Still at bivouac. . . vii

July 20  

We're still at bivouac.

There isn't a sniff of boredom in the diaries. What's ahead for all of the troops is life  or death. That kind of suspense leaves little room for boredom.  Random problems occur regularly, but most of the chaplain's time is spent with the household pains that affect life even though the whole company is in the middle of nowhere and a long, long ways from the action none of them can put entirely out of their minds.

Since many of the soldiers playing cards and gambling, I advised the colonel to have ball games on Sunday to occupy the soldiers.

The Chaplain may be fudging a little here. His inherited Sabbatarianism would have ruled out ball games on the Sabbath, but he's making an exception to the rule set mightily in him--after all, using the devil's cards AND GAMBLING was far more horrifying a species of sin than tossing around a softball. It's hardly a crack  in the fortress, but it makes me smile. His faith is a fortress for him, and it's not often he gives in to what his Dutch Reformed constitution will allow.

A soldier was bitten by a rattlesnake and rushed to the hospital. Another soldier, while making his bed, found a rattlesnake in his bed.

There are many disappointments in the Army. Many had wanted to go to school and learn something more important than what the infantry teaches.

And always, every night, the interpersonal stuff.

A soldier let me read a letter from his wife. She said the baby gets excited whenever a car comes on the yar. She said the baby thinks her daddy is coming home. Yes, the soldiers can be thankful they're still in the United States. 

Warfare--combat--is coming. He knows it, and so does everyone else. It's the bogeyman that's always out there waiting hungrily.

September, 1943

I visited a Jew in the hospital. I tried to explain to him that Christ was the promised Messiah of the Old Testament. He asked why the Jews rejected Christ when He came. I said that the Jews expected an earthly king; but Christ came to establish a spiritual kingdom. He said that the army has made him a better man and that he now goes to the synagogue services regularly.

The little old man who taught "History of Revelation" my freshman year of college and "Reformed Doctrine" my second--we quite regularly made fun of him--lectures about sex to hundreds, even thousands of men in ranks waiting to be deployed to war. That's beyond imagination. 

Our advice, as chaplains at the officers' meeting about contraceptives, is  having good results [they had argued against distributing prophylactics--if the men had them, they'd use them]. After 12 weeks, it is reported that our regiment has the lowest VD rate in the entire division. The sergeants had a meeting and decided to continue the practice of not handing out contraceptives promiscuously.  

September 8, 1943

We three chaplains went to a German prison camp in Camp Shelby. It was only because we were chaplains that the officer let us in. The prisoners were all in good shape physically. 

Eventually, Chaplain Van would be shown sites more horrifying than he could imagine. His one line about physical condition of the prisoners here is not incidental, even though it will be a year or more before he sees what life and death was like in the German camps.

These prisoners had fought in  Holland, Belgium, France, Leningrad, Sevastopol, and were finally captured in Tunisia, Africa. 

Then comes astonishment. Van Schouwen doesn't say he was non-plussed, but he must have been when those German POWs told him what they did.

They refused to believe that Italy had surrendered. They said this story was United States propaganda. They also admitted that eventually Germany would lose the war.