Visiting Our Chaplains in the ETO
PART II
By N. M. YLVISAKER
During the closing months of 1945, the President of the Army and Navy Chaplains' Association, Dr. N. M. Ylvisaker, visited the European Theater of Occupation where he was given a rare opportunity to observe conditions and meet with many Army chaplains. A brief report of his experiences appeared in the January-February issue of The Army and
Navy Chaplain. Here is the second installment.
OUR first report from our visit to the ETO was made lain Corps and by the Corps itself. Nor did these men
from Paris, where we spent several days in constant hesitate to plead with us to help maintain the morale of touch with the ETO Deputy Senior Chaplain, with Chap- this Corps on the highest level of efficiency and efficacy lains in his office, with individual chaplains in the Seine during the trying months and years ahead for those who Base sector and with local American and French clergy, should be selected to minister to the men of the army of In the month of rapid travel to follow, frequent group occupation. It is no secret that most of these leaders today conferences, and almost continual personal conferences consider the chaplain to be one of the most valuable men with individual chaplains and ranking officers in France, serving in the armed forces of our country. What a recogBelgium, Germany, and Austria, we were to appreciate nition this is for the regenerating power of the Christian how valuable our Paris stay had been because of the religion and how heartening for those of us who have concontacts established, and because of detailed and help- sistently contended for a ministry to be placed entirely on ful information made available to us there. We were a religious-spiritual level! given a real introduction to overseas conditions affectingRENCE ARRANGED us as members of an army of occupation, and our pre- CONFERENCES ARRANGED liminary contacts in the Seine sector were to be for us an Chaplains' conferences were held during the month of orientation in approaches which must later be made November and early December at the following strategic throughout the theater, if our mission should be crowned centers, all of them at or near strategic army or military with any degree of success. headquarters: Le Havre, Brussels, Antwerp, Rheims, Let it be emphasized again that the entire Chaplains' Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Heidelberg, Munich, Bamberg, and Association, and certainly its president, owes a debt of for Austria at Vienna, Linz and Salzburg. Visits were gratitude to Chaplain (Col.) E. R. Carter, Deputy Senior made to chaplains at a considerable number of individual Chaplain of the ETO, who with his assistants and with embarkation ports, at camps, prison camps, hospitals, uniArmy Base and sector chaplains did so much to make versity centers, concentration camps, war crime trials, and this tour not only possible, but prepared to meet any headquarters commands. We inspected chapels and emergency. It was through the work of his office that the churches set aside for army church worship service, even Washington directives for the tour were brought properly those placed in old French and Austrian forts. We were to the personal attention of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, invited to preach to or address large Army audiences at Allied Commander-in-Chief, with the immediate result Paris, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Linz, and Vienna. And we that remarkable clearance papers were issued for the tour had the rare privilege, because of our status as War Corfrom ETO headquarters bearing General Eisenhower's sig- respondent, to sit in at the War Crime trials at Dachau nature and making it possible for the representative of the and at Nuernberg, where we not only listened in on the Chaplains' Association to travel in the status of a general proceedings as the crimes against civilization were charged officer. Only those who know travel conditions in war- against prisoners of high and low degree, but were the ravaged Europe can appreciate. what that means. Trans- guests of those in charge of the trials who discussed freely portation and billeting facilities of the highest order were personalities involved as their characters became revealed generously provided everywhere, and because of these through constant association while under guard by these orders ranking officers throughout the entire theater were officers, psychiatrists, psychologists, intelligence officers, most insistent that every reasonable provision be made for and chaplains concerned. our welfare, and every channel open for a successful con- More than three hundred chaplains attended the conclusion to the intention of the visit with our chaplains. ferences arranged. Oftentimes we discovered that chaplains had travelled by jeep up to two hundred miles over
CHAPLAINS OF VALUE TO OCCUPATION FORCES rough roads, through snow and fog and cold, to be present May it be stated here, too, that every one of these offi- at the conference. Most of the conference periods lasted cers, without exception, spoke only in terms of highest from two to three hours, with an address which tried to commendation for the service rendered, sometimes under strike a highly spiritual note given as a basis for the disthe most difficult circumstances, by members of the Chap- cussion period, which then became a feature of the conApril-May, 1946 11