Coblenz rubble

April 7:

Everybody  is busy getting ready for the trip. Nobody, not even the colonel, knows where we are going. Orders were secret. 

1944: Between April and the end of the war, 3772 flights by 40 air attacks threw 10,000 tons of bombs at Koblenz. By 6 November the city will be 87 per cent destroyed. 15,000 of 25,000 apartments have been destroyed, 1000 dead to lament.

1984: Koblenz counts 115,000 residents in 50,000 households. The city is growing and has significantly recovered. 

April 11:

Since we were traveling under secret orders, we were unaware of our final destination. The colonel went to the military governor of Coblenz to inquire about our destination. He said according to the information he had received, our destination is Coblenz. But he said there is absolutely no room in the entire city for 500 additional soldiers--the entire city is in rubble, except for an ancient German fort outside the city. . . .It is 80% destroyed. . .It received direct hits by our block busters. . . The rooms were littered with shoes, uniforms, clothing, women's and babies' clothes.

Coblenz has been completely destroyed, the streets are full of rubble and cannot be used by vehicles. It seems like every building was hit by our guns. No electricity or water. 

When the war began, Koblenz (German spelling?) was not an Allied target--no garrisons, no major highways or rail stations. Until 1944, Koblenz seemed outside of the war grinding destruction, even though nearby cities lay in ruins. 

After D-Day, however, the city (about 90,000 inhabitants) caught far, far more than its share of Allied bombs. The Bulge made its railways more  strategic. By that time  of 1944, Allied bombers let up a bit, especially when the Allied armies fought their way into the Eifel region. The bombing raids ended in January of 1945. As Chaplain Van notes, the entire infrastructure in and around Koblenz was destroyed. On March 19, 1945, American troops captured the city.

It's impossible to imagine what kind of world Chaplain Van saw and felt around him, just two weeks or so after the fighting ceased. 

April 12

We entered Germany on  Tuesday and went through quite a few German villages. When the army approached a village, the rulers were told to surrender. If they refused, the air force came over and bombed the village. Thus many villages were destroyed. Many people fled before the bombers hit. Now they were slowly coming back with carts loaded with household goods, drawn by cows or oxen. In some towns not a soul was in sight--ghost towns.

Chaplain Van and his rebuilding units keep following the path created by the fighting front, moving in and through small towns, all of which, it seems, have suffered immensely from the superior air power of the Allies as well as the marching armies of the Allies and the Russians.

Frankfort's railroad yards must have been beyond imagination: "The rail center of Frankfort is in awful shape--rails sticking up, locomotives demolished, tranns smashed, huge piles of dirt plowed by bombs. It seemed as if our bombs turned the city upside down.

Chaplain Van is in Frankfurt when he hears significant news.

Frankfort in 1945

We received thenews yesterday that Presidnet Roosevelt had died of a stroke. He performed a magnificent job in reorganizing our industrial complex into a mighty war effort. Our armies are only 40 miles from Berlin. 

Metz--the new assignment

The pictures that were taken of the bulletin board, Sunday service, and my office are completed. . .are beauti­ful -- full size 8 1/2" by 10 1/2". I sent them to my wife. Later some of them were placed in The Banner.

Chaplain Hiterius, a Swedish Lutheran, is taking my place. He is 52 years old. 

A soldier said today, "I liked your sermonette on marriage so much, that I took it off our bulletin board and sent it to my wife." 

March 18: 

My orders read, "Spe­cial Order Co 70 Paragraph 30 (c) March 11, 1945, Relieved from Hdq Command, Hg ETOUSA and as­signed to 746 Ry Operating Bn. APO 350." ~-

AI translations: "This reassignment likely placed the individual in a logistics role supporting the final Allied push into Germany. Railway battalions were essential for sustaining momentum as the front lines advanced rapidly in early 1945."

I was informed that· the HQ of the 746th ROB is at Metz, Germany. This city has never been conquered in the past. It is sur­rounded by mountains. This will be a difficult assignment. Railroad men are strung along over 100 miles and work night and day to re­pair yards, catenaries, loco­motives, bridges, cars, etc. The work is urgent, for huge amounts of military equipment and supplies must be brought to the front. It will be difficult to get the men together for a worship service. 

