CCHA, Historical Studies, 61 (1995), 53-77
In the Day of Battle:
Canadian Catholic Chaplains in the Field,
1885-1945
Duff CRERAR
We lined up on deck just as we had done on schemes. I took the pyx from my tunic pocket and received Holy Communion; then as shells screamed and whistled and our planes droned above I gave my men a general absolution.... It was seven o’clock.... Joel Murray from Cross Point and I landed together in the water but we could reach bottom and made shore. A young lad next to me fell, a bullet got him. I dragged him ashore, and there in that awful turmoil I knelt for a second that seemed an eternity and anointed him - the first of a long long list I anointed in action.... There on the open beach they lay dead or dying. It was our duty to get to them, so with our stretcher bearers and first aid men, Doctor Patterson and I crawled back again across that fifty yards of hell ... right next to you, perhaps someone you had been talking to half an hour before, lay dead. Others dying, might open their eyes as you reached them. By the little disc around their neck I knew their religion. If Catholic, I gave them Extreme Unction with one unction on the forehead, but whether Catholic or Protestant, I would tell the man he was dying and to be sorry for his sins, and often I was rewarded by the dying man opening his eyes and nodding to me knowingly... 1
Father
R.M. Hickey’s first hour on Juno Beach, rendering the traditional services of
the military chaplain, made a deep impression on the men of the North Shore
Regiment, recurring even in this fiftieth anniversary year of the Normandy
landings.2 Yet the figure of the chaplain, praying, giving Sacraments,
comforting the dying, preaching in the field and burying the dead has been part
of Canada’s Catholic heritage since the days of New France, creating a
tradition which, in the place of formal training, served as an invaluable
model for the neophyte padres who served in Canada’s twentieth century wars.
Nevertheless,
the padre’s life in the field remains a shadowy memory in the warrior lore of
most Canadians. This paper will trace the field ministry of Canadian military
priests from the days of the Northwest Rebellion to the middle of this century.
In the era before Cold War anxieties stimulated Canadians to embody a standing
Army (and a permanent cadre of chaplains), no cleric hanging about militia
camps and regimental church parades prepared too seriously for wartime
ministry. Yet, occasionally, and especially during World Wars I and II, they
confronted battlefield realities for which no seminary or summer camp could
prepare them. By 1939, both the torch and the accumulated lore was being handed
on personally from one generation to another, as former altar boys and students
of the Great War veterans exchanged cassock for khaki. Their experiences
confirmed that, though technology, tactics and the scale of war itself had
changed from that waged on the smoky prairies of the Canadian Northwest or the
sweltering killing grounds of South Africa, there remained a strong continuity
in the field work of the padre which linked them to the pioneers of 1885 and
1900.
By 1914,
Canadian Roman Catholics could point to a long tradition of priests who had
made heroic names for themselves on the battlefield. For nationalistic Irish,
English and Scottish Catholics, the roots of padre lore went back to Loyalists
such as John McKenna and Edmund Burke, who served in Upper Canada as
stipendiary chaplains to British regiments and colonial garrisons. One of the
most famous was Alexander Macdonell, chaplain to the Glengarry Fencibles, who
had settled with his veterans in Canada after 1802, and rejoined the colours
when the regiment was revived in 1813. These men cast the first mould of heroic
fighting priest into which later clerical material was to be poured. Holding
high a large crucifix, it was said, Macdonell led his military parish in the
storming of Odgensburg, as well as a dozen other regimental exploits in Upper
Canada.3 French Canadian Catholics, too, could point to their
own heroes in vestments: during the 1813 American invasion of Lower Canada, two
French Canadian priests were appointment chaplains to militia regiments serving
in the Chateauguay campaign.4
After
Confederation, however, sectarian and racial differences made it far more
difficult for patriotic priests to follow in their footsteps. George Etienne
Cartier’s appointment of Father Marie-Joseph Royer, OMI, as chaplain to the
French Canadian militiamen in the 1870 Red River force, became so entangled in
controversy with Protestant sects that subsequent politicians vetoed any form
of permanent chaplaincy. In 1885, even after the fighting had begun in the
Canadian Northwest, Minister of Militia Adolphe Caron did not appoint padres
for the contingent he was mobilizing. Catholic officers of the 65th Carabiniers
de Montreal and 9th Voltigeurs de Quebec, however, pressed him to make such
“absolutely necessary” appointments. This time, after all, there was danger of
death! The Voltigeurs had their candidate – F.X. Faguy – at the ready, and the
Carabiniers already had recruited Philemon Prévost, OMI, with the backing of
church authorities. Caron relented. When word of the Catholic appointments
reached Protestant ears, ten more non-Roman Catholic chaplains, chosen by regimental
ballot, soon caught up to their regiments in the field.5
To Catholics following events in the field,
their insistence on active service padres was well worth the argument with
Caron. Both war reporters and veterans immortalized Prévost and Faguy in their
tales told Canadian Catholics back home. At the battle of Frenchman’s Butte,
Prévost, in white surplice, blessed the Carabiniers before the attack on Big
Bear’s band, and, when a casualty was left behind, Prévost and the force
commander, General T.B. Strange, went back with a stretcher and rescued him
while under heavy fire.6 Father Faguy, on the other hand, did not see
any fighting, as the 9th garrisonned the railway stations in Southern Alberta,
but there he shone as the dedicated priest, shuttling back and forth between
detachments by handcar to give Sacrament to all, exuding bonhomie in all
directions.7 Thus the two
priests created a contemporary model of military ministry which became almost
the ideal in the minds of Canadian soldiers and civilians.
