I Wanted to Be a Chaplain: A Reminiscence of World War II

Eugene E. Campbell. USHS collections.

I Wanted to Be a Chaplain: A Reminiscence of World War II

BY EUGENE E. CAMPBELL

AFTER SERVING AS AN ARMY CHAPLAIN IN EUROPE during World War II, Gene Campbell returned home to become one of Utah's most distinguished historians. A professor of history at Brigham Young University for twenty-four years, he received many awards, including the Utah State Historical Society's most prestigious honor, Fellow, for his lifetime contributions to the research and writing of Utah history. Born in Tooele on April 26, 1915,Gene was loved by students and colleagues for his appreciation of people and for his liberal and humane approach to life. In this account of his experiences as a Mormon chaplain during the war he reflected on how his attitudes and outlook on life were shaped by those experiences. When the United States entered World War II Gene and his family were in Wayne County where he was a seminary teacher for the LDS church He registered for the draft there

I had volunteered for the Chaplains Corps and had qualified, but the quota of Mormon chaplains had been met. At that time the army was not drafting married men with children. They didn't call them up until it was really necessary. I was finally called to take a physical exam for the Chaplain Corps and went to Fort Douglas for it There were only two or three others there and they treated us very nice, just like gentlemen. The very next week I received a call to take a physical examination for the draft board, and again I went up to Fort Douglas, but this time there were many men being drafted and they treated us like dogs I knew then that I wanted to be a chaplain. I didn't want to be drafted. I had a master's degree, I had been on a mission [for the LDS church], and had taught seminary. I felt that I was as well qualified as any Mormon to become a chaplain.

I finished the school year and was working at Utah Copper in Magna for the summer. I received a telegram one day that was addressed First Lieutenant Eugene Campbell I was told to report to Fort Douglas and take the oath that the officers are required to take. I went to Fort Douglas, took the oath, and got an officer's uniform. Despite the fact that I had received citizens' military training some years earlier, I felt like .. . an imposter wearing a uniform. It isn't easy to go there as a civilian and then walk out a first lieutenant. I couldn't remember whether you saluted inside a building or not. I walked down the streets of Salt Lake and enlisted men saluted me, and I really was puzzled as to what I should do I received a transportation allowance, boarded a train in Salt Lake and it took two or three days to get to Chaplains School at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

At Harvard they held the school in a building called the Germanic Museum. We had worship services every morning in the Harvard Chapel. We were quartered in Perkins Hall, a barracks-like affair with upper and lower bunks, four of us to a two-room unit I was put in with three very interesting men.

Jim Summerville was a Roman Catholic priest from Brooklyn. I think women would look on him as being quite handsome. He was a cocky, selfassured, personable guy.

Then there was Llewelyn Runyon from Minnesota who was a Methodist minister. He was a gentle person and highly moral. He was what I thought of when I thought of an ideal Protestant minister He was sensitive and intelligent I greatly admired him even though I thought he was the least manly of the guys.

Jim Franklin .. . a Baptist preacher from Tennessee . . . was quite a character. He didn't have too much education. He [had] received what he felt was a call to preach. His congregation felt that he was qualified and so he was recommended by his church He had some college training at one of the Baptist seminaries He was a chain cigarette smoker, and Jim Summerville, the Catholic, smoked cigars most of the time.

They asked me about our youth program and how we had recreation halls as part of our chapels and a full program of recreation, including athletics, dancing, drama. When I said dancing the Baptist preacher jumped up and said, "You mean to say that you foster an evil like dancing right in your chapel?" I said, 'Yes, I don't think it's evil." Then he said, 'You are a hypocrite, criticizing me for a little habit like smoking while you actually espouse a great evil like dancing." I soon learned that everyone didn't see things quite the same way. I began to have my eyes opened a little and have my vision broadened somewhat.

During the six weeks that we were at Harvard I came to have a genuine affection and respect for each one of those men I believe that they also felt that way about me We finished our session together and all of us felt that we would be heading for some combat area. It was either Llewelyn or Franklin that said that he felt that it had been a genuine religious experience, and he would like to have us all kneel and pray together with locked arms and hands We did and it was a moving experience for me.

