THE JEWISH HOLYDAYS OF 1918 IN THE A. E. F.
My experiences as chaplain were as nearly typical as possible with any
individual. A few of the Jewish chaplains saw more actual fighting than
I did; a few were assigned to the Army of Occupation and saw the
occupied portion of Germany. But for nine months I served as chaplain in
the American Expeditionary Forces, first at the headquarters of the
Intermediate Section, Service of Supply, at Nevers; then with the
Twenty-Seventh Division at the front and after the armistice at the
rear; finally at the American Embarkation Center at Le Mans. I worked in
cooeperation with the Jewish Welfare Board; I saw Paris in war time and
after; I had two weeks' leave in the Riviera.
My commission as First Lieutenant Chaplain U. S. A. came to me on July
4th, 1918 at Great Lakes Naval Station, just north of Chicago, where I
was then serving as Field Representative of the Jewish Welfare Board.
Two weeks later I reported at Hoboken for the trip overseas. There I had
the good fortune to obtain a furlough of ten days before sailing so that
I was able to be back in Chicago just in time to see my newborn son and
daughter. I left when the babies were a week old to report back to
Hoboken again for my sailing orders and found myself at sea during the
tense and crucial month of August 1918.
The trip was the usual one of those anxious days--thirteen days at sea,
constant look-out for a submarine, but finally a mild disappointment
when we sailed into harbor without even a scare. We carried our life
preservers constantly and waited daily for the sudden alarm of a boat
drill. Our ship, the _Balmoral Castle_, was one of a convoy of twelve,
with the usual quota of destroyers accompanying us. Two days from
England we met a flotilla of destroyers; later two "mystery" ships
joined us and in the Irish Sea we were greeted by a huge Blimp or
dirigible balloon. With this escort we sailed down the Irish Sea, had a
glimpse of Ireland and Scotland and finally disembarked at Liverpool.
Our first impression was the flatness of a European metropolis when
viewed at a distance and its entire lack of the jagged sky-line of an
American city.
Our pleasurable anticipations of a view of Liverpool and perhaps a
glimpse of London were rudely disappointed. We disembarked about noon,
marched through side streets, which looked like side streets in any of
the dirtiest of American cities, lined up at a freight station, and were
loaded at once on waiting trains and started off for Southampton. All
that afternoon we absorbed eagerly the dainty beauty of the English
countryside which most of us knew only through literary references. We
were sorry when the late twilight shut off the view and we had to take
our first lesson at sleeping while sitting up in a train, a custom which
afterward became a habit to all officers in France.
Daybreak found us at Southampton in the rest camp; evening on the _Maid
of Orleans_, bound across the channel. We had not seen England, we had
no place to sleep and not too much to eat, even sitting room on the
decks was at a premium, but we were hastening on our way to the war. At
Le Havre we were again assigned to a British rest camp, where we
appreciated the contrast between the excellent meals of the officers'
canteen and the primitive bunks in double tiers where we had to sleep.
After two days of this sort of rest and a hasty visit to the city in
between, I received orders to report to the G. H. Q. Chaplains' Office
at Chaumont.
My first train journey across France impressed me at once with the
unique character of the landscape. The English landscape is
distinguished by meadows, the French by trees. The most realistic
picture of the English landscape is the fantastic description of a
checker-board in "Alice in Wonderland." In France, however, one is
struck chiefly by the profusion and arrangement of trees. They are
everywhere, alone or in clumps, and of all kinds, with often a formal
row of poplars or a little wood of beeches to make the sky-line more
impressive. In northern France the houses and barns are all of stone,
peaked and windowless, with gardens that seem bent on contrasting as
strongly as possible with the grayness of the walls. It seems as though
tiny villages are every few feet, and always with a church steeple in
the middle.
