Read an Excerpt
Sky Pilots
The Yankee Division Chaplains in World War I
By Michael E. Shay University of Missouri Press
Copyright © 2014 The Curators of the University of Missouri
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8262-7324-6
CHAPTER 1
"Sky Pilots"
THE CHAPLAINCY EVOLVES
Ever since 1775, when General Artemas Ward took command of the aggregation of militias surrounding Boston, chaplains have been a part of what would become the United States Army. In fact, the Provincial Congress "was practically flooded with offers from patriotic preachers who wanted to serve," including Dr. Samuel Langdon, president of Harvard College, though the overall spiritual effect may very well have been minimal. In spite of twice-daily church services and an abundance of clergy, profanity persisted throughout the army. The Continental Congress weighed in a year later, when it authorized the recruitment of chaplains, and George Washington himself followed up with General Orders dated July 9, 1776, in which he directed that a chaplain be assigned to each regiment. Commanding officers were ordered to seek out, "persons of good characters and exemplary lives." Nevertheless, nearly 150 years would pass before a Chaplain's Corps would be formed and integrated into the Army after the close of the First World War.
ELIHU ROOT
Beginning in 1903, the truly transformational effects of the fundamental changes to the Army cannot be overstated, and they were primarily attributable to the vision and executive ability of Elihu Root. A successful New York attorney, Root was tapped by President William McKinley to be his Secretary of War, following the departure of Secretary Russell Alger from the Cabinet. The process begun by Root was continued by Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood, as Chief of Staff, and later Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, both of whom also vigorously seized upon the opportunity to reform the Army, from its inefficient and highly politicized bureau system to glacially slow promotions based strictly on seniority. In spite of resistance from diehard senior officers, the most significant reform was the establishment of a General Staff and the appointment of a Chief of Staff to replace the rank of Commanding General. Promotions would gradually start to be made on merit and fitness, although the inevitable politics still played a role regarding promotions to the higher ranks. John J. Pershing was a prime example. There was also an emphasis on the training and education of officers in service schools, in an effort to make these leaders more professional. Also important was the effort to create a more modern army on a European model, with larger units like "maneuver" divisions, composed of infantry, artillery, and cavalry. Regiments would now have three battalions. In short, it was a complete makeover.
Traditionally, a chaplain's duties were loosely defined, more often than not by the individual regimental commander.
Aside from conducting religious services ... chaplains were the morale officers of their day. Not all posts had chapels, so they had to hold services in whatever room was available.... They usually supervised the post school and library and gave lectures on assorted topics, and used stereopticon and lantern slides as well as movies to entertain the troops.
As part of the reform effort, changes were made regarding the selection of chaplains. Instead of appointments by the Secretary of War, an examination was added, along with a background check, and more significantly, the various denominations were given increased input into the recommendation and selection of candidates. Once appointed, chaplains were accorded actual rank as officers, and the Army assigned assistants from the enlisted ranks and allocated transportation by the Quartermaster. More importantly, there was an increase in the overall number of chaplains to one per regiment. As early as 1908, Chaplain Aldred Adino Pruden proposed a board or commission be appointed to recommend chaplains to the General Staff. Gradually that idea took hold, and each of the major religious denominations established such entities, and they became the primary source of chaplain candidates. Later, the Protestant denominations would coalesce into the General Committee on Army and Navy Chaplains, while the Catholic Church would act through the National Catholic War Council.
THE NEED
One thing is for certain—there were never enough chaplains in the AEF. As of April 1917, at the beginning of America's entry into the war, there was still only a single chaplain assigned to each regiment, roughly composed of 1,200 men. The next month, Congress passed a defense bill without increasing the number of chaplains per regiment, while at the same time it increased the size of an infantry regiment to 3,600 men. At that time, in the Regular Army itself, there were a total of seventy-four chaplains, along with an additional seventy-two in the National Guard. General John J. Pershing, Commander in Chief of the AEF, recognized the need for chaplains and strongly recommended that one be assigned for every twelve hundred men (roughly the size of a new infantry battalion). Congress was slow to comply with this request, and when the law doing so was ultimately signed by President Wilson in May 1918, it was already late in the war. As a result, the Army played "catch-up" throughout the war, turning out about 150 new chaplains a month.
Gradually, however, over the course of the conflict, the training and assignment of chaplains began to coalesce around the efforts of two men. The first, Bishop Charles H. Brent, a well-known Protestant missionary, was appointed as the Senior Chaplain for the AEF with his headquarters at Chaumont. His job was to coordinate the activities of all chaplains regardless of religion. The second, Chaplain Aldred A. Pruden, who had also lobbied hard for a chaplain school, designed the initial curriculum and served as the head of the school throughout the war.
