Faithful Till The End: Canadian Military Chaplains in the Last Days of the Great War

No Canadian scholar knows the history of Canadian military chaplaincy in the Great War better than my friend, Dr. Duff Crerar.   In these notes which Duff kindly shared with myself and CAF chaplain colleagues, Duff describes the ministry of Canadian padres in the last months of the war and on to demobilization.   It is a harrowing story of chaplains pouring themselves into their work and in some cases working themselves to death.  My thanks to Duff for telling their stories.  MP+

The Pursuit to Mons and the Padres

The Canadians captured Cambrai on 9 October, having again surprised the Germans by a night attack. Already attempting to make a general withdrawal, the enemy gave way before they could blow all the critical bridges. The Second Division’s 20^th and 21^st Battalions saw off a surprise counter-attack by German tanks, but it was clear that the Germans were making another retreat.

The Canadians had broken through at the critical point of the Siegfried line.  Valenciennes was the next fallback for an army rapidly running out of men. Over twenty German divisions were disintegrating because they could not be reinforced. Crown Prince Rupprecht doubted that his troops would hold to December.

The chase was one. Canadians would bombard a German position, patrols would investigate, and report the Germans gone or in the process of leaving. Or, there would be a hurricane of machine gun fire, shrapnel and high explosive. Currie ordered his troops to proceed with caution, especially as the trail of sabotage and scorched earth combined with heavy rain to make casualty evacuation almost impossible. The Allies were outrunning their supply lines. Canadian soldiers, enjoying the experience of being greeted as liberators, were pausing for impromptu civilian hospitality. Belgians were handing out much of their precious hoarded food, which meant the Canadians had to rush some of their own rations forward to feed the over one hundred thousand liberated civilians.

The Germans had not all given up. Postwar critics who charged Currie with needless casualties in the last week of the war were oblivious or unwilling to acknowledge that German machine guns and artillery continued to oppose the advance, and that in many sectors local counter-attacks required continued operations. The Germans gave every intention to fight for Valenciennes, flooding the defences along the Canal de l’Escaut, with five –understrength – divisions guarding the gateway, Mount Houy. Rebuffed when he offered his artillery assets to assist the British, Currie grimly knew (after the British failed to take Mount Houy for the third time) that his troops would have to take the hill, and ruffled more than a few British senior officers by refusing to throw his troops in without full preparations. He and Andrew McNaughton, his gunnery expert, honoured their vow to purchase victory with shells, not men.

On 1 November, the all-Canadian attack blasted the Germans out of Mount Houy: the shattered survivors surrendered to a mop-up attack by the 10th Canadian Brigade. The 12th Brigade entered Valenciennes, and on 3 November the city was declared free of German defenders.

Canadian troops in Valenciennes after its capture on 3 November, 1918.

By then, General Ludendorff, de facto commander in chief of the German Army, had been dismissed. Attacks by Australians and Canadians on 4 November struggled to mop up the snipers and machine gunners left behind to cover the all-out retreat. The casualty rate plummeted, but Canadians felt them even more deeply as it was clear that war was almost over. It is a terrible thing to die at the end of a war. Most important, both to Currie and his Army Commander, General Horne, was the reality that German soldiers were not all giving up, but often continuing to cause casualties in pockets of determined resistance. The Germans gave every indication they would fight for Mons. Currie’s plan to encircle it and break in simultaneously fell afoul of such isolated pockets of the enemy. On 10 November, a company of the RCRs and another of the 42^nd Battalion moved in to clear out Mons. After causing a few last minutes casualties, the Germans melted into the mist. At eleven, the Armistice took effect. Already a riotous celebration was brewing up in the city centre. It was St. Martin of Tours day, the patron saint of chaplains.

Canadian chaplains had kept pace with the troops, though 3^rd Division Senior Chaplain Louis Moffit reported that holding services and large gatherings fell by the wayside in the constant shifting and shelling. Reports preserved from this period in Chaplain Service records are few. Another half-dozen chaplains were wounded by shells. Father T. McCarthy had been with the 7^th Brigade constantly, and was reported among the first troops entering Mons.  Conditions had been brutal, and more than one padre could not express what they had seen in genteel tones. A.E. Andrew, an Anglican chaplain to the Royal Canadian Regiment, recently awarded the Military Cross for his work with casualties (including stepping in when most of the officers had been killed or wounded) in October, let off steam during the celebrations that followed, making some frank comments about the high command which got into the Canada Gazette. The Assistant Director of the Service, A.H. McGreer, noted “he used language which is commonly employed by officers of all ranks, and I am sure he never dreamed of all his statements being reported… If it comes to a court martial they can’t convict him, I’m sure of that… Andrew got the MC the other day…” Word of Andrew’s remarks at Cambrai, when told that he did not belong up front – “if the men can go, I can” – had percolated through the Division. After they had cooled down, the authorities let him off with a warning, and a transfer.  