In Paris the first man I met was my old friend, Dr. H. G. Enelow, of
Temple Emanu-El, New York, who was standing by the desk in the Hotel
Regina when I registered. As the next day was Sunday, Dr. Enelow was
able to devote some time to me, taking me for a long walk on the left
bank of the Seine, where we enjoyed the gardens of the Luxembourg and
sipped liqueurs at a side-walk cafe at the famous corner of Boulevarde
St. Michel and Germain. Paris in war-time was infinitely touching. It
had all the marks of the great luxury center of the world: shops,
boulevards, hotels, and show places of every kind. But many of the most
attractive of its tiny shops were closed; the streets at night were
wrapped in the deepest gloom, with tiny shaded lights which were not
intended to illuminate but only to show the direction of the street. The
crowds were only a little repressed in the day-time, for the extreme
crisis of the summer had just passed, but with dusk the streets became
entirely deserted. Through Dr. Enelow I met also Dr. Jacob Kohn, who
with Dr. Enelow and Congressman Siegel constituted the commission of the
Jewish Welfare Board to outline its program for overseas work. Dr.
Enelow introduced me also to Mr. John Goldhaar, the secretary of the
commission, afterward in charge of the Paris Office of the Jewish
Welfare Board, to whom I shall refer more fully in another connection.
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 chateau 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 chateau was a queer
angular mediaeval 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, Epinal, 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.
Our services were held in the large Y. M. C. A. hut at the chief
barracks. The large, bare room was turned over to us for certain hours;
the workers closed the canteen and attended the services. And in return
I concluded one of the evening services fifteen minutes early so that
the regular clientele would not miss their semi-weekly motion pictures.
In fact, I found the Y. M. C. A. here, as everywhere, most eager to
cooeperate with me and to serve the Jews as well as the Christians in the
army. My cantor for most of the services was Corporal Cohen of New York,
although several other men volunteered for certain portions of the
prayers. The head usher was Sergeant Wolf, who looked after the hall and
the seating with the thoroughness characteristic of sergeants
everywhere. Among the congregation were ten officers, two nurses, and
three families of French Jews, as well as a mixed group of enlisted men
from every branch in the army, from every section of America and every
group of Jewry. The festival had caught us in a foreign land, in the
service of America, and it had brought us together as nothing else could
have done.
We wore our hats during the service because that was the natural desire
of the majority, who were of orthodox upbringing. Of course, a soldier
naturally wears his overseas cap under any circumstances and it would
have needed a special ruling to bring them off. The service was read out
of the little prayer book circulated by the Jewish Welfare Board, with
which about a fourth of the congregation were already provided from the
camps in the States. We read the abbreviated Hebrew service, then about
half of the prayers in English, and had an English sermon. The only
objection to these innovations came from the cantor, Corporal Cohen, a
young man with a traditional Jewish background, who had gathered the
other Jews in his company every Friday evening for a brief service and
was generally looked up to (although not always followed) as a religious
leader. My only way of convincing him was to inquire among some of the
other men as to the number who did not understand Hebrew. When he saw
that over half of the Jewish soldiers had no understanding of the Hebrew
service he withdrew his insistent request for a strict traditionalism
and I was saved the necessity of falling back on my military rank.
I was much amused after the several services at the number of young men
who came to me, complaining about Cohen's rendering of the services and
boasting of their own ability. I was able to give several of them the
chance in the ensuing days and found out that it is easy to get a Hebrew
reader, quite possible to find one who reads with feeling and
understanding, but utterly impossible to pick up in the army a cantor
with a trained voice.
Our arrangements were made under the approval of my commanding officer,
the senior chaplain of the post, and few features of our service were
more appreciated than the address of Chaplain Stull at our services on
the second day of the festival. I had hesitated to invite him, and was
therefore doubly surprised when he assured me that this was the third
successive year that he had preached at a Jewish New Year service: two
years before on the Mexican Border, the year before in training camp in
the States and now in the American Forces in France, Chaplain Stull was
a regular army chaplain of eighteen years standing, and his membership
in the Methodist Episcopal church was less conspicuous in his makeup
than his long experience in army life. His sermon was one of the
outstanding events of our holy season. His explanation of the vital
importance of the Service of Supply to the army at the front came with
personal weight for he had just come back from the fighting forces to
take a promotion in the rear. His moral interpretation of the
significance of each man to the whole army was the sort of thing that
the soldier needs and likes.
