible road. I took a flashlight and held the light just a few inches from the ground to keep the wheels on the road. We followed the road until we thought we were directly across from the crash site. I left Tom in the jeep — no jeep, not even in the fog, was ever left unattended — and trudged into the darkness.

I had plenty of time to pray for guidance. I coursed up and down the field and then slipped on a piece of metal. I smelled some acrid smoke and went in the direction of the smoke. Through the fog, not far away, I could see a macabre sight of crushed metal, with smoke swirling up to the sky. A terrific fire had engulfed the remains of the engines and part of the fuselage. I circled the remains, looking for any signs of the crew. I prayed earnestly, “God, Our Father, into your hands I commend all who were in this plane. Be merciful to them. They were sacrificing their lives for the cause of freedom you have given us.”

I was hoping that somehow some of the bodies had been thrown from the plane by the force of the crash. I rummaged through the metal, looking for bodies or uniforms. I finally found a lone eagle insignia, completely torn away from the pilot’s uniform by the force of the crash. I picked it up as though it were a relic — it was all that remained of the brave crew. I said a prayer and gave conditional absolution, hoping that perhaps in the fog there was a body that I had not discovered — knowing that only the good Lord knew for certain.

As I returned to the jeep, holding only the eagle insignia, I just shook my head at Tom, confirming his sad premonition that we would find only a grave with nothing in it. We turned over the insignia to the officer responsible for it and glumly walked over to the mess hall as the dawn brought another day of war.

There was no “getting used to” this grim price of war. Even when occasionally a whole flight would return, with some of the pilots waggling their planes’ wings up and down as a sign of triumph as they landed, there was always the thought of what the next flight might bring — more victims, especially the civilians, left at the site of the bombing.

A less troublesome duty I took on was serving as the officer for the base dances. The colonel said he just hated doing it, and he asked me to take over as his delegate. I soon found out why he couldn’t stand it. The dances were open to all the noncommissioned officers and privates in the area, including the soldiers from the nearby truck company. The girls were all English from the surrounding area. The colonel always dispatched a personnel carrier for my use. If any girl desired to leave the dance hall and return home because things got too rowdy, I could send her home in the personnel carrier, manned by a dependable sergeant. It gave the girls a sense of security to use it if needed.

Most of my time chaperoning dances was spent answering questions from the English girls. A favorite question was, “I’ve known this soldier for several months now, and he wants me to marry him. He says he comes from a nice town in Texas. Is it really like one of our English villages?” I would reply, “I don’t know that town. My advice is for you to wait to get married after the war and for you to travel to take a look at the town and his family before you get married. Make him pay for the ticket, and be sure it’s a two-way ticket, just in case. If he really loves you, he’ll agree to do that.”

I knew of one case in which a GI in England changed the final words of his marriage promise from “until death do us part” to “for the length of the duration”!

D-Day Invasion

D-Day — June 6, 1944 — changed the whole atmosphere in England. The Brits were liberated from bombing attacks and no longer had to hide under tables when the warning sirens for bombs went off. The Allied forces were on the attack, and the English people were eager for any bit of news from the Western Front. A new spirit swept the camp. The end of the war could not be far off.

I heard the news about D-Day over the radio in England, and I was praying hard because I knew the stakes were as high as they could be. My brother Frank, who was in the invasion, said everyone prayed crossing the Channel. A Ukrainian American prayed in his mother tongue. Italian Americans did the same.

Much later when I came to New Orleans, I met engineer Frank Walk, who was a green soldier of only twenty-two when he landed on the beach in the Normandy invasion. His commanding officer was supposed to be in charge of beach traffic, but he psychologically broke down. Undaunted, Frank took over and coordinated the traffic to save the day. It was acts of heroism such as his that won the war. Frank, by the way, much later designed the papal altar we used for the great outdoor Mass by Pope John Paul II in 1987 at the University of New Orleans. He is one of the true unsung heroes.

In July 1944 we received word we were being transferred to an airfield in France to service the planes attacking Germany. The airfield was near Melun, a pleasant town about thirty miles southeast of Paris. Incredibly, our movements were held up for a few days because we had run out of typing paper, and everything had to be recorded in quintuplicate. The most serious difficulty was the theft of a package that contained the warm-weather flying gear for the pilots.

Moving to France brought us closer to the war and increased our rapport with both the pilots and the French citizens. Despite the catastrophic impact of the war, the French civilians retained their Gallic sparkle. The new post also brought more duties for me.

Our camp was near a large convent with an attached boarding school for girls in elementary grades. Because the French population was predominantly Catholic, I naturally had more contact with the local residents, the local pastor, and the civil authorities. The sisters were the first to make a request — that I celebrate Mass occasionally for them and their students. After the Mass, celebrated in a beautiful chapel (a rare treat), the Sister Superior had a list of questions. In perfect English, she asked, “Why do the English, and I think some of the Americans, dislike General DeGaulle so much?” “What will be the attitude of your country toward France after the war?” “Can you get some of your soldiers to help repair some parts of our building?”

The last question was easy to handle — until the soldiers realized there were no older girls enrolled in the school.

Colonel Harris, our commanding officer, enjoyed the welcoming attitude of the French and accepted an occasional invitation to dinner by some of the wealthy citizens. This led to his request that I accompany him to Paris, where he was called on official business. When his business was finished, he asked me to help him buy some French perfume for his wife. He asked, “What does Ma Peche mean?” I answered, “My sin.” He put the bottle down, saying, “No, never. My wife is back home by herself.” He finally settled for something safe — Shalimar, named after the famous garden of Lahore in Pakistan.

With the perfume secured, we went to a restaurant, where I informed the mâitre d’ how important the colonel was. The chef presented us with an exquisite filet mignon with a special bèarnaise sauce that he had developed. After the chef made a personal presentation at the table and finished with a bow, the colonel asked, “Where’s the ketchup?”

Despite the affluence of a few French families, the plight of the less fortunate was desperate. The Nazis had taken an immense toll on the food supply. Also, it was common to see French farmwomen walking with no stockings and wearing shoes made of cardboard and cloth.

Nevertheless, practically every French town that was liberated held a victory celebration, and I was asked to attend to represent the United States. At one celebration, the ostentatious mayor was dressed in his official sash and stood near the center of the town hall to receive guests and well wishers. He asked me to stand next to him. The dance was lively, and ironically, the most popular dance was the polka, which originated in central Europe, not in France.

The intermission produced a rush to the table for refreshments. Our mess sergeant had donated some hamburgers for the occasion, and the people were so hungry they devoured them immediately. After the intermission the mayor and I resumed our positions of honor. The first dance after the intermission was another polka. When a handsome airman with a beautiful young mademoiselle swished past us, all of a sudden a big hamburger popped out of her blouse, flopping down just in front of the mayor. With no hesitation, the mademoiselle bent down, snatched the hamburger from the floor, and slipped it back right between her breasts in her blouse. With no loss of dignity, the mayor stared straight ahead. Food is a precious commodity in a time of war.

The Catholic soldiers responded well to the lift that came from being in a Catholic country. Some politely asked me if it would be all right for them to attend Mass in nearby churches. I encouraged them to do so but also reminded them to be generous when the collection basket came around. As usual, I took up a collection for the benefit of the nearby church, which had been badly damaged. When I presented it to the pastor “for your church,” he demurred. “I cannot touch the church building,” he said. “It is a national monument. But I can take the money for the poor.” All the prominent French churches were controlled by their government.

As the summer of 1944 wore on, anticipation grew that the war was reaching its conclusion. That gave me an opening to tell the men to get themselves in good spiritual condition to return home — and not to propose to those pretty French girls. I continued my successful method of forestalling marriages by making the soldier fill out the application in triplicate, one sheet at a time. The French names, especially, were a puzzle to them, and that tripped them up.

The pilots were a very friendly but extremely competitive group. I found this out one day when the chief test pilot asked me to join him on one of his test missions. After about twenty minutes of all kinds of gut-wrenching maneuvers — Immelmann turns, upside down flying, steep climbs followed by feathering the prop, and steep dives that left my stomach about a thousand yards behind my body — it occurred to me he was repeating the same maneuvers.

“Why are you repeating the same thing?” I shouted. He shouted back, “Are you sick?” I replied, “No, not yet.” After several more maneuvers, the pilot asked again, “Are you sick now?” I answered, “No, but I don’t want any lunch.”

Finally, we came down, and when my brain had left my throat, I asked the pilot, “Why did you put me through all this?” Sheepishly, he replied, “The first time that I went through all those maneuvers, I got sick. I just wanted to prove that no chaplain was tougher than I.” I shot back, “Why didn’t you tell me that? I would have gotten sick for you in record time.”

As the winter of 1944 approached, we believed that the reeling German army would certainly collapse and surrender. I was still strongly dissatisfied with serving outside the combat zone and told the colonel, who saw no reason why I should be permitted to leave his command to join a combat unit. Finally, in December, we received the surprising news that the German army, under Field Marshal von Rundstedt, had smashed a gaping hole in our front in the Ardennes Forest section in Belgium.

Immediately, I went to see the colonel, who admitted, “Those fellows are fighting for their lives. The two airborne divisions, the 82nd and the 101st, are in a terrible position. Okay, you can leave.” Off I went to Paris, accompanied by my assistant Tom Getty, where I volunteered to join the Airborne. I was told that the 82nd needed a Catholic chaplain for its 505th Regiment, and orders were promptly cut assigning me to the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division. Now the trick was to find out where they were. No one knew exactly. I was told to go to the headquarters at Rheims, and someone there could point me in the right direction.

The severe weather that had allowed the Germans to launch their offensive also affected the weather in France. It was a bitterly cold drive in the jeep to Reims, but Tom was delighted to be of service for this mission. As we approached Reims it was like approaching a different planet. Fresh units were mixed with retreating, despondent, and weary soldiers. Reims was total confusion. Troops were trying to dig fortifications near the town, fearing the Germans might get there soon. Spying the cross on my uniform, soldiers asked for a blessing and asked me, “What’s the news? Where are the Germans?” I didn’t know any more than they did.

We finally found the Army headquarters, and everything was crisp and businesslike. Someone took a look at my orders and handed me a slip that would get Tom and me billeting for the night. It was too late to go to the front. We were told to come back in the morning, and we would be given instructions on where they thought the 82nd and the 505th were located. And then, as an afterthought, they told us there were no supplies of warm clothing and that we should hold on to what we had. I had a trench coat and as much warm clothing as I could get. I managed to get an insignia, a shoulder patch of the 82nd, which I sewed on my trench coat.

The headquarters was close to the center of town, dominated by the huge and magnificent Notre-Dame de Reims Cathedral, which seemed to brood over and defend the anxious groups of soldiers. The cathedral had been badly damaged in World War I and had been rebuilt and fully reopened in 1938 through the generosity of the Rockefeller Foundation. I had visited the cathedral during a vacation as a seminarian at the North American College, and I felt as though I was coming back to a second home, not as a visitor but as a member of the family. This time, I was coming to try to defend it.

I said a long prayer, asking the good Lord, through the intercession of the Blessed Mother, to help me discharge my duties to the men I would be serving. I was thrilled to know I was about to participate in the war that I had foreseen and that I was entering the active period of my chaplaincy.

The billet was a haven for officers and soldiers en route to the front and a few coming back from the front. I didn’t get much sleep because I was trying to get information from officers returning from the front. I needed to learn everything I could to understand how our troops were weathering the surprise attack.

The next morning at headquarters, I said good-bye to Tom, who decided he did not want to join the Airborne. I got into a truck that would take me to find the 82nd and the 505th. The driver was Lieutenant Solbjor of the 82nd Airborne, and to my surprise we were joined by a determined female war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn, the third wife of novelist Ernest Hemingway. We were seated on the front seat, which made conversation easy.

Lieutenant Solbjor did most of the talking, telling us that security was paramount because the Germans had taken a huge warehouse of American supplies at St. Vith. Many of the German officers and soldiers were dressed in our uniforms. Many Germans spoke English, making it easy for them to infiltrate the Allied lines. Some of the Germans were even dressed in cassocks, making it much easier for them to gain credibility. Therefore, the officers of the 82nd and their regiments placed a premium on secrecy concerning the exact location of the troops.

We had brought along “K” rations — 3,200-calorie nonperishable meals developed in the 1940s by physiologist Dr. Ancer Keys — and we stopped at one point to eat them. I learned that hunger was a good sauce; in fact, it was the only sauce that made “K” rations edible. Sometimes the only way to thaw out a frozen a “K” ration was to put it under your shirt. Thawing the food with your body didn’t improve its taste but made it edible.

In the afternoon, we drove off the main road, and Lieutenant Solbjor threaded through roads in the Ardennes. The snow seemed to increase as we drove along, the majestic pine trees mantled in snow like Christmas trees. Then, piercing the winter air, we heard the booming of distant heavy artillery, the crackling of rifle fire.

Finally, through the trees, we came to a clearing and a snowy field in front of us. Solbjor stopped the truck. “We’re in the territory of the 505th,” he told me. “If you walk across that field, you’ll find some elements of the 505th; they can take you to their headquarters. I’ve got to find the division headquarters. Good luck.” And off he drove with Hemingway’s wife.

I trudged across the open field carrying my Mass kit, wondering how to find the paratroopers. The snow was as high as my knees. It was very cold, and not a person, not a voice, was there to break the silence. As I neared the trees, a voice with a German accent rang out: “Halt!”

I halted. I thought to myself, “Was I to become a German prisoner before I even reached the 82nd?” Then I heard some muffled conversation, which I couldn’t comprehend. There was a long silence and then a sentence in German. I had to respond. “I know very little German,” I shouted, “but if you speak very slowly I might be able to understand.”

Then there was a brief pause. “Okay, come forward,” the voice said.

Two figures seemed to rise out of the snow. They were Americans: a lieutenant with piercing blue eyes and, next to him, a sergeant who seemed to be very unfriendly and distrustful. The lieutenant was of German descent from South Dakota, a Protestant, and very friendly. The sergeant was of Polish descent, a Catholic from the Midwest. I quickly showed them my orders, and the lieutenant explained the delay. “You’re wearing a trench coat, and we were not issued any trench coats,” he said. “The Germans got a lot of trench coats from the warehouses in St. Vith.”