Displaced persons -- xxx

Chaplain Van doesn't often talk about "the folks back home." He records getting lots of mail from his wife, but says only that he received those notes. It may be too much to expect from a man who is strikingly sure of his principles. Here's one of the moments he does talk about the relatives, a uncharacteristic reflection.

The 746th ROB had about 50 men stationed at Kassel and were billeted in boxcars. I took quite a few pictures of Kassel and its ruins and sent them to my brother in Lansing, IL. He had about 20 German prisoners working on his farm, and when he showed them pictures of Kassel, they simply said, "Propaganda" and would not believe what they saw. 

If it wouldn't be for an occasional Nazi leftover determined to kill Allies until the very end, the war would be over. For all practical purposes, it is. All around him, the evidence cannot be denied. Chaplain Van's diary notes grow longer and longer. He's seeing the war from its bitter ends.

Perhaps there's less danger now. Perhaps the entrails of war are simply too stark and difficult to witness, day after day.

April 20: 

There is a constant stream of DP [Displaced Persons] along all the highways I traveled... They were taken from every country when the Germans occupied their countries... Now they were going home -- men, women, and children, pulling carts piled high with their belongings. At night they stop at a house along the highway, order the occupants out and stay for the night. When I pass them with my command car, they stand at attention and wave their hands enthusiastically, as if to say, "Thank you for liberating us." The misery and suffering the Germany brought to many Europeans is indescribable.

April 27:

There is a strong feeling of animosity against German civil­ians and the Gcrma1n nation as a whole. Some go as far as to say that the entire nation should be annihi­lated. The German people try to defend themselves by saying "We were compelled to follow Hitler or else suffer the consequences. But now we are very thankful in being liberated from Nazi tyranny." 

Rarely does Chaplain Van talk about himself, weigh values, compare himself now--at the end of the war--with the Cornelius Van Schouwen before the war. He's seen so much that he cannot help but make judgments, specifically about himself. 

When I first saw the destruction wrought in France, I had some guilt feelings and wondered if it all could be justified. After talking with many French, Dutch, Belgians, and Italians in German concentra­tion camps, my attitude changed somewhat. I asked myself, "What about justice? Where does justice and mercy meet?" Of course, it met in the Cross of Christ, where God was reconciled to his people and his people to God. That is also the place where justice and mercy for the German people must meet too. 

At Kassel, I saw many truck­loads of German prisoners of war (POW) come in. There is a POW camp with 30,000 German prisoners just west of Kassel. They are all happy that the war is over and that they are now in the hands of the Americans instead of the Russians. There are still a few arrogant ones 1mong them who usually start trou­ble. 

A sobering thought:

The Russian army from the East and the American army from the west Met at the Elbe river. The regiment to which I was attached at Camp Shelby made the junction. If I had remained with the 69th Division, I would have been in a lot of combat.

And then, just a bit later, a prophetic thought that almost certainly arises from the wasteland experience he can't help but see at the end of the war all around. It must be a kind of moral exhaustion, bearing witness to all that suffering and desolation he can't help. Everywhere he looks there is ruin that creates a darkness he can't help but feel will require almost impossible action, back home. It's an odd thought really, but perfectly consistent with Chaplain Van's whole mode of thinking. The way the sentence is written suggests that "the gospel" will have to work hard and restoring "moral and spiritual sanity." It's almost impossible not to assume that he's talking about godly men and women--they'll have a hard time.

The Gospel (Christ and Christ crucified) will have a tremendous task to bring the nation back to moral and spiritual sanity. The war has had a demoralizing effect on thousands of our soldiers.