I was assigned to the 71st Infantry Division which was preparing to go overseas for a combat assignment I survived the trip fairly well However, I have always been subject to motion sickness and got somewhat seasick In fact, one day I had a hard time finishing a sermon. I was holding services down in the mess hall, and with all those odors plus the rocking of the ship, I began to feel sick and . . . cut the sermon short and headed for the upper decks.

We landed in Le Harve, France, late at night. We had to carry our duffle bags and what else we had off the boat. The weather was terrible. We slogged through mud, sleet, and snow to some trucks, got in, and were taken somewhere. It seemed as if we drove all night. . . . The next morning.

. . . we were just dumped in a field of mud and rain and snow at Yerville, France, which is part of Normandy. We pitched our tents and had noon Krations for breakfast, some hard crackers and some cheese That night cold, hungry, miserable, and facing combat I asked myself what was I doing there. I began to wonder why I ever volunteered.

After our unit had been there for about three weeks we received orders to move to the front, which was still in eastern France. We finally ended up in the town of Bitche, which sounds a lot like bitch, and, as you can imagine, the GIs called it that.

We were let out in what looked like a bombed-out chapel. We threw our bedrolls down there and went to sleep. When we woke up we found that we were in the bombed-out ruins of a Catholic university called the University of Bitche Soon the GIs were going around singing "We are the loyal sons of Bitche."

I could speak some German. I had taken a couple of years of German at Snow College and . . . had reviewed it while working on my master's degree I held a church service in the local Lutheran chapel which had been partly damaged. The ministers had fled and weren't holding any services there, so I got permission to hold a service for the men in the chapel. Some of the townspeople asked if they could attend I told them they could, and I gave a little prayer and speech prepared in German I had a similar experience in a neighboring town which had a lovely little chapel. I got permission from the mayor to hold services in their chapel, and he asked me if the townspeople could attend I said to him, "I'm a Mormon, not a Lutheran." He said, 'You preach the Word of God and we're hungry for it." I told the mayor that they could attend and enlisted the help of a local schoolteacher to help with my talk and with some singing. By the time the service was to start there were about thirty or forty GIs present but not a single civilian. I thought they had got the word that I was a Mormon, but I went out to the door to see if anybody was coming. There were a couple of little kids playing around the courtyard and I asked, "Where are all the people? Were ist die LeuteV The little boy answered, 'You didn't ring the bell." I asked, "Do you know how to ring it?" He did, and in about three minutes the whole community was there. They were dressed in black, wearing their best clothes, their go-to-meeting clothes. We had quite a service; we sang "A Mighty Fortress." I talked to them a little in German and we had prayer. It was quite a rich experience for me. When I went to the back of the room as we normally do at the end of the service to shake hands with the people on the way out, they started pressing money into my hand They expected to pay for the service There was also a little basket on each side of the door and they were putting money in that. I tried to stop them, but I couldn't. I don't know how much money was put in the baskets, but I didn't touch it Finally, when all the people left the chapel, the mayor and two or three other officials returned and gathered up the money and said to me, "We'll take care of this."

In another town we threw our bedrolls on the floor of a beer hall as we were expecting to attack the next day or two, but we ended up staying there for three days . . . [and then] I moved into the biggest house in town with some other officers. The house belonged to the factory owner. It was a beautiful three- or four-story brick mansion with a private swimming pool, a steam laundry, a cellar full of wine, and elevators that went to the upper bedrooms. It was really quite a place.

It was at Easter time that we were there, and on Good Friday I thought that I had better hold a service. I got the word around that there would be services held in a room above this beer hall. It was a big open hall and I had it decorated with flowers.

. . .Right in the middle of my sermon a warrant officer who had never been to church before came staggering in accompanied by a sergeant They both had been hitting the wine cellars and were just as drunk as could be. They walked right up to the front and sat down in the very front row. The seating was makeshift, with chairs, and I wasn't far away. I continued to talk [for] three or four minutes [and then] this doggone warrant officer got sick and the vomit splashed on my boots, he was so close. Then they got up and walked out. He was very embarrassed the next day when he realized what had happened. They had just wandered into church and didn't know what they were doing.

