to love and serve
Afterword
During World War II between December 1941 and 1945 some 16 million Americans served in the Armed Forces. Of these 416,000 gave their lives as the United States waged war in the European and Pacific theaters. More than 8,000 Chaplains of all denominations served side by side with the men and women in this deadliest military conflict in history.
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hey held religious services for soldiers and sailors and preached to them. They counseled and advised those who sought help. They were everywhere they deemed their presence to be necessary – in battle, that meant with the combat troops, and there the chaplain often acted above and beyond the call of duty. Under hostile fire, they risked their lives. (Seventy Catholic Chaplains died in World War II.) They sought the wounded, the dying, and the dead who lay exposed and helpless. They succored them, rescued them, brought them back to medical aid stations, and prayed over them. They buried 21 bodies and wrote to the families of the deceased.” “In combat, every chaplain experienced the same terrors – the threat of sudden annihilation or severe
injury, the death of one’s closest companions – the same crushing burden of labor, and hardships of weather and terrain. At the same time, chaplains who remained in the United States during all of the war (many of whom resented having to stay at home while ‘the boys’ were suffering overseas) suf22 fered boredom and frustration.” Although but a small percentage of the total number of Chaplains, the records of military service, the citations and awards, and the inspiring stories of New England Province Jesuits recounted here capture the shared experience of the whole and remind us that we must not forget with the passage of time the sacrifices they, together with millions of their fellow Americans, so generously made to keep our Nation free.
21 Donald F. Crosby, Battlefield Chaplains. (Lawrence, KS, University of Kansas Press, 1994), xi-xii. 22 Ibid., xxiv.
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