In Paris in 1944 and 1945, no one would have ever been far from fighting, but it's fair to say that these new orders bring Chaplain Van much closer to the front. The men who will fill the chairs of whatever church is designated for his use will be from battalions that are rebuilding infrastructure previously destroyed by Allied bombing. 

March 18, Sunday: 

Forty soldiers attended services at the Province De France building, 50 soldiers were at the Spanish building, and 30 at the Argentine building. They sang "Blest be the tie that binds; our hearts ... " as the closing number. At the Argentine building they sang "God be with you till we meet again." The tie that binds our hearts to Christians is very tender indeed. 

Maj. Sommer told me that I would receive a Commendation Medal from General Kimball for the work I did under his command. He said, furthermore; "Your new job will be tough, the previous chaplain couldn't handle it." 

Two sentences in a two-sentence paragraph suggests the man's ironclad sense of service. His ambitious work in Paris is being rewarded by the Army--he'll be given a Commendation Medal which makes it clear. He doesn't let the news stand however. The subsequent sentence registers a reason for some fear--Metz will carry with it some difficulties--"the previous chaplain couldn't handle it."

The Battle of Metz took place from September 27 to December 13, 1944. It was part of the Lorraine Campaign during World War II and marked one of the most intense urban and fortress battles fought by the U.S. Army in Europe.

Chaplain Van is arriving three months after the final German fortifications were overrun. 

March 21:

To get to Metz, I had to take a train to Nancy, Germany. We arrived at 3:00p.m. Nancy is a railway center. It was heavily hit by our bombers. As the Germans say, "Allies rail equipment, locomotives, passenger trains, and rolling stock was bombed to pieces. Some locomotives were buried by our bombs, with only the  smoke stack sticking above the ground. Twisted steel rains were sticking up into the air.

Many Americans soldiers are stationed at Nancy. . . .I was informed that there was no train traffic to Metz--only a small "doodlebug," as they called it, which could carry only a few passengers.

March 22:

When Chaplain Van gets to Metz, he registers and then is told that he's in the wrong place, that his CO intended for him to be Rouen, France at the 746th main HQ. Snafu--he doesn't say that, but it might have been difficult news for him to take, given the fact that Rouen more than one hundred miles away. Meanwhile, his baggage got lost somewhere.

He stayed in Metz several days, waiting for his baggage. When he looks around, it's plainly what he's seen before of war's desolation. Just more. 

Hundreds of slit trenches, indicating that our soldiers were pinned down by enemy fire from the mountains. [Metz is a kind of natural fortress, surrounded by mountains and therefore difficult to defeat.] German officers were persuaded that Metz was so strongly  fortified that the Americans would never capture the city. They moved their families into the city. but when our big guns were trained on the open dugouts on the top of the mountains, their guns were silenced. German officers fled into the city and into civilian basements. When the American soldiers entered it was house to house fighting. They ordered the occupants to come out with their hands up. When they refused the soldiers threw hand grenades into the basement and all the occupants were killed. A military doctor told me that the first two weeks after the city surrendered they were busy hauling dead people out of the basements. 

Chaplain Van doesn't say it and perhaps didn't know it, but all around Hitler's Nazi Germany was suffering its death throes. In two months, it would be over, finally over.

A national need for repentence

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.

The war-time Paris experience

It's war, and nothing can alter that fact of the chaplain's existence. Around him the wounded arrive in daily shifts to be processed and sent either to a full-fledged field hospital or home. Chaplain Van sees it as his duty and honor to meet at least some of the wounded when they're taken off the train. 

But were it not for the war, Chaplain Van could not be operating as a servant of God in more plush circumstances.

