A national need for repentance -- xxvi

From his confessedly plush offices in Paris, Chaplain Van devotes himself to the personal morality of the soldiers, most of whom are or will be assigned to the front, beyond France now and into Luxembourg. Sometimes he sees returning wounded, but for the most part he ministers to those who will soon be in foxholes, not simply because of the terror of this new German offensive, named as "the Bulge" only once in his diaries, but also because the winter's insane grip takes an awful toll. 

If he knows that Hitler's surprise attack, so effectively hidden from prying Allied eyes, is rolling up territory in the next six weeks, he doesn't mention it. His own rank at that time certainly suggests that he is far enough up the ladder to be included in talks concerning Hitler's last and insane attack. He knows, but says very little about the Bulge, which, historians say, ended in late January, when the Nazi aggression ceased.

I don't know what to say about the fact that he doesn't say much about this immense military action,  the Battle of the Bulge, the biggest battle of the war really. It seems not to be registered. 

Perhaps he didn't know. Despite his rank and his opportunity to be in on the news, he--like many others--was kept away from the truth because the truth, early on, was quite grim. Hitler's attack was a shock, and its power was was magnified by the bad weather, thick cloudiness that kept Allied air power grounded. The Allies owned the skies, but could do nothing for what seemed forever. There were lots of reasons not to tell everybody everything during the war. Maybe he simply didn't know.

The February 22 entry includes the Stars and Stripes report on American casualties--almost 140,ooo dead, 42000 wounded, 60K missing--immense totals. Meanwhile, the Navy lost 33,000, 40 thousand wounded, 10 thousand missing, and 4.5 thousand held prisoner. 

Chaplain Van reports those numbers, then says

All of these have given their lives for the cause of freedom. Some families have had three sons killed in action. 

And then this, typical Chaplain Van:

The American people too must repent of their evil ways and turn to God in faith and prayer. The Bible says that righteousness exalteth a nation but sin is a reproach. This terrible war with all its death and destruction has not caused the nations to repent.

I can't be sure exactly of how this nation would adequately verify its righteousness, or "repent" together, but it's very clear that to Chaplain Van, presently such expiation has not been done officially or well, if at all. He finishes the entry for February 22 with this:

At the staff meeting yesterday I complained that I had difficulty in getting tracts. The next morning Col. Crawford called me by phone to say I could get all the tracts I wanted. He had made the arrangements.

March 1:

I have finished two years in the military. When I became a chaplain, I did not know what to expect, but I was rather confident. Romans 8:28 says the Lord gives grace to whatever task he calls us. I served 17 months in basic training at Camp Shelby, MS. I left for foreign service in July 1944 and served seven months in the ETO [European  Theater of Operations]. The blessings I have received for myself thus far are incalculable. To God be all the praise and glory. 

Just exactly what he means by assessing his attitude early on as "rather confident," isn't clear, but it is a confession. He assesses himself that way when he began his service--"rather confident," which is, I'm sure, what all of us would say as well. Little did he know what war was going to be like; little did he know of liberated Paris; little did he know of marriage breakups left and right--or hookups, for that matter. As a pastor, I'm sure, he'd witnessed rotten behavior before, but war does strange things, as he rightly investigates, making some more religious and some not so.

Whatever the specifics, his thanksgiving is here and it is believable. What he's learned, he says, comes packaged in blessings that "thus far are incalculable." 

After the Bulge, what was left for Allied forces was clean up. The big battles of the war were finding a place in national history, but there was at least six months of dirty, bloody clean up as the Allies advanced on Berlin.