Major Josef C. Dine
2nd Battalