The Archbishop Wore Combat Boots. Nancy A. Collins
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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.
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.