These services were unusual in that they were the first holy season
which most of the men had spent away from home. The war was still on
then; the St. Mihiel drive took place the day after Rosh Hashana; the
news from the front was usually good and always thrilling. We at the
rear were deeply stirred. Some of us had been wounded and were now
recovering; some were in training and were soon to leave for the front;
some were in the S. O. S. permanently. But the shadow of war was dark
upon us all. We were in the uncertainty, the danger, the horror of it.
We felt a personal thrill at the words of the prayers,--"Who are to live
and who to die; who by the sword and who by fire." We recited with
personal fervor the memorial prayer for our fallen comrades. Many among
us were eager to give thanks at recovery from wounds. Therefore, the
desire for a religious observance of our solemn days was all the
greater. Men came in from a hundred miles, often walking ten miles to a
train before they could ride the rest.
Brothers, long separated, often met by chance, soon to separate again
for an unknown future. I remember two--one a veteran of two battles, now
convalescing at a hospital, the other newly arrived from the States and
still in training. They met on Rosh Hashanah, each ignorant of the
other's whereabouts and the veteran not even knowing whether his brother
had arrived in France. The touching scene of their reunion had its
humorous side too, for the wounded soldier from the hospital naturally
had not a franc in his possession, and the boy from the States had
enough money for a real holiday and had reserved a hotel room with a
luxurious French bed. He was thus able to act as host for two happy days
and nights. But on Yom Kippur when the wounded soldier came again his
brother was not there. His unit had been ordered to the front and I do
not know whether they ever met again.
War had us all in its iron grip. I, for one, expected soon to have my
request granted that I be assigned to a combat division. Not that I
overlooked the need for Jewish work in the S. O. S., but the most
pressing need at that time was at the front, and I was looking forward
to taking up the more exacting duties there.
The three Jewish families of the city added a pathetic touch, for they
were glad indeed to attend a Jewish service and for the sake of the
soldiers were willing to sit through our English additions. Their
situation seemed similar to that of most recent immigrants of the United
States; the parents spoke both Yiddish and French, the young people like
ours in America, spoke chiefly the language of the country. It was both
ludicrous and touching to see American soldiers competing to exchange
the few French words they knew with the two or three Jewish daughters.
It was often their first chance for a word with a girl of their own
class, certainly with a Jewish girl, since they had left America. And
the fact that the girl with her familiar appearance could not
communicate with them on a conversational basis, did not seem to impede
their relations in the least. The isolated condition of these French
Jews in a city of 30,000 can only be compared to that of American Jews
in a country village.
While at Nevers I could not overlook the opportunity to visit the two
great hospital centers at Mars and at Mesves sur Loire. I visited from
ward to ward in both of them, paying special attention to the Jewish
boys and finding always plenty of occasion for favors of a hundred
different kinds. At that time we were short of chaplains of all
denominations in the army, so that even the hospitals had not enough to
minister fully to their thousands of sick and wounded, while the
convalescent camps with their hundreds of problems were almost uncared
for in this respect.
At Mars I held a service on Friday night which was fairly typical of
conditions in France. The service was announced as a Jewish religious
service, but on my arrival I found the Red Cross room crowded with men
of every type, including four negroes in the front row. Evidently it was
the only place the men had outside the wards, so they came there every
night for the show, movie, or service which might be provided. They were
not merely respectful to the service and the minority of Jews who took
part in it. They were actively responsive to the message I brought them
of conditions in America and the backing the people at home were giving
them in their great work abroad. These wounded men from the lines, these
medical corpsmen who might never see the front, were alike eager to feel
the part they personally were playing in the great, chaotic outlines of
the world-wide struggle. And they responded to a Jewish service with an
interest which I soon found was typical of the soldier, in his restless
attention, his open-mindedness, his intolerance of cant but love of
genuine religion.