November 14: 

HQ asked me to change my office to the States building on the University of Paris Campus. This campus con­tains about 25 dormitories. Other nations constructed dormitories for their students attending the University of Paris. Rockefeller fi­nanced the recreational building, containing a swimming pool, auditorium and a tennis court, office is located at the entrance to the building. There was carpet on the floor, a fire place, deck, and chairs. Across from my office is a large lounging room for the soldiers. All the buildings on this campus are occupied by ­American soldiers. This gives me the finest assignment of all the chaplains in the European Theater of Operations (ETO). I am a staff member of General Kimball, who has the finest group of officers I have ever met in the military. And on Sunday I have the beautiful American Church to hold my services. I could not have it better anywhere in the army. 

War's bloody effects spill out all around anyway, despite his plush digs.

I met Chaplain Edwards, who was one of my roommates on Saturnia. He was in the battle of Brest and was wounded with shrap­nel. He received the Purple Heart and is now troubled with arthritis. He has been assigned to a field hos­pital at Rheims.

 November 27:

I met Chaplain De Jong--a member of the Reformed Church of America. While I was talking to him, a  call came from the depot that a train load of wounded soldiers was coming in. We both went to the railroad station. A blizzard had been raging at the front and many soldiers had trench feet. Some had hands shot away. Others had stepped on land mines and had their legs amputated. these soldiers still had the dirt and grime of the battle on them. 

Chaplain De Jong works in the 203rd General Hospital. He believes that the war has deepened the religious life of the soldiers on the combat front.

The nature of the wounds and the bitter cold Chaplain Van notes here suggests a battle scenario very much like that created when Hitler threw everything he had into an offensive which no one saw coming and was eventually called the Battle of the Bulge. 

The date of the entry predates the day the Nazi offensive began, which was--

December 14: 

I don't know that I've found any single story as long and wild as this one--the story of a Dutch Resistance worker. It's so wild that it's almost hard to believe. What she has going for her, however, is a preacher, twice her age, who was no longer a rookie when it comes to war. Secondly, she's gutsy and brassy, as some war veterans are, and as some Dutch Resistance were. Can we believe her? Chaplain Van certainly did. 

Her story is told in its entirety in the diaries--that's something new for the Chaplain. That he was moved by the story--and by her--seems clear. 

Chaplain Van was often called upon  to speak to Dutch people, often Dutch refugees who found themselves in liberated France with no way to get home to Holland. Here's the story he tells to the diary.

A 19-year-old Dutch girl works here for the United States Signal Corps. She originally came from the Dutch East Indies. She was a member of the French un­derground. Once she was surrounded by three German sol­diers and shot all three. She was later captured and was sent to Aachen. On the way, the train was shot up by our planes, and in the confusion she escaped and returned to France.

She said to me that she was ut­terly disgusted with this group of Hollanders in Paris. [Chaplain Van visits this "group of Hollanders" regularly. He explains that they are refugees--men taken, against their will, to France for factory jobs. When France was liberated, they could not simply go home since the Netherlands was also in the  hands of the Nazis.] She called them "een rot Zotje." i.e., "a rotten bunch." She criticized the French for surrendering so quickly at the beginning of the war. She is now keeping company with an American soldier and hopes to go to the United States someday. She speaks perfect French, English, and German. 

She told about her experience in helping an American aviator es­cape to Spain. The aviator was dressed in women's clothing. When her mission was accomplished, she asked the aviator for his revolver. 

When she returned to France, a French girl who was keeping com­pany with a German officer, betrayed her. When several Germans came to arrest her, she de­cided to shoot it out with them. She had five bullets and said to herself, four bullets for them and one for me. She killed two Germans and then put the gun to her head. But the chamber was emp1y. 

The Germans tied her up, tortured her and tried to make her talk. She was unconscious for several days -- she didn't know how long. The Germans thought that she was dead and threw her in a river. While i­n the water, she regained conscious­ness and floated with the stream Finally she swam to shore and fell down unconscious. When she awoke, she found herself in the home of an old lady. This happened in Southern France. 

When the Americans came that way, she and several of the French underground went to the house of the girl who had betrayed her, cut off her hair and painted the Nazi sign on her forehead. She showed me a picture of the girl with her short hair and painted face. 

Sunday Morning Meds from Psalm 32

 “For day and night your hand was heavy upon me.”