Unfortunately for the regiments, however,
sectarian controversy still followed padre appointments, when Protestant
politicians learned that Prévost preached crusading sermons to French Canadian
soldiers on their vocation as missionaries of Catholic civilization, and
Protestant onlookers objected to the sight of a Catholic chaplain leading a
Corpus Christi procession that summer. These incidents, along with the Riel
trial, stirred up the bigotry which justified Ottawa’s view that chaplaincies
should not be maintained in peacetime.8 Militia officers, however,
kept Faguy and Prévost illegally on their paylists back at the armouries. As
the commander of the 9th Voltigeurs, Lt. Col. Roy, explained to
Militia headquarters, a padre was necessary in the regiment, to keep up the
image of the unit and aid recruiting.9
By 1896, the insistence of Roy and other
officers brought Ottawa to concede the creation of a peacetime militia
chaplaincy.10
The wisdom of this measure, to Catholics,
was proven during the South African War. In spite of outraged howls from
Orangemen in Parliament and the Protestant press, the heroic work of Father
Peter O’Leary, with the Royal Canadian Regiment at the battle of Paardeberg,
put the Anglican and Presbyterian chaplains of the unit completely in the
shade. When Boer sharpshooters brought the regiment’s attack to a halt,
O’Leary and the Medical Officer fearlessly moved about in broad daylight,
succouring wounded, bringing water, encouragement and last rites as needed:
Then there was that
noble, self-sacrificing priest, Father O’Leary, who has time and time again in
this war proved himself worthy of the Victoria Cross. Than he there was no
braver soldier in South Africa. Wherever a wounded man needed succour he was
there; where a dying lad needed to be shrived he was to be found. Out of the
firing line he could not keep, and his escapes were miraculous. Dangers,
privations, hardship effected him but lightly; his only thought was for the men
he had come to Africa to sustain and comfort in the hour of danger and
sickness, and the only commander he heeded was his duty. He was courting death
in the firing line that bloody Sunday in February, but death passed him by; and
yet how close it came!11
That night, it was
O’Leary who laid the dead to rest by moonlight, making an indelible impression
on the minds of the Royal Canadians. O'Leary’s determination to follow his men
through all privations, however, led to his collapse with enteric fever
contracted from contaminated water, and evacuation to Canada after weeks in a
British hospital. Just a few days after Paardeberg, the fighting priest of the
Royal Canadians ended up out of the war and headed for home.
Mentioned in dispatches, lionized by the
Canadian press, O’Leary set a new standard for the chaplaincy until 1914, when
another South African veteran, Sam Hughes, was creating the Canadian Expeditionary
Force (C.E.F.). Among the first he appointed at Valcartier in 1914 was O’Leary
himself, sixty-four years old but still game, who served as hospital chaplain
in France until recurrent pneumonia forced him to retire. As he was responsible
for approving all chaplains nominated by unit commanders, Hughes’s preferences
for genial and ebullient priests like O’Leary, whatever their other
qualifications for chaplaincy, predominated in the recruitment of the first
C.E.F. Roman Catholic chaplains. Events proved Hughes too partial to South
African veterans, French-speaking clerics and headline-gathering priests, some
too old, others too taken to drink or Tory politics to be adequate pastors in
the field.12 Most glaring of all poor appointments was that of A.E. Burke, who
passed himself off as Catholic head of the Chaplain Service, scandalizing
priests overseas and clerics at home until forcibly retired during the Chaplain
Service reforms of early 1917. Hughes’s system discouraged church or episcopal
consultation on the numbers or quality of priests appointed, and discouraged
church organization of its own chaplaincy boards until late 1916. Then padre
scandals and protests from an outraged Catholic hierarchy, advised by returned
padre-casualty J.J.O’Gorman, caused the removal of Hughes’s immensely unpopular
Anglican (and Orangeman) Director of Chaplain Services.13
As a result of this maladministration, the
first two years of war for Canadian Catholics overseas were characterized by a
perennial shortage of priests, especially English-speaking. In the summer of
1915, for example, only one English-speaking chaplain was available to serve
Anglophone Catholics in two whole divisions of the Canadian Corps. Meanwhile,
the three other – Francophone – priests were having difficulty being accepted
by non-French-speaking units.14 Whatever the language and cultural problems,
the sight of four chaplains trying to cover a parish of approximately 7,000
Catholic men scattered across a three-Division Corps front proved that more
chaplains were needed in the field!15 Consequently,
throughout the first years of the war, both padres and the church press
repeatedly complained of soldiers not having access to Sacraments, and
suffering from a lack of priests of their own language (Gaelic as well as
Englishspeaking).16 Service conditions were made even more arduous
by the British Army taking horses away from padres in early 1917, on the
grounds that it was a waste of horseflesh and hay. This loss of mobility added
to the labour of getting out to scattered detachments for mass – without
breakfast – and the loneliness of padres, whose meetings became even fewer and
far between.17 The result, combined with the arduous conditions of war, was frequent
chaplain burnout – and outrage at the mismanagement of the Service.18
These vexations were relieved, gradually,
by the reforms initiated by the Borden government and Canadian commanders
overseas in the winter of 1917. Thereafter, the Knights of Columbus ably provided
welfare agency support for Catholic padres and, under the chaplains’ direct
control (in contrast to the Protestant padres continually at loggerheads with
the fiercely independent YMCA) established the famous chain of Catholic Army
Huts, stocking supplies of religious artifacts, Holy Name Society forms and
canteen goods. The Catholic Army Huts and Chapel Tents were considered a great
aid by the padres, and most attributed higher turnouts for Sacraments to having
their own portable chapel tents.19 Most importantly, the number of priests
steadily grew, until, by the summer of 1917, most complaints about chaplain
shortages were resolved.20
As a result of these reforms, the
battlefield ministry began to grow to the level of effectiveness that padres
demanded. In 1915 they had been too few and far between.21 They had no time
to venture into the trenches, despite clear signs that this was necessary to
win the affection of the men and assist them where they fell. Forced to wait in
the rear, or minister at Casualty Clearing Stations as men were brought in long
after being hit, often unconscious, dead or dying, most padres chafed under
British and Canadian army regulations which forbade them access to the front
line.22 A few, such as Ambrose Madden, a forty-one year-old Oblate from
Vancouver, however, against advice (and regulations) followed their units into
the line. There Madden earned a Military Cross, the first decoration for
Canadian chaplains of all denominations, for binding up wounds, leading blinded
men to dressing stations under fire, and digging out others buried by shelling.