W. B. Carleton, a priest from Metcalfe, Ontario, received a surprise when the French Army conferred the Croix de Guerre for his intrepid work with the 3^rd Division Artillery. Carleton would return as a Senior Chaplain to the Canadian Army in 1940.

Other chaplains were showing signs of strain as the pressure of operations turned into the march to occupation across the Rhine and restlessness to get home. Sickness, nervousness and other disorders were reported by several padres: chronic bronchitis, a sign of exhaustion, and hard to treat in the pre-anti-biotic era. His Brigade reduced to a skeleton by casualties, B.J. Murdoch was returned to Britain on sick leave, exhausted and insomniac. He was given early discharge and returned to New Brunswick, though the psychological scars of being under fire relentlessly in the last 100 days would haunt him for the rest of his life. Almond learned that one of his former chaplains, Salvation Army officer Charles Robinson, who had reverted to combatant ranks in 1916 and been awarded a Military Cross at Vimy Ridge, had been killed in September and was buried near Arras. Just previously word had reached headquarters that a Methodist Chaplain, Eric Johnston, who had been in action continuously with the Canadian Machine Gun Battalion since Amiens, trying to spend a week with each company across the Corps, had been evacuated sick to #20 General Hospital, where he died of pneumonia.

Other padres found the change in moral climate and the breakup of units for repatriation seemed calculated to undo their work. Roman Catholic chaplains went to the Belgian hierarchy as well as the British Army authorities to fight a soaring V.D. rate. F.G. Sherring, a decorated Anglican Chaplain, exploded in rage when his 2^nd Division Artillery units were scattered, ruining his plans to distribute comforts ranging from cigarettes to underwear -- as well as his Christmas and New Years’ religious services. Fortunately for him, his near-seditious remarks about the high command were expressed in reports to his chaplaincy superiors, who quietly filed them away without action or comment.

Throughout the rest of the winter and early spring of 1919, the Canadian chaplains prepared for the peace. Many occupied themselves in teaching in the Khaki University, and some took advantage of the program to add to their own education. Nearly two dozen made the journey to Buckingham Palace to receive decorations from King George V.  Often they ran into chaplains of other denominations which they had served alongside, and which they might never see, much less work with again. John Holman reminisced about urgently throwing up sandbags alongside a priest to protect an advanced dressing station before taking heavy fire, both in their shirtsleeves in the Amiens heat. Many took part in the conferring of battalion colours, now being brought over from England or being consecrated for the first time, in drumhead services in Germany and Flanders. Others found themselves, in moments of inactivity, thrown back to moments which they had pushed into the back of their minds during the victory autumn. They saw faces. They recalled brief, intense, often whispered confidences. They remembered the men they had helped, many, to die. Percy Coulthurst, Ewen MacDonald, Thomas McCarthy, Canon Scott just out of hospital in England and W.H. Sparks flashing back to ministering, stretcher to stretcher, reciting, “The Lord is my Shepherd”.

For many chaplains with the Corps, the end of combat meant the pressure to get letters written, some perhaps which they probably had wished to avoid. Murdoch found himself awash in letters of sympathy to kinfolk in Canada. His Montreal battalions, Highlanders, and working men left widows and orphans, bereaved parents who needed some reassurance and comfort. Their men had died well, suffered little, and had the ministrations of the priest or minister they needed and deserved in the hour of their death. On their return, more than one followed the example of George Kilpatrick, by 11 November the Senior Chaplain of a Division, who personally visited the homes of every soldier from the 42^nd Battalion who had died overseas. As harrowing is that could be, there were some consolation for padres, as more than one family was grateful for every scrap of news about their loved one they could provide. They were touched, and often inspired by another kind of bravery and resolute courage they witnessed among those who had only waited, and waited.

Condolence letter written by Padre A.B. MacDonald to the mother of one his soldiers.

One of the most perceptive padres to write his superiors in this period was A. B. MacDonald, a priest who would return to his Calgary church and devote his life to veterans after the war. He had spent days among the refugees who streamed back during the last weeks of the German retreat, hearing pitiful tales of deprivation and atrocity. He had been only a few miles from Mons when his gunners ceased firing on the 11^th. As he looked around him, at the devastated land and lives, and contemplated his own men coming back seeking order out of chaos at home, he knew he needed help.

