Serving God and Country: United States Military Chaplains in World War II

Chaplain Lemons laid much of the blame for the “59 Americans killed, 97 wounded—in addition to [destruction of] boats, tents, big guns, food, fuel, ammunition, and much other equipment” on the people he labeled naïve American isolationists in the 1920s, and especially on the idealistic American politicians and journalists in the late 1930s and early 1940s who simply refused to prepare us for war. These leaders, said Lemons, argued that America had no duty to defend helpless nations overrun by Germany and Japan, and that America’s security would be best enhanced if the nation remained neutral and gave the world a peaceable example by not building up its military arsenal. To the mind of Lemons and plenty of his contemporaries, such “unrealistic dreamers” ultimately cost the United States a prolonged war and countless lives and casualties.4

It was not until his troop ship reached New Caledonia that the reality began to sink in that this war was not a festive adventure. Sobering reality dawned in the minds of sailors and marines when, for

the first time, they saw body bags and listened to horrific stories about a place called Guadalcanal. Chet Root would soon care for wounded, maimed, and dying Second Division marines on Tarawa and Saipan, and then he would be nearly killed by a Japanese hand granade on Tinian in late July 1944.4

Chaplains removed muddied dog tags and prayed over the dead, and they made notes of temporary grave locations in hopes that the men could be exhumed and reburied in proper graves—complete with wooden markers—once the island had been secured.

During his four months on the beach, Reardon recalled that “we had almost no medicine, almost no food except Japanese food. At times we had no pills for malaria. We were all alone.”20 During the first month or more, the priest assumed they would never get off “the Canal.” He referred to the beach as his “parish,” and some marines helped him build an altar out of empty ammunition boxes, and they designed a cross from empty shell casings. For eighty-five days Chaplain Reardon never changed clothes; he lost fifty pounds, seldom had even a few minutes for private prayer, and like many of the marines he served, suffered from streptococcal infections and malaria. Despite the fact that he eventually collapsed into unconsciousness, had to be evacuated, and came perilously close to death, the faithful chaplain could look back on the experiences at Guadalcanal and say, “I really felt close to God.”21 While he celebrated Mass for men who had pulled back for a brief respite, he remembered, “it was as if the war didn’t exist. Only the Mass existed.”22

A brief glimpse of Chaplain Thomas M. Reardon’s ability to bring light to the darkness of Guadalcanal came from a non-Catholic marine who came upon the priest’s little makeshift chapel: “Speaking in a tone of most sincere compliment, [the young man said] ‘The Catholic Church is like the Standard Oil Company. It has stations wherever you go.’”

that “despite regulations explicitly forbidding chaplains to carry firearms, he habitually stalked around the island with a loaded pistol and a cartridge of extra bullets.

He quoted his fellow chaplain Father Keogh, who purportedly exclaimed, “You’ve got to help the Lord once in a while.”28 Evidently Chaplain Carol Lemons, another Protestant chaplain who ministered to Seabees and Marines during these months, decided to “help the lord once in a while” too. His unpublished autobiography reveals that in the face of threats of Japanese infiltration at night, he kept two .45-caliber pistols—one under each side of his blanket.