When I got back to the officers quarters I discovered that the special service officer, Major Mann, had found [out] that we had liberated a group of Russian workers that had been working at the local factory. They were mainly girls who had been brought from Russia to work in the German factory Major Mann had arranged for a truckload of them to come to the officers quarters for a party When I heard about the party I thought to myself, boy, this is going to be a rough one. The men were all starting to drink and I didn't know what to do. I thought that the best thing for me was to go up to my room and at least stay out of it I was heading for the elevator when the inspector general of the division, a lieutenant colonel, called to me and asked where I was going. I told him that I wasn't going to be involved in the party. He said, "Chaplain, I command you to stay here and keep this party straight." I had shared some other experiences with him and we had a pretty good relationship. I said, 'You know I can't do that." He said, "I command you to try," and then he said to me as a friend rather than an officer, "I'm asking you to stay." So I stayed.

The truck arrived with a load of Russian girls. Most of them hadn't had a good meal for many months probably Some of them had had no contact with their homes for two years They didn't know whether their parents were still alive or not. The one thing that was in my favor was that no one could communicate very well. Most of the girls knew some German so if any of the guys wanted to talk to the girls, they had to communicate through me which was a real limitation They gave the girls some food The girls had made a two-stringed instrument. . . like a guitar so that they could accompany each other [as] they sang and danced. Our special services officer found a guitar somewhere and gave it to them as a gift They also had a little concertina There was a lot of singing, and the guys started teaching them how to do dances like the Virginia reel and the conga They made a conga line through the house It turned out to be a real nice affair At eleven o'clock I said to Major Mann, "It's time to take those girls home." So he rounded them up and put them in the truck and took them back to their barracks.

We were still heading north towards Berlin when I got orders to report to our headquarters in Fulda. I headed for Fulda in my Jeep. I got to within ten miles of the city where a bridge was blown out. I talked to a farmer who was working in a field. He said there was a smaller bridge on a dam and he showed me where it was My driver and I were all alone We had a carbine with us, and that was the total amount of protection we had We were under the impression that the whole region was under American control Patton sent his tanks down the main highway and took the main cities, and then the infantry regiments like ours would come in and occupy the cities [Patton] would push on ahead and the infantry regiment would move forward on each side of his tank force and capture the little towns That way we would sweep across Germany So the city of Fulda had been taken and the 26th Infantry Division occupied it We were assigned to clean up the little towns on one side of the thrust I crossed a bridge, came into a little town, and noticed that people were hanging out their sheets I knew that this is the way Germans air their bedding They do it almost every day I heard some small arms fire but it didn't seem like it was very close We even had a flat tire in one town and we stopped and fixed it We went through another town and finally drove into Fulda but couldn't find the 71st Infantry Division We found the 26th Division Headquarters, and finally got to talk to the commanding officer He asked, "What are you doing in here?" I answered, "I had orders to come here as this is where our headquarters was supposed to be." He said, "There has been a delay and they are not in here yet. By the way, how did you get here?" I showed him on the map and he laughed and said, "Congratulations, chaplain, you just conquered two towns." Actually, I was the first one to go into those two towns. I didn't know that, of course; they were surrendering when they were hanging out those white sheets. I thought they were just airing their bedding. I asked him what would be the best way to get to my headquarters and he said, "You need to go on the other side of the river." He gave me directions, and we headed back. On the way back I passed our artillery outfit which was setting up for a night attack. I saw German soldiers lying dead with their heads blown off. It was horrible. . . .About 10 kilometers back . .. I found one of our infantry divisions . . . marching off for a night attack. I had been all through that area and didn't even know that it was German territory.

When I heard that Munich was taken I went a little out of my way to go there and see Dachau I saw the exterior of the great concentration camp and then went into Munich I went down to the Marianstrasse to the famous city hall with its famous glockenspiel. There wasn't a soul around but when we drove out south of Munich we came upon a small unit of German soldiers marching Boy, was I frightened! But soon I noticed that they didn't have any guns I discovered that they were just sixteen-year-old kids that had been drafted into the German army. When the Americans came through they turned them loose and told them to walk to their homes.