MacDonald reached out to J.J. O’Gorman, the doughty priest who lit the fuse which exploded in Ottawa and led to reform of the Catholic chaplaincy, now returned to direct the Catholic Army Huts overseas. He asked for copies of popular and influential tracts by Catholic authorities on social questions, family life and the pronouncements of Leo XIII on the church’s role in society. He intended to translate, rewrite and paraphrase their contents to adapt them to Canadian conditions and Canadian veterans. “The practical application of social science in Canada will be completely different from England”, he noted. Lt. Col. W.T. Workman, in London, ensured that he would have Rome leave.

By the summer of 1916 MacDonald was back at Sarcee Camp in Calgary. He noted to A.L. Sylvestre, his Senior Chaplain in Canada, that the veterans would open up and trust the uniformed padre, or one they had known overseas. He recommended that the Permanent Force be granted permanent chaplaincies. Sylvestre was sympathetic, but Ottawa was already preparing the demise of the Chaplain Service. MacDonald was probably the last chaplain standing on the day it was officially demobilized -- 1 January, 1921. The Great War was really over: now came the Peace to endure, and overcome.

 

Video Games And War Crimes

Longtime readers of this on-again, off-again blog will know that video games and ethics are an interest of mine.  By way of disclosure, I confess that I own a PlayStation, am a terrible FPS (first person shooter) player as I oak reflexes and spatial reasoning, but occasionally like games where I can shoot zombies and hostile space aliens.

Yesterday the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has called on the video game industry not to create content that allows players to choose actions which would, in real life, violate internationally agrees laws of armed conflict.  As Michael Peck notes for Foreign Policy,   "The ICRC is suggesting that as in real life, these games should include virtual consequences for people's actions and decisions.  Gamers should be rewarded for respecting the law of armed conflict and there should be virtual penalties for serious violations of the law of armed conflict, in other words war crimes."   The proposal would deny the players the ability to use torture or abuse non-combatants, as some games permit.

It's an interesting proposal, and heartening to see at least one game studio cooperating with the ICRC, but as Peck notes, it's unlikely that other game companies will fall in line. The Red Cross' focus on military-themed games such as the Call of Duty series may lead one to wonder whether crime-themed games such as the urban-mayhem Grand Theft Auto, are just as morally suspect?

Peck concludes his article on a sceptical note, arguing that it is not the province of video games to teach ethics.  One can imagine a game that is specifically designed to teach ethics, such as simulation that challenges players to make hard choices while, say, running an NGO in a disaster zone, but that is not the sort of game Peck describes.   Popular video games, he notes, are about winning, not ethics.   "When Grand Theft Auto V penalizes players who behave violently with a crackdown by the cops, does it lead to more ethical behaviour, or just inspire players to find more clever ways of killing and robbing?"

I wish the ICRC luck with their project, and for those readers who have children who play these games, I think that would be a great dinner table conversation topic.  For educators, the ICRC website's resources on this issue are terrific.  I would also suggest that parents learn the rating system for games, and be vigilant about what gets played in the family home.   For my part, I'll keep the mayhem focused on hostile aliens who want to take over the earth.

How To Spoil A First Person Shooter

A friend of a friend on Twitter put me on to the website XKCD, A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language. Well, those are three of my favourite things. The math bits are over my head, but the site as a whole is often mordantly funny, a must for tech savvy hipsters.

I found this cartoon extremely funny. It says everything about the first person shooter genre of video games better than anything I've written on the subject, and with only .01% of the words.

Military Video Games: "The Promise Of Plausible Heroism"

In a thoughtful piece in the NYT, Seth Schiesel makes the point that the new generation of incredibly attractive modern war video games (I confess I'm tempted to get an XBox and start blasting away) are supplying narratives of war and heroism that the wars of the last decade have not given us. MP+


A scene from Battlefield 3.

November 15, 2011
Recruiting the Inner Military Hero in Men
By SETH SCHIESEL

If there were a draft in this country, video games about war probably wouldn’t be so popular. The fantasy would be less appealing if the reality of killing and dying in combat with other human beings were more imminent for more people.

A military draft is now unthinkable in America. And so bullet-spewing first-person shooter games like Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 seem likely to continue to reign among men as the most consistently popular genre in video games. According to game companies and analysts, the expansion of gaming onto social networks (FarmVille, Sims Social) and cellphones (Angry Birds) is largely being propelled by women. But the core console and PC gaming world — where players spend $60 on a product that has cost tens of millions to create — is still mostly driven by the tastes of young and reluctantly middle-aged men.

