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