 “The gift that keeps on giving,” Garrison Keilor says, of guilt.  I don’t know many Jewish folks, nor enough Roman Catholics to generalize, but my guess is that guilt likely runs as rampant among believers of all stripes as does allergies or acne or avarice—or, for that matter any of the other Seven Deadlies. 

 I’m guessing no single group or fellowship holds a patent on guilt, but here in the upper Midwest, children of the northern European Protestants—Calvinists, Lutherans, and their Mennonite friends—seem to have it in spades. 

 For three decades and more, Garrison Keilor has been trading on dark and somber types, me included.  Today, he simply needs to mention the word “Lutheran,” and his listeners know exactly the darksome tone that is about to emerge from his tales. 

 There are tons of reasons for our excesses, I’m sure, but I’ll assert one of them—the degree to which we are affected by our environment; and here, on the Great Plains especially, the excesses of that environment. 

 Everything comes in spades where I live—winter’s cold, summer’s heat, rainfall, snow, drought, hail, tornadoes, and the ubiquitous, howling wind.  It’s no wonder we’re losing population out here.  Sometimes, when a hot wind takes off your face like a ratchet, I think General Zebulon Pike was right:  this really is the Great American Desert.  For more than a century we’ve been hoodwinked by real estate crooks.  Maybe we ought to sell the whole Upper Midwest to Ted Turner and his buffalo.

 I’m wandering.  We’re talking about guilt because that’s what David is talking about in verse three, and the weather here is a long way off.

 Here’s what I mean.  In the land where I live, it’s almost impossible not to be a victim of the weather.  A friend of mine moved to California; he said whenever he scheduled a game of golf, it took him more than a year to forget that he didn’t have to worry about bad weather. Here, everything—including livelihood, much of it agricultural—is dependent on weather, and the weather is often dangerously wicked.

 It’s a form of dependency we’re forced to accept and therefore it’s hard not to believe in some higher power.  Where I live, it takes some chutzpah to be arrogant when a 20-second hailstorm can get wipe you out completely.

 For better or for worse, those who feel God’s hand in the daily regimen of life find it easier to believe.  They know that when they’re safely in that almighty hand—when He’s holding us lovingly—we feel the greatest comfort life can offer. 

 But when that hand is pressing down upon us, the sober souls of Lake Woebegone know just as surely, as did King David, that its weight is impossible to bear. 

 Perhaps what people say is true:  “a guilty conscience needs no accuser.”  But how much worse it is when the accuser is God almighty.  That’s the heaviness David feels in his bones and joints, day and night, as he says.

 Unrelenting.  Laughter helps a great deal—thank you, Garrison.  But David knows, from personal experience, that the only relief is forgiveness. 

 That’s what Psalm 32 is all about.

Calvinism under fire

October 29, Sunday

I preached on  Galatians 6:7. Attendance at the Jean Fontaine School was 30, Diana Hotel 20 American Church 150, Motor Pool 50. 

Chaplain Van recites these numbers every Sunday, and the numbers do vary. Why GIs show up or why they don't remains of great interest to him because he feels very deeply (and traditionally) that attendance at Sunday worship is requirement for a Christian life. Back in the States, it's clear that he is mystified by the imbalance when Sunday worshipers so greatly outnumber Protestant. Months before--during training--he asked his Catholic colleagues why that was happening. The answer he received had to be gratifying--because we know, the Catholic chaplains told him, that the church will be and is best sustained by religious training in church and in home and in school. 

I'm guessing it was part of his job's mandate that he chart numbers as he did. It's fair to say that the lengths of his additions are increasing.

Today I met Chaplain Kidder, who is six and a half feet tall, and the soldiers call him "tiny". He had been in combat since the invasion. He said that
Chaplain Vander Ark was working at an aid station when the Germans opened with fire. Vander Ark had a nervous breakdown and was sent to the rear for recuperation. I asked Chaplain Kidder what effect that [battle] had on him. I was surprised when he answered, "The war had made a Calvinist out of me." I asked him what he meant by that statement. He said, "When you are standing in a foxhole, you cannot ask God to send the bullets to the left of you or to the right, for then the soldiers might get shot. When you see nothing but death and destruction, it is impossible to see any good in this war at all. But a Calvinist emphasizes God's overall plan, working for a greater good." I asked Kidder if the soldiers were more religious at the front. He said, "If we get a good shellacking from the enemy on Saturday night, we will have a good attendance on Sunday morning, otherwise not. The war intensifies what is in a per­son. If a person is a Christian, he will become a better Christian. If not, the war will make him worse." 