His cheerful courage was credited with steadying the men and won general praise
from the officers.23 After the Mount Sorrel battle, fought in June
1916, Corps Commander Julian Byng made it clear that all his padres would be
welcome to serve in the front line, and the British Army soon withdrew its
regulations forbidding padres to go ahead of the dressing stations.
This new attitude paid dividends during the
Battle of the Somme, as chaplains rotated from dressing stations to regimental
aid posts as their brigades went into combat. Chaplains found the new
opportunities exhilarating and dangerous: Father J.A. Fortier, with the
cavalry, won his Military Cross for care of wounded under fire, but J.J.
O’Gorman was maimed by shellfire when bringing his wounded in off the
battlefield.24 Problems still cropped up, however, over where priests might best serve
in battle: in trench warfare, should the padre be in the brigade dressing
station, with the wounded collected and brought to him by stretcher bearers
down the communication trenches, or should he isolate himself in a forward Regimental
Aid Post, in the hopes of getting to casualties still conscious (and perhaps
too close to death’s door to make it all the way back to the station)? Doctors,
too, sometimes resented their presence. On the Somme front, some Medical
Officers told padres they were getting in the way at the aid posts.25 On the other hand,
padres themselves noticed a growing devotion among their troops as the
deadliness of the war was impressed on them: at least, the confessions grew
increasingly fervent when punctuated by shellfire.26 This was widely
contrasted to the apocryphal story of the recuperating Canadian safe in an
English hospital who requested a priest: when the padre arrived, the patient,
though heavily bandaged about the legs, dove through an open window and struck
out for a nearby wood, followed closely by his would-be comforter calling,
“Come back, my son, Come back!”
Where did a padre do the most good? The
question occupied Canadians throughout the great 1917 battles: Vimy Ridge, Hill
70 and Passchendaele. At Vimy, the epitome of fixed positional warfare,
non-Catholic padres emerged from tunnels and attack trenches carefully located
as close to the objectives as possible. As their attacking battalions swept
over the top and down the far side of the ridge, they cleaned out enemy
trenches and turned captured dugouts into first aid posts. Senior Chaplains,
however, still placed the Catholic priests at central dressing stations well
behind the attack line, where they could see the largest number of wounded and
give last rites to the dying.27 Yet priests were not satisfied, and in the
subsequent fighting a few, again led by Ambrose Madden, challenged the
orthodoxy, winning praise for intrepid rescues during trench raids.28
Some officers and Senior Chaplains,
however, still frowned on priests scattering their efforts over an extended
battlefield. Madden himself was forced to see the wisdom of those who argued
for a conservative policy at Hill 70, the hotly-contested struggle for the high
ground north of Lens which the Canadians took part in that August. He tried to
cover the three Regimental Aid Posts of his brigade by going forward to visit
them, one by one. He never made it beyond the first two: the intense artillery
fire playing over his sector and the hectic activity with wounded and dying in
his first station absorbed all his time and energy. Unable to bring the wounded
on stretchers down into the dugouts, Madden spent the worst day dressing
wounded, praying and anointing in the open, hastily burying the dead in circles
around him, as the bodies decomposed so quickly in the August heat.29 Clearly the
dilemma remained unresolved: was it not necessary that a few Catholic men die
without ministry, so that the padres could see the many in the dressing
stations?
The condition of
the battlefield at Passchendaele that autumn, which ruled out the
highly-organized and tightly scheduled rotations of Vimy and Hill 70, provided
both sides of the debate with more ammunition. Veterans could not recognize
their old battle haunts of 1915-1916: rain and ceaseless shelling had turned
them into miles of reeking, murdered earth. Getting into the front line meant
taking a nightmare journey along slippery “duckboards” in darkness, harassed by
intense shelling and aerial bombing. For stretcher bearers it meant hours of
deadly and exhausting labour, requiring from six to sixteen bearers to
extricate each casualty from the ooze. Scattered among the blasted ridges and
hollows were small concrete emplacements built by the Germans and dubbed
“pillboxes” by the Canadians. The only safe shelter above ground, these were
commandeered by officers, medics and padres for first aid and command posts.