After Munich we went down to the Austrian border and crossed the Inn River into Austria. This was not too far from Hitler's birthplace, Braunau. I discovered later that he was born on the Austrian side of the Inn River Then, as we pushed across Austria, we liberated two concentration camps. One . . . called Gunskierchen lager ... a new camp. . . . was in the woods and was filled with Jewish inmates from the Balkans. The other . . . Ebensee was in one of the most beautiful regions in the whole world, the Salzkammergut region of Austria Ebensee was an older concentration camp located on the side of a mountain. They had built four caverns under an old stone quarry as a camouflage in which they were building the V-2 rocket It had an elaborate electrical plant It also had a concentration camp where the inmates that worked there lived When they got too sick to work the Germans disposed of them. They had a two-furnace operation which burned the bodies. When I arrived, bodies were stacked in the room like cordwood and there was a half-burned body in the furnace A Dutch physician who had been given the job of running the furnace was still there. This was a mixed camp containing Dutch and French citizens. They were mostly political prisoners, whereas the first camp we liberated was made up strictly of Jewish refugees from the Balkans In both places there were some horrible things to see.

The Ebensee Camp contained hundreds of inmates They were like skeletons. Some of them were lying around on the ground and some of them were walking around, their minds just as blank as could be . . . [and they were] stark naked. It was pretty cold the last of April up in the Austrian Alps not to have any clothes on.

About a month after the war ended I was holding a service in Augsburg. It was the largest group that had attended one of my services. Major General Wyman, the division commander, the assistant division commander, and another two or three generals were there, plus some other highranking officers I had a fine service prepared We had a brass quartet in our band which was really good Everything went well However, the sermon I had prepared was on forgiveness. . . .We had been under great pressure and tension and the things that we had done and said to others in our outfits we should be able to forgive. I said that in the ultimate sense we had to forgive our enemies too if we were truly Christians We had to find a way to forgive the German people. The next day the commanding general, General Wyman, called me into his office and said, "That was quite a sermon you preached yesterday." When he said "quite a sermon" I didn't know whether that was good or bad That was the way Churchill always addressed a baby's mother: "That's quite a baby you have there." He told me that he didn't consider it an appropriate sermon for our situation. He said, "Do you realize that we are one of the divisions alerted to go toJapan? We havejust begun to fight; we have the hardest part in front of us; we can't be talking to these men about forgiveness." He told me that his father had been a Methodist minister and his brother was married to a Mormon. He was a very warm congenial man He said, "I suggest you pocket that sermon for a few years until we get out of this mess."

I was uncomfortable at first in the role of an officer. I liked the recognition, better pay, better quarters, and the other benefits. It was awfully hard for me to act as a religious leader and to be classified as an officer For example, I would sit at the officers table with the officers, and we had better food or special privileges such as being able to go to the head of a long line at the theater. It was hard for me to reconcile my concept of a Christian person with the army's hierarchy I tried to break it down I tried to stand in ... a long line with the enlisted men, but I soon got the word that the men didn't appreciate that. I was an officer and that was not where I ought to be I was part of the "enemy." I finally was able to accept my role as an officer I would try to be available for the men that needed a chaplain and . . . for emergencies such as trouble at home. Of course, as a chaplain Iwas also helpful in batde situations and in times of death. . ..

Generally, I tried to help the morale of the men. I promoted activities such as athletics and songfests. . . . My particular background enabled me to be more effective [at that] than other professional Protestant ministers because I had been an athlete. . . . [and] could stand rough talk without getting excited.

The war was a great adventure for me. I believe that the war was one of the greatest events in history. I [had] felt it was passing me by, and [then] to have the kind of experiences that I had seemed kind of wonderful. I treasure the memory of it. I wouldn't want to do it again, most of it anyway, but it was a rich experience for me.

NOTES

Dr. Campbell died on April 10, 1986. This article was extracted from an interview conducted by Richard Maker onfuly 17, 1973, as part of the Charles Redd Centerfor Western History, Brigham Young University, LDS Chaplains Oral History Project. A transcript is on file at the Harold B. Lee Library, BYU.