Despite the public’s political exhaustion after a decade of real war, imaginary war remains as popular as ever. Both Battlefield 3, published by Electronic Arts, and the new Call of Duty, from Activision, will be among the year’s biggest-selling games. In terms of design polish, production values, visual presentation, multiplayer appeal and even such storytelling as there is, they deserve all of their success.

But what makes these games so much fun for so many people in the first place? Of all video games, first-person shooters usually elicit the most confusion, consternation and derision in people who don’t play them.

Trust the marketers to show us the way. The people who make these games know exactly which of their audience’s psychological buttons they are trying to push. The tagline in the commercial Activision has been running during football games and other television programs to promote Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is “There’s a soldier in all of us.” The official trailer has been pulling in about a million hits a day.

Read the whole piece here.

The Gamification of Jihad

I've posted here in past about the relationship between video games, youth culture and the recruiting and training practices of western militaries. Here's an interesting story from the Foreign Policy website about how radical Islamist groups are borrowing from the same culture, using the forums and online communities surrounding certain games to entice recruits, build loyalty among followers, and blur the line between video games and violence. MP+



The counterterrorism community has spent years trying to determine why so many people are engaged in online jihadi communities in such a meaningful way. After all, the life of an online administrator for a hard-line Islamist forum is not as exciting as one might expect. You don't get paid, and you spend most of your time posting links and videos, commenting on other people's links and videos, and then commenting on other people's comments. So why do people like Abumubarak spend weeks and months and years of their time doing it? Explanations from scholars have ranged from the inherently compulsive and violent quality of Islam to the psychology of terrorists.

But no one seems to have noticed that the fervor of online jihadists is actually quite similar to the fervor of any other online group. The online world of Islamic extremists, like all the other worlds of the Internet, operates on a subtly psychological level that does a brilliant job at keeping people like Abumubarak clicking and posting away -- and amassing all the rankings, scores, badges, and levels to prove it. Like virtually every other popular online social space, the social space of online jihadists has become "gamified," a term used to describe game-like attributes applied to non-game activities. It turns out that what drives online jihadists is pretty much exactly what drives Internet trolls, airline ticket consumers, and World of Warcraft players: competition.

Gamification started out as a corporate buzzword, meaning any attempt to ensure brand loyalty and engagement through applying gaming principles. It doesn't mean turning something into a game, but rather allowing users to gain status-based awards and reputation, earn meaningful badges, compete with others, use avatars, and trade in a virtual currency. If you've used frequent-flier miles, earned stars with your coffee purchase at Starbucks, or checked in on Foursquare, you've had a gamified experience.

Read the whole story here.

Another Take on Video Shooter Games

Character from US Army recruiting video game, America's Army

My last post reminded me that I've beaked off on the subject of video games and ethics myself. Here's a link to an article of mine that appeared in the online journal of chaplaincy, Curtana: Sword of Mercy (Spring/Summer 2010). The link takes you to one big .PDF file but scroll down to find my article. Curtana is edited by former chaplain Robert Stroud and is an interesting venture - long may it prosper.

Should Shooter Games Be Ethical?

Time to revisit a subject discussed here on MP before. Freelance journalist Matthew Shaer has published an interesting piece on Foreign Policy on the latest crop of Iraq/Afghanistan-themed first person shooter games. Three of his points worth noting:

1) Now that contemporary wars are lasting long enough to spawn their own video games, game designers are deciding whether or not to cross an ethical line when they allow players to take control of the enemy and kill depicted US/NATO soldiers.

2) Point one assumes that one can speak of the ethics of these games, though that is a point contested by some. Here's Shaer: "There is no moral nuance at play in any of the first-person military shooters on the market today, no greater cultural lesson to be learned -- there is only the opportunity to use a cool-looking machine gun to take the head off a bad-looking dude, in a beautiful-looking environment."

3) By taking this "no moral nuance" line, game designers are missing an opportunity to take players deeper and maybe teach them something. Here's Shaer talking with communications professor Ian Bogost: "Games are great at depicting systems instead of telling stories. ... And then there's role-playing: What is it like to be someone else?" he said. "That's the missed opportunity in Medal of Honor -- what does it really mean to be the Taliban? Where are they coming from? What does that feel like? Now that doesn't mean you have to endorse the opinion, but [in a video game] you can explore something from someone else's side."

Bogost paused. Medal of Honor, he added, "was never on that track, but if it had, it would have been interesting and powerful."