Here, however,
conditions and not policy dictated chaplain tactics. Most Protestant padres
were sent up with their home unit, told to find a pillbox and stay put, close
to the men. There they would at least be able to comfort casualties during the
long wait for evacuation. Clearly, many men would never survive the long carry
back to the dressing station, even if they were brought alive to the aid post.
Yet initially, most Catholic chaplains were still stationed in the dressing
stations. Before long, though, a few priests, such as Fathers R.A. Macdonnell
and W.L. Murray (with the 4th Division), found they were needed to patrol the
evacuation route between aid post and dressing station, to anoint those who
were not going survive the middle passage. Both men were convinced that waiting
back at the station was a mistake. Eventually the exhausted Macdonnell was
forced to return to the dressing station, while the burly and indefatigable
Murray roamed the muddy approaches, especially the Zonnebeke road, visiting
dying men at relay posts and ambulance rendezvous further forward.30
Another encouraging discovery was the
warmth and devotion they discovered when forced into close contact with the men
in pillbox or aid post. Combat reports gathered by Father Francis French
repeatedly stressed how men were often reconciled to the church in the last
minutes of their lives. After three days at an advanced dressing station set up
against the infamous “Tyne Cot” pillbox, Father R.C. MacGillivray related:
Some days previously I had the Catholics of certain
Brigade paraded to Church. As I was in the Confessional the Officer in charge
entered... “something prompted me to come and have a talk with you”...I told
him it was undoubtedly his mother’s prayers.... “She sent me a Sacred Heart
Badge last night, and I know she always prays for me. Father I will go to
Confession” and he went. It was his body I found among the dead, and as I
covered it up with a blanket I said a little payer to St. Monica ...the second
day of the show a man was brought in in a dying condition, calling aloud for a
Priest. I went up to him and he said, “Are you a Holy Roman Catholic Priest?” I
told him I had grave doubt as to the ‘Holy’ but was unquestionably a Catholic
Priest. “Father, I am dying, I want you to baptise me.” After a short
instruction I administered the first and last Sacraments. Near him on a
stretcher was a boy shot through the throat whose eyes were becoming glassy. I
placed my hand on his forehead, and as he looked at me and then smiled, I
recognised one of my men. Laboriously he removed a ring from his finger, and
placed it in my hand. I bent down to hear what he had to say, and was rewarded
by a faint whisper ‘Souvenir, Father.’ The effort was too much and he relapsed
into coma and was hurried away. The ring is in my possession; it may have cost
a franc, but I value it above money....
MacGillivray’s
report reflects the pastoral impulse which drove chaplains closer to the front
of battle in the Great War. Concluding his lengthy Passchendaele report, he
mused:
Even as I write
this report, I can in fancy see their eager faces and hear their sincere,
“Good-bye Father, Pray for me.” These words kept ringing in my ears yesterday
as I said Mass for the noble boys we left in Belgium. The life of a chaplain is
usually a hard one, and as he struggles along, the indifference of those who
should know better frequently causes him to ask the old question, ‘cui bono?’.
But on the other hand when he sees the courage of his men and their trust in
God, when he receives back to the fold men who for years scoffed at religion;
when men not of his faith grasp his hand and ask to be remembered by him as
they go to face death, he is amply rewarded for his toil. I would not exchange
these few hours in the mud and cold for years of peaceful parish work.31
What was evident,
too, at Passchendaele, was that pushing priests forward towards the front line
would eventually cost some their lives: even after the attacks were over, when
priests found time to get up forward to their home units, the passage from rear
to pillbox nearly killed them. MacGillivray recalled the walk over shell-swept
walkways as a hell of fire, gas, hunger and thirst, while the dead lay thick on
both sides of the board walk, and wounded men cried out from shellholes asking
for stretchers. Wounds and honours were plentiful Passchendaele outcomes for
padres: Father T. McCarthy was hospitalized temporarily by poison gas, while
F.P. Lowry and F. Costello were pulled from combat with battle exhaustion.
Fathers J.G. Coté and W.B. Carleton, on the other hand, were recommended for
battle honours.32
Passchendaele thus made it abundantly clear
that the current allotment of four priests to a division, while better than that
of 1915-1916, was nevertheless completely inadequate to the needs of Catholics
under fire. Either greater numbers, or greater mobility was needed in future.
It also provided the inspiration to push for priests spending more time in the
line and under fire: the quality of their ministry depended upon their freedom
to meet the men where they fell, or as near as possible. Whether or not they
would be able to meet such a challenge, with their few numbers, remained an
object of great concern to senior Catholic chaplains, such as W.T. Workman, in
London, and F.L. French at Canadian Corps headquarters.
