Shepherds at War, Part I

Remembering America's WWII chaplains

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As we mark the latest round anniversary of the end of World War II, I’ve been going down one of my periodic rabbit holes of reading around the war. In particular, I’ve been revisiting the role of chaplains, which never fails to be straightforwardly awe-inspiring. Relative to the general volume of WWII literature, there isn’t much work devoted to these “sky pilots,” as they were affectionately called. Their heroism has been largely unsung, but as Wheaton historian Lyle Dorsett argues in his study Serving God and Country, the war couldn’t have been won without them.

Dorsett’s book is arguably the definitive guide on the topic. I highly recommend it together with the late Donald Crosby’s Battlefield Chaplains, which focuses specifically on Catholic priests. Crosby lamented the fact that there was no similarly thorough treatment of Protestant or Jewish chaplains, but Dorsett’s comprehensive survey does a good job filling those gaps. I also can’t recommend W. Wyeth Willard’s memoir The Leathernecks Come Through highly enough, for an evangelical pastor’s inspiring firsthand account of some of our most harrowing Pacific battles.

Reading these histories, I’m moved to lament how the word “chaplain” has suffered from contemporary inflation, even expanding to include the completely areligious. Years ago, I had a radio dialogue with an English atheist who went on to become the University Chaplain and Lead Faith Advisor to the University of Sussex. His career is marked not only by atheist activism but by outspoken support for every leftist cause under the sun, including abortion and euthanasia. (Our debate reached an especially sharp point when we discussed whether the right to life extended to comatose patients like Terri Schiavo, murdered 20 years ago last month.) Yet we live in an age where this is considered normal. The good chaplain has always been expected to serve, but we have redefined what a “chaplain” is because we have redefined what “serve” means.

The war chaplains whose stories have been preserved for posterity, as well as many forgotten to time, were to the best of our knowledge good and faithful servants. They blessed, comforted, and preached in the full knowledge that many of their flock were indifferent or outright hostile to faith. It could be said that they met every man where he was, in that they didn’t force religion onto him. Still, they held out the lifeline of truth to any who would take it. This was their duty, no more and no less. The cost was high. For some, it cost everything.

Of course, these men were human, and there was the occasional failure of nerve or morals among their ranks. Battlefield Chaplains records the memorable story of one anonymized priest who was caught in a sexual indiscretion and could have been dismissed, but was given a chance to redeem himself. In the stern but kind judgment of his Protestant superiors, he was fully contrite and eager to serve with distinction—which, in due time, he did, earning a Bronze Star for valor under fire. (Decorated chaplains wore their medals lightly, knowing most acts of heroism in the war went unnoticed and unrewarded, or under-rewarded. Only one chaplain earned the Medal of Honor, among many worthy of the same.)

I’ve been compiling a handful of favorite stories from a blend of print and online sources, selecting with bias towards the end of the war, in hopes that they will inspire further reading. Because this is going to be a very busy writing month, and I want to make sure paid readers keep getting their money’s worth even if I lack time for anything else, I’ve decided to pay these out in a few installments instead of releasing them all at once. If curious, non-paying subscribers can look back at my free piece on a hero of Pearl Harbor here. You can also look for a forthcoming First Things piece about a hero of Okinawa, a priest who was such a colorful character he deserves his own article. I may also write more later about the role of American Jewish chaplains in mediating the liberation of death camp survivors. Throughout the war, there was a severe shortage of rabbis to meet the needs of Jewish men, although Christian chaplains did their best to step into the gap. I’ll include one of them in this series.

There’s much talk these days about how to model masculinity well for boys. We could do worse than to feed them stories like these. While this wasn’t intentional, going over my selections I noticed a recurring pattern of men who weren’t outwardly hyper-masculine. Some of them were shy or bookish, some were physically unimposing. This didn’t stop them from establishing themselves as beloved leaders and shepherds of men at war. There’s a lesson in this, somewhere.

And now, enjoy.