The meetings and partings of war-time came home to me several times at
Nevers. I was called to see a young man in the hospital, suffering from
spinal meningitis. I found him a highly intelligent boy from Chicago who
knew a number of my old friends there. I was able to do a few minor
favors for him such as obtaining his belongings and notifying his unit
that he was not absent without leave, but simply locked up in the
contagious ward. But on his recovery the news went to his family in
Chicago to get in touch with my wife and a friendship was established on
a genuine basis of interests in common. At another time I was approached
at the Y. M. C. A. by one of their women workers who had heard my name
announced. She turned out to be a Mrs. Campbell of my old home town,
Sioux City, Iowa, and an acquaintance of my mother through several
charity boards of which they both were members. She was acting as
instructor in French and advisor to the American soldiers in Nevers,
while her husband, Prof. Campbell of Morningside College, was on the
French front with the French auxiliary of the Y. M. C. A.
Another interesting incident was my meeting with Mr. Julius Rosenwald of
Chicago, then touring France as a member of the National Council of
Defense. The Y. M. C. A. secretary asked me to introduce him to a
soldier audience in one of their huts. The first day I came, however,
Mr. Rosenwald was delayed and the boys had to put up with a new film of
Douglas Fairbanks in his stead, like good soldiers accepting the
substitution gladly enough. On the second day Mr. Rosenwald himself was
there and I had the pleasure of introducing him to an audience of about
five hundred soldiers, as varied a group as ever wore the American
uniform. His simple personal appeal was a direct attempt to build up
the morale of the troops through a hearty report of the interest and
enthusiasm of the people at home. He called for a show of hands of the
home states of the different men, then responded by reading letters and
telegrams from governors and other local officials. Mr. Rosenwald was
one of the very few official travelers in France whose trip was not
merely informative to himself but also valuable to the army. We in the
army grew to dislike "joy riders" so heartily that it is a positive
pleasure to mention such a conspicuous exception.
Another duty typical of the variety of tasks which welcomed me as a
chaplain, was to conduct the defense of a Jewish boy at a general court
martial. He asked to see me during the holydays, told me his story, and
I stayed over in Nevers a few days to act as his counsel. Since that
time I have frequently been called on for advice in similar cases, for
an army chaplain has almost as many legal and medical duties as strictly
religious ones. In this particular case circumstantial evidence seemed
to show that the young man had stolen and sold some musical instruments
from an army warehouse where he worked. He was only a boy, a volunteer
who had falsified his age in order to enlist. According to his own story
he was partially involved in the case, acting ignorantly as agent for
the real criminal.
The trial was quite fair, bringing out the circumstantial evidence
against him, and his sentence was as low as could possibly be expected.
So, with memories of friendships made, of work accomplished, of a new
world opening ahead, I left Nevers on September 20th after only
eighteen days of service. I had to report at Chaumont again to receive
my orders to join the 27th Division.
For two months after that no Jewish chaplain was stationed in the
Intermediate Section, which covered the entire central part of France
and contained many thousands of American troops, including everywhere a
certain proportion of Jews. Then Chaplain Rabinowitz reported at Nevers
temporarily and served for his entire time in France in various points
in the Intermediate Section, at Nevers, Blois and at St. Aignan.
I had been thrust into the midst of this tremendous, crying need for
service of every kind, religious, personal and military. I went to my
division to find the same or greater need, as the situation was always
more tense at the actual front. For three weeks I had ministered as much
as I could to the Jewish men scattered about Nevers and all through the
central portion of France. Now I left them for good. Their usual
greeting on meeting me had been, "You are the first Jewish chaplain or
worker we have met on this side." And unfortunately, the same greeting
was addressed to me every time I came to a new unit or city until the
very day I left France. The need among these two million soldiers was so
tremendous that a hundred times our resources would not have been
sufficient. As it was, we made no pretense at covering the field, but
simply did day labor wherever we were stationed, serving the soldiers,
Jews and Christians alike, and giving our special attention to the
religious services and other needs of the Jewish men.