A bright spot, however, was the arrival
before Passchendaele of the first of the Catholic Army Huts
tent-canteen-chapels: one for each division, and another for the 22nd
Battalion. By the spring and summer many more had appeared, offering shelter
and recreation as well as worship for padres and Catholic soldiers, and forming
a new base of operations for the religious work priests intended to prepare the
men for the 1918 offensives. Plans for devotional campaigns by the Holy Name
Society and Sacred Heart dedications, however, were interrupted in early 1918,
when the German spring offensive pulled the Canadians into holding long
stretches of the line while the British and French struggled to survive. Father
Maurice de la Taille, padre to the Canadian Cavalry Brigade, recalled seeing a
wounded man in one dressing station with serious facial wounds. When asked if
he wanted Communion, he could not speak, but simply wrote “Yes” on the canvas
side of the ambulance in his own blood.33 During the same
period, Father B.J. Murdoch observed a Highlander stop by a mortally-wounded
pal he had just annointed: “‘What will I tell your people at home’... ‘Tell
them – ’ he laboured a little for breath – ‘tell them,’ he repeated, ‘I had the
priest!’.”34
Now units spent up to two months in the
line, under intense shelling, forcing chaplains to use the ancient chalk caves
at Ronville (near Arras), or burlap and corrugated-iron huts amidst
heavily-shelled clearings as chapels when in reserve or, scrambling from aid
post to dressing station visiting their flocks up front, always carrying along
their ciborium, with consecrated Host.35 During one of
these hasty visits, Ambrose Madden was wounded for the second time by
shellfire. Father A.B. Coté, too, was wounded.36 Worse was to
come. During a gunnery duel in the Arras sector, the chaplain to the 22nd
Battalion, Rosario Crochetière, took shelter for the evening in a battalion aid
post. Early in the morning, the sandbagged hut took a direct hit. There were no
survivors. B.J. Murdoch, then ministering to the 3rd Brigade, received the news
at breakfast: “Not a year before he had sung the great open-air Mass at Witley
Camp when the Catholic soldiers had been consecrated to the Sacred Heart. Just
yesterday he had gone to the Sacred Heart to receive the reward of his
stewardship. I sat back from the breakfast and wondered who would be next.”37 Previously
Crochetière had confessed privately that he was nearly paralysed with fear
before going into action. Now his remains were buried at Berneville by his
Catholic colleagues.38
It was a thoughtful
group of Catholic chaplains who set out in the summer of 1918 to prepare their
men for the fall offensive, which all hoped would be the last of the war. This
sense of urgency was met by renewed efforts of both the home church and the
Chaplain Service to be ready for the fray. At the end of May, Bishops Michael
F. Fallon and G. Gauthier arrived, to meet with chaplains and Catholic troops,
and encourage them with addresses on faith and war. The Holy Name Society
campaign by Father R.A. Macdonnell, a Canadian Benedictine of the 4th Division,
raised so much interest and sympathy among troops of all denominations, that it
was endorsed by senior officers and resulted in pledges against profanity being
signed by several thousand soldiers, many of them Protestant. Many chaplains
during the fall battles were deeply moved on discovering signed pledge cards in
the personal effects of the dead they found on the field.39 The anticipation
of victory as well as more intensive operations may have added to the almost
revivalistic tone among Catholic chaplains in the Canadian Corps. Moreover,
additional priests arrived, as the Army and Canadian Government added to the
numbers at hand. Thus, when the Canadian Corps slipped into their positions
before Amiens on August 7, 1918, ambitious plans, including the Catholic
chaplains, were about to be realized.
On August 8, 1918, eighteen Canadian
chaplains went over the top in the first waves of attacking troops. Supported
by supplies from the YMCA, Salvation Army and Catholic Army Huts, Roman
Catholic as well as Protestant chaplains roamed the entire Corps area, with
immediate access to men wherever they were hit. The provision of more chaplains
and their mobility the open warfare of
the breakthrough the fighting troops made that day facilitated the close
ministry which Madden and others had tried to provide earlier. For the less
severely wounded, there now were extra Catholic priests waiting for them in the
rear.40 Running or crawling through the field, front line chaplains located
wounded who had been missed by medics, offering, with machine gun rounds
scything the ripening grain, last rites where the men fell, instead of meeting
them hours later, comatose or dying, in the dressing stations.41
The dangers again became evident. A
Protestant chaplain was killed outright, while Madden was wounded yet a third
time, winning the Distinguished Service Order decoration for tending to
wounded under intense artillery and machine gun fire. Fr. Nicholson, following
a party of men whose officer had been killed, led them on to the final
objective, leaping into a German gun emplacement waving a walking stick and
calling on the startled gun crew to surrender. The 5th Brigade’s Fr.
Desjardins was winded by a near miss, but brushed it off as a slight
occupational hazard.42 Some of the reports from the Catholic priests
reveal a new kind of exhilaration, at both the stunning success of the assault
and their own sense of satisfaction at sharing dangers and seizing
opportunities for ministry which had not been permitted them in the past: as
Fr. Miles Thompkins crowed in one report, “I got my tail nearly shot off...