Charles Henry Brent was born in Newcastle, Ontario, Canada, on April 9, 1862. He was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1887, three years following his graduation from Trinity College at the University of Toronto. Brent was assigned to St. Stephen's Church, an inner-city parish in Boston in 1891, and he became a United States citizen about the same time. In 1901, he was elected Bishop of the Philippines and consecrated the following year. He traveled there with William Howard Taft, who had been appointed to head the Second Philippine Commission and later as the governor of the islands. During his time there, Brent worked hard to convert the non-Catholic population, including the indigenous Moros and Igorots, as well as those in the Chinese enclave in Manila. He was the author of several works on religion and a fierce and vocal opponent of the opium trade, serving on various boards and commissions. While serving as Missionary Bishop of the Philippines, he returned periodically to the United States to lecture, first at the General Theological Seminary in New York in 1904, and again in 1907 at Harvard University.
In May 1908, he was elected Bishop of the Diocese of Washington, D.C., but he declined the appointment, preferring instead to remain a missionary bishop. He would serve the Philippines until 1918, at which time he was elected Bishop of the Diocese of Western New York, a position he accepted but did not assume until sometime in 1919 after he had returned from France. In the interim, he was selected as the Senior Chaplain for the AEF. While he stood high in Pershing's regard, some in the AEF thought that perhaps he tended to go on "interminably" about his ambitious plans for the placement of chaplains throughout the army.
Bishop Brent arrived in France in December 1917 as a special representative of the YMCA when General Pershing tapped him to organize the AEF chaplains. He set about utilizing the limited resources available at that time. The bishop first turned to private organizations, like the Knights of Columbus, Red Cross, Salvation Army, Jewish Welfare Board, and the YMCA, all of which picked up the slack. Brent's decision to utilize these civilian agencies represented a departure from the entrenched attitude of many Army chaplains, dating back to the Civil War, when the YMCA-sponsored U.S. Christian Commission was viewed by many chaplains as an interloper and a direct competitor in what was their exclusive domain. Perhaps because Brent himself was not a regular military man, his decision was a logical one. Due to the acute shortage of Army chaplains, he referred to these agencies as the "saving element." Staffed by brave and dedicated men and women, the outside agencies served the doughboy at home and overseas, delivering creature comforts, writing materials, and spiritual aid and comfort. The Knights of Columbus sponsored dozens of priests, volunteers assigned to individual units, many of whom would eventually receive commissions in the Army. They, along with lay YMCA Secretaries, could be found throughout the AEF in France, including the front lines. At the same time Brent was unequivocal in his position regarding the role these organizations should play—they were "to aid the chaplain in his work."
A Preliminary Board was established on January 10, 1918, for "the organization of chaplains and the coordination of all moral and spiritual agencies at work in the AEF." The board recommended the formation of a Chaplains' Office at Chaumont near General Headquarters, and after two revisions to its report, on May 1, 1918, General Order No. 66 established the GHQ Chaplains' Office and the Board of Chaplains to "develop an esprit de corps among the chaplains; to provide such literature on chaplains' opportunities and duties as will tend to develop the highest degree of efficiency; to prevent and forestall duplication of effort and to coordinate the activities of the various religious and welfare organizations operating" with the Army.
In addition to Bishop Brent, who was named Senior GHQ Chaplain, the other Board members were Rev. Francis B. Doherty, a Catholic priest and another old hand, having served in the Philippine War, and Rev. Paul D. Moody, both of whom were appointed as GHQ Chaplains. Paul Dwight Moody was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 11, 1879. He was the son of famed evangelist Dwight L. Moody, who was also the founder of the Northfield School (later Northfield Mount Hermon School). Upon graduation from Yale University in 1901, he embarked on ministerial studies in Scotland and at the Hartford Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1906. Moody taught school for a time and worked for two publishers. In April 1912, he was ordained as a Congregational minister at the South Church in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and served there as minister until 1917. When the United States entered the war in Europe, he enlisted in the Vermont National Guard and was commissioned as a Chaplain (1st Lt.) in the 1st Vermont Infantry Regiment (later designated as the 103rd Infantry). Moody went to France with his regiment and served with it in the Chemin des Dames and Toul Sectors, until June 1918, at which time he became a permanent member of the Board of Chaplains headquartered at Chaumont.9 He would be directly involved in the assignment of chaplains.