How much authority does a chaplain have? In some incidents he can even take a general to task. A general wanted to set up a brothel for the soldiers under his command. A chaplain voiced his objection and the general told him to mind his own business. The chaplain re­sponded, "That is just exactly what I am doing." When the project was completed, the chaplain called up the authorities at Corps HQ and in­formed them what the general had done. Immediately, the general was informed that no brothel would be tolerated in the United States Army.

The little brothel story is interesting because it's not difficult to guess that the anonymity of the chaplain might just suggest it was Chaplain Van himself who spoke out against the brothel. It would be tough to prove that to be true. What is, at least to me, greatly fascinating is that the story does seem to suggest that Chaplain Van sits around a table of people who have some significant power. 

Two soldiers had been friends throughout their military career. When they were stationed in England, both dated the same girl at intervals. Now when they were stationed in Paris, the girl informed them that she was pregnant and wanted to get married. Both of the boys claimed to be the father of the girl and demand that she should make a choice as to which of the boys she wanted to marry. They did. A few weeks later they both came to my office with a letter from the girl. She had made her choice. After I read the letters to the men, the one that wasn't chosen congrat­ulated the one who was selected. They left my office arm in arm and the one who had gained the girl asked for help in getting a furlough to go to England and marry her.

These kinds of problems don't appear to happen with any less frequency in his position in Paris. 

American Church of Paris -- xxiii

October 28:

My Jeep driver, who landed in Normandy during the invasion of Europe, told me this incident. A soldier found his brother, a para-trooper hanging in a tree. His body was mutilated. Just then a MP came up with several German prisoners. He yelled at the MP to get out of the way and then riddled the German prisoners with bullets from his machine gun. My jeep driver saw this happen.

Clearly, Chaplain Van, who has not as yet seen any action but lots and lots of destroyed buildings and shattered lives, is taken with the stories from the front. The stories he repeats, I'm sure, helped him deal with the fears he--and everyone else-harbored.

During the invasion, a French boy had a grenade in his hand and threatened to throw it at our soldiers. The officer yelled, "Shoot him." He was killed instantly.

My jeep driver, who had spent a lot of time at the front, said that life in the fox-holes was terrible. On a rainy day, the soldiers stand ankle deep in the mud. Being in Paris was like heaven. 

With the Jeep driver's stories as background, that last sentence comes to color Chaplain Van's time in Paris--five months. With a fancy hotel room as a foxhole, and a church unlike any he'd ever seen holding his pulpit, the horrors of war can be kept aside, even though the front is an ever present reality.

October 29, Sunday

Perhaps the most beautiful and unusual church in any land is the American Church of Paris. It is located on the Seine river in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Three American Presidents--Ulysses Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson worshipped in this church, besides ambassadors and nobles of many lands. President Wilson attended this church during the days of the Versailles Treaty after World War I. American students, government workers, businessmen, and many American tourists flocked to Paris every year and attended this church. After the First World War (1914-1918) many American soldiers, having married French girls, remained in Paris and became members of this church. However, when the German army approached Paris, during the Second World War (1939-45) the entire congregation fled to Switzerland and the church was closed.

When Paris was liberated during the Second World War the members  of this congregation gradually returned. I needed a worship center for the American soldiers and for the English-speaking people of Paris. So I opened the American Church of Paris and held services in this church for five months in 1944. 

This church claims to be the oldest American speaking church on foreign soil. It is also known as the American Embassy Church. The former organist of this church returned from Switzerland and started a choir. A member of the board asked me if I would consider a call from this congregation after the war. I told him that I would prefer to go back to the United States. They gave me a book containing the entire history of this church.