Certainly if I had a tail it would have been ‘na poo’.”43 W.L. Murray,
concentrating now on stretcher cases in the open (because walking wounded more
easily would make the dressing station on their own), was constantly harassed
by snipers hidden in the long grain, but his greatest annoyance was the
practice some medics made of removing all identification from the dead, making
it impossible to sort out Catholics from Protestants for burial. Three Catholic
chaplains received Military Crosses for their exploits in the field during the
Amiens operation.44
In the next few weeks of open warfare, the
new policy brought more priests into the fields of fire. Fr. French, with an
unprecedented number of twenty priests available, sent twelve forward with
stretcher bearers, leaving only six for dressing stations and two for burials,
almost the reverse of the 1917 pattern.45 Though few reports
were written in the last hectic days of the war and few formal services held,
the padres scattered across the Canadian Corps held brief devotional services
with small knots of soldiers, and dedicate the bulk of their time to the
wounded and dying. Catholic chaplains rotated between the field and dressing
stations, sometimes taking turns hearing confessions and celebrating mass in
local churches or the open air (when their units were in reserve and they could
work in pairs or threes). Chaplains found their men turning out in such large
numbers before attacks that last-minute confessions and masses were held with
men donning their equipment, and turning out with loaded weapons a few minutes
before pulling out for their start positions.46 Like his men, the
padre came to loathe or dread aerial bombing more than a barrage. He learned to
read the daily office while shelling sprinkled gravel on the pages of his
breviary, and draw strength from the encouraging letters of thanks sent him by
next of kin to the men he had ministered to.47 Catholic chaplains
found it especially satisfying that, led by Fr. Thomas McCarthy of the 7th
Brigade, the Chaplain Service, too, entered Mons with the leading Canadian
units on November 11, 1918. By then, five more priests had earned the Military
Cross, two more had been wounded, and Murdoch, at least, was clearly suffering
from battle fatigue, or, as it was known then, “shell shock.”48
The exhilaration of victory, however, soon
was replaced by the trials of an army in occupation and garrison duty. The
moral perils and pitfalls soon brought the venereal disease rate in the C.E.F.
to alarming proportions. Chaplains of all denominations joined with medical
officers to warn soldiers of the perils of leisure and lust. Catholic chaplains
renewed the Holy Name Society campaign to promote chastity among the troops on
leave. At the same time, they rallied the Chaplain Service to oppose mass
distributions of prophylactics with special lectures and sermons. Equally
effective were the efforts to enlist Cardinal Mercier, Belgium’s most
distinguished prelate, to have civic officials close brothels.49 By then word of
rioting in Canadian camps in England, especially Kinmel Park, in Wales, also
brought reports from other padres about their work toning down soldier
indignation and impatience with their demobilization plans.50 Clearly, by spring
1919, all the padres were relieved to get their men back to Canada, and their
own home clergy! In one of the last few official actions of the Service, John
O’Gorman and two assistants visited the Vatican in May 1919, for an audience
with the Pope. As O’Gorman reported on the eighteen field decorations earned by
Canadian chaplains, “the Pope, looking at the list, said ‘You have no
decoration.’ I answered no. At this Fathers Planet and Carleton chorused: ‘Il
était blessé’ –- and the Pope answered ‘You will be decorated in heaven’”.51 Other chaplains
received Papal commendation in a more tangible form: the bestowal of a Papal
Portable Altar on seventy-nine chaplains by Benedict XV.
In the difficult days of the peace,
Catholic padres worked to organize veterans. Among the leaders was Father F.M.
Lockary who assisted New Brunswick delegates in the founding of the Canadian
Legion between 1926-1927.52 Many were shocked and alarmed, however, at the
speedy dissolution of the Service by the Canadian Government. Nevertheless,
the lessons learned in the Great War were not forgotten by church or priest: in
any future war, they vowed, these lessons would not be disregarded, and old
mistakes not repeated.53
This became clear in the opening days of
the World War II. In order to avoid any repetition of the bitter disputes in
Ottawa and overseas, the Catholic hierarchy insisted that Catholic chaplains
be under their own separate but equal Chaplain Service. Bishop C.A. Nelligan
was appointed, by the Minister of Defence, as Head of the Roman Catholic Active
Service Force chaplaincy. In addition, a number of veterans of the Great War
re-enlisted to guide the opening years of chaplaincy anew, until old age or
changes in active service conditions forced them to leave the field. Padres
such as Ronald MacGillivray, Thomas McCarthy and G. Coté lent their expertise,
MacGillivray now as Senior Chaplain of a Division.
Significantly, many new padres, with no
previous militia or military experience, drew on the lore and legend of their
Great War forerunners. Books by and about chaplains such as Fr. William Doyle
of Britain, were seized eagerly, and last-minute interviews granted by Great War
survivors. A few of the newly-minted padres, such as R.M. Hickey, were even
able to consult their boyhood idols, such as Benedict Murdoch, author of the
World War I memoir, Red Vineyard, and model their own ministry after the
Great War experience. They quickly were reminded that the padre vocation was a
serious commitment: perhaps thinking of Crochetière, Murdoch reassured Hickey,
“Yes, go Father Raymond, you will make a good Chaplain. It will be a great
experience, and then if you are killed, well, you’ll save your soul.”54 Perhaps Murdoch
was thinking of the parting words of a British Carthusian on his own departure
for France in 1917: “Perhaps,” he said rapturously, “you’ll be a martyr.”55
By October 1940, at least eighty-four
Catholic chaplains were on full-time postings, with at least forty more
enlisted as part-time chaplains. Twenty-four had gone overseas, and many more
would follow over the next five years.56 While the early
years of preparation in Britain, again, seemed to lead officials and some
officers to think of padres as rear area adjuncts, soon the old lessons and dilemmas
reappeared, which seemed insoluble unless chaplains could get into the forward
area. In the meantime, the days of waiting – which stretched out to three or
four years – in Britain, brought back to most chaplains the perennial problems
of training, morale, and morality. As before, the best chaplains took part in
training – including weapons drill – with their men, and kept busy with
entertainment and welfare work, as well as spiritual ministry.57 Occasionally
collisions with commanding officers who distrusted Catholics, and padres in
general took place. Most taxing, to wisdom and tempers, however, were the countless
cases of moral deterioration – “woman trouble” – as it was dubbed, marital
infidelity, or sudden romances which kept men coming to the padres for advice.58 Some chaplains
seemed relieved to set sail for Italy and Normandy, if only to separate the men
from their moral entanglements and temptations to indiscipline.