Like Bishop Brent, Paul Moody was imbued with the zeal of a missionary. As Chaplain of the 1st Vermont Infantry Regiment, he recognized the temptations testing the young soldiers in the camps, even before they went to France. He wrote:
Unfortunately there are temptations which come upon men with greater force when cut off from the refining influences of home, and the government is coming to recognize more and more that these are dangerous, not merely because they affect the morals of the men, but also because they reduce their efficiency. If in any way the Church can help to stem the force of the appeals to the lower nature, it will be doing a service not alone for God but for country.
Moody's views comported with those of Bishop Brent, and more importantly, with those of General Pershing, and could well have led to his appointment to the Board of Chaplains.
Virtually every aspect of the initial American war effort, including the chaplaincy, had to be learned on the job. So, while Bishop Brent was organizing the chaplains in France, the home front was not neglected. Recognizing the need for some uniformity, a plan to establish a school for chaplains was developed by Chaplain (Major) Aldred Adino Pruden, sometimes referred to as the "Father of Army Chaplaincy." Pruden was born in Virginia in 1866. Upon graduation from the Theological Seminary of Virginia in 1894, he was ordained an Episcopal minister. Pruden saw service in the Spanish-American War as a chaplain in the 1st North Carolina Volunteer Infantry and later in the Philippine War. He remained on active duty with the Army as a chaplain, and he was promoted to the rank of major in 1911.
The War Department approved Pruden's school plan in February 1918, and the first Chaplain School class commenced at Fort Monroe, Virginia, on March 3, 1918, with Pruden as commandant, using a curriculum designed by him. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Army Chaplain School moved to Camp Zachary Taylor in Kentucky. The course or training cycle lasted five weeks, and it included physical conditioning as well as subjects such as Military Law, First Aid, and Army Regulations. Each cycle consisted of approximately 140 students, and it was initially intended to train both chaplain candidates and commissioned chaplains in equal numbers. However, as the war progressed the Army found that those already commissioned could not be readily spared from their duties given the existing shortages. More than a thousand chaplains would graduate from the school prior to its closure in January 1919.
Bishop Brent established a second school in France at Neuilly-sur-Suize, just south of Chaumont and AEF Headquarters. The purpose of this school was to supplement the initial training, with practical lessons geared specifically toward working in the front lines. At first, the course was one week long, but it was later expanded to ten days.
For decades, a disproportionate number of Episcopal priests served as Army chaplains. Recognizing the fact that many other denominations were represented by the troops that served, steps were gradually taken to include a greater variety of clergymen, particularly Catholic priests, within the ranks of the chaplaincy. As early as 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt estimated that Catholics comprised more than 20 percent of the Army rank and file, but they were served by fewer Catholic chaplains. Later, in 1914, Secretary of War Lindley M. Garrison concluded that the actual number was 23.75 percent, and thereafter, the Army set the ratio at 25 percent. At the start of the First World War there were sixteen Catholic priests in the Regular Army, and another ten in the National Guard. In addition, there were 8 Navy chaplains who were Catholic priests. As of the Armistice, 1,026 Catholic priests were serving in the armed forces, 762 of whom had received commissions, with the balance serving under the auspices of organizations like the Knights of Columbus. This represented approximately thirty percent of the total number of chaplains.
Despite the increase in the number of Army chaplains as a result of the Root reforms in 1903, even as late as 1916, efforts to appoint a Jewish chaplain from among them failed. It was not until October 6, 1917, that Congress authorized an additional twenty chaplains at large, six of whom were specifically allocated to Jewish chaplains. Those slots were immediately filled by rabbis already serving in the ranks. Later, with passage of the Defense Act of May 25, 1918, still more were authorized. Up to that point, Jewish troops were served primarily by chaplains of other faiths or lay troops within the ranks. "Acting Rabbi" to the Jewish soldiers in the Yankee Division was Benjamin Riseman, a real estate broker from Boston, who would serve under the auspices of the Jewish Welfare Board. These so-called "Star of David men," like the fifty-year-old Riseman, who had emigrated from Russia with his wife in 1890, would learn to perform Jewish services and to otherwise provide comfort and counseling where no Jewish chaplain was assigned to a unit. Riseman would continue to serve, at least until the arrival of Rabbi Israel Bettan, a commissioned officer, late in the war.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sky Pilots by Michael E. Shay. Copyright © 2014 The Curators of the University of Missouri. Excerpted by permission of University of Missouri Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