Although army chaplains could leave many of
these problems behind – at least until the mail caught up with them – naval and
air padres based in England were continually confronted with the moral and
domestic counselling dilemmas, without the prestige among the men that combat
duty could bring them. When an Air Force station chaplain tried to fly with a
crew on a bombing mission, he would be in deep trouble with the station
commander. Fr. J. Philip Lardie, with 428 Squadron, found this out when he
returned to Middleton St. George after riding with a Lancaster crew during a
1944 raid on Kiel. Though buffeted about the flight deck as the bomber dodged
fighters and flak, he was more wounded by the punishment meted out by Wing
Commander Chester Hull the next day for disobeying orders.59 Rightly or
wrongly, Air Force authorities were convinced that a padre going missing over
Germany was both politically and militarily bad for morale. Nevertheless,
station padres had their own brushes with war’s horrors, as damaged aircraft
crash-landed and burned, dead and wounded crewmen had to be recovered,
identified and buried, and letters written to next of kin. Some of the hardest
duties involved making calls to families whose loved one had gone missing over
Germany the night before.
In both Italy and Northwest Europe,
however, army chaplains began the old pilgrimage from rear to front edge of
battle once again. This time, technology – in the form of the light truck or
“jeep” – made it possible for padres to approach the 1918 dream of ubiquity.
Unlike the Great War, when Army authorities had taken away their horses in 1917
as a waste of resources (leaving fasting Catholic chaplains to hike the miles
between detachments to say mass) padres now had the vehicles to spread their
small numbers over a wide front. While bunking with Brigade or Artillery and
Ambulance headquarters, individual priests, such as A.J. Barker, with the
First Division in Italy, now could make visits to separate units, drive wounded
back for treatment and keep up with the line of advance: frequently at the
side of the Medical Officer, closely supporting his own men in attack.60
Nevertheless, the
life of the solitary priest with a Brigade was often a lonely one, which encouraged
many to team up with the more broadminded among the other Protestant chaplains
in his formation, for conversation, mutual support during combat, and
occasional stunts or time off duty. Many Protestant memoirs, such as those of
R.O. Wilkes or Waldo Smith, noted that their appreciation and erstwhile
friendships with priests grew into relations of mutual trust and deep respect.61 They would read
prayers over each other’s dead when combat and hot weather made immediate
interment necessary, and their men came to hear each other’s sermons, though
intercommunion was still out of the question. With jeep and radio, these
chaplain teams kept in close touch, learning to minister without offending
denominational sensibilities of fellow padres or, more importantly, the men
who approved, even insisted on a less sectarian ministry from their chaplains.
Many padres felt privileged and accepted when, after proving themselves,
commanding officers would take them into their confidence, as well as consult
them on the state of morale in the unit.62
Catholic chaplains in both Italy and
Northwest Europe also encountered opportunities to minister which reminded them
of Murdoch’s and others’ experiences in the Great War. In Catholic countries
which had turned into battlegrounds, local civilian priests often were killed,
conscripted or otherwise absent from their parishes when Canadian chaplains
arrived. Soon their ministry involved baptisms, weddings, funerals and service
for the area’s civilians, until it was time to move on. In some parts of Italy
and France, the press of these flocks could even divert a conscientious
chaplain from his military parish until officers or a Senior Chaplain
intervened.63 Many
came from visiting the shattered homes of civilians with a renewed appreciation
of their Canadian homeland, and pride in the way many of their men shared
whatever they had with the victims of the fighting.64
Many found, as their predecessors had in
France and Flanders, the special mood of their pre-combat services both
awe-inspiring and exhilarating. Most tried to visit the scattered detachments
of their men bringing Sacrament once each week. Men who in England had avoided
confession or service now came, humble and sincere. The words of the service
took on special poignance: earlier memories of soldier devotions and the
peaceful hush of English camp outdoor services flooded into Hickey’s mind in
1944, as he buried many of these same men in the Normandy soil, just as
Murdoch, Macdonnell and MacGillivray had experienced at Vimy, Passchendaele and
Amiens.65 And all reported the appreciation and gratitude felt by men, as they
died, that they had received the ministry of the clergy in the hour of their
death.
As with their
predecessors, these chaplains faced the consequences of accompanying the men to
the front: Fr. F.J. Deloughery was captured by the Japanese at Hong Kong, while
padre Thomas Mooney, from Hamilton, Ontario, was killed by shellfire while
ministering to wounded a few weeks after D-Day: he was buried in the Canadian
cemetery at Eccloo, Belgium. As a tribute, the Protestant chaplains of his
formation served as pallbearers.66 On February 28, 1945, Fr. J.R. Dalcourt of
Rimouski was killed when his vehicle hit a land mine while returning to the
Régiment Chaudière from funerals at Bedburg. A few hours later, Hickey and Fr.
McCarney laid him to rest in the cemetery he had just left that morning.67 Like other priests
unhappy with rear area postings, Dalcourt had agitated for a front-line post
since D-Day. He had been with the regiment since November 1944, relieving the
battle-exhausted Father Huard. After surviving night visits to outposts under
fire, and a much talked-about stealthy Christmas Night visit to advanced posts
with Communion, his soldiers were saddened by news of his death in the
relatively calm rear area.68 For such priests, as for others who were
wounded, the military cost of discipleship was devastatingly real.
Finally, and most importantly, the padres rediscovered
the intensity and exhaustion of combat. The illnesses, wounds, deaths and
endless burials of members of their flock, often without sleep or rest, used up
the physical and moral health of more than one chaplain. A few weeks after
D-Day, Fr. Hickey could see the impact of combat on his men at mass: pale
faces, hollow eyes, strained expressions, disturbed sleep and bad dreams. He
soon found his teeth – like those of his men – chattering during a barrage, and
was appalled to discover that he, too, was losing weight and energy at an
alarming rate as combat wore them all down. Over time, padres found themselves
growing emotionally deadened by the weight of death and destruction, though,
often at the slightest stimulation, capable of sudden loss of control in
unexpected moments.69 Even leave to Britain left a padre such as
Hickey, like Fr. Murdoch in 1918, unable to settle down without his comrades,
the military routine, and even the sound of the guns to lull him to sleep.70
Although far more research remains to be
done on the pastoral experience of the World War II for Canadian chaplains,
some general conclusions may be drawn from juxtaposing their experience with
those of the Great War padres. First, chaplains in both wars noticed that the
padre encountered extremely high expectations from his men – a padre was to be
embodiment of all Christian virtues, especially courage and sincerity. He was
NOT to act or think like the other officers, but be, above all, a priest. All
chaplains learned of the absolute necessity of getting “up front” with the men
and acting as personal as well as official pastor, whenever possible. In any
way possible, even rear area chaplains learned that they must be willing to
share all the risks as well as activities of their men, which posed special
problems for Canadian air force and naval chaplains.
Chaplains of both wars found their emotions
stretched on active service. The time spent in aid posts with men, of soldiers
dying comforted by their ministry before they passed on, gave chaplains many
bittersweet memories, which often needed to be communicated to next of kin. As
much as most padres dreaded writing these letters, they often were consoled by
the grateful replies relatives sent, thanking the padres for whatever they had
done for their loved ones. In this respect, chaplains in both wars often
carried some of the responsibility for maintaining home front morale as much as
that at the front. Padres, too were deeply moved by the burial of their men,
often soon after reconciliation with the church, or in a field service
punctuated by noises of war. The emotional drainage they felt continually
tested their stamina, as did the physical demands of active service. Often they
needed to care for local Catholic civilians as well as soldiers, especially in
Italy, where, unlike France, many priests were not in close touch with local
people or had fled or been killed. Able to use local chapels freely, they were
impressed by “the universality of the Catholic faith”: able to cross all
national and military barriers, even with the enemy. In both wars, chaplains
felt, whatever the state of organization, supply or transport, that they were
too few on the field. Torn between absolutes, most chaplains faced the
universal dilemma of which soldiers, which positions, which units, which ranks
should receive priority? Here he was helped by greater mobility and speed of
casualty evacuation, thanks to the jeep, in the World War II!
In looking back, the field padre’s mind
often filled with traumatic memories: the smell of death, awe and horror at the
extent of destructiveness of man (especially after battles such as Cassino);
the horrors of burying men long dead and often blown to pieces or burned to
cinders, and incredible physical and spiritual exhaustion. Yet, most could find
plenty of redemptive memories: the beauty of Creation (significantly, often in
dawn and wildflowers) in midst of slaughter; of men reconciled to the church
after falling away; of most men not skipping Sacraments while in the field;
saying mass in the most unlikely places, yet with such poignant sincerity; of
hearing men saying the rosary while shells or aircraft screamed overhead. They
recalled chumming with Protestant padres and finding sectarian differences
fading into trust and respect, of former ecclesiastical enemies sharing use of
crucifix and of Protestant officers honouring Catholic rights; of Senior
officers taking them into confidence; of hospital and camp work: especially
pastoral counselling and writing long letters; and of no little national pride
in the quality of their men and how they lived up to their best national traditions
when on active service. For most, their war experience, harrowing, and often
leaving deep physical and psychic scars, was nevertheless a time of empowerment
and affirmation of their faith; of special faculties, of experiencing a
special kind of love and respect from their men, and a deepening of their own
faith.
The study of recent and contemporary
Canadian chaplaincy remains. Major areas still to be covered include a complete
survey of the World War II, of Korea, Cold War and peacekeeping operations. Of
particular interest must be the study of Canada’s Cold War/peacetime ministry,
a reversal of the role and work of the Canadian chaplain between 1945 and the
1990s, especially as the lore of war gave little guidance to these latter
padres, now encountered a standing force of men constantly in training and
emphasizing preparedness, but at peace and who with a type of congregation few
earlier padres would have been equipped to deal with by their field experience:
married soldiers and dependents living on bases requiring schools and chapels,
not dressing stations and aid posts.71 More work needs to
be done in the study of the padres’ relationship with the church through these
years.
Before these, however, it remains to stop and appreciate the contributions of the forerunners of today’s chaplaincy, in this anniversary year of Normandy – for the insights which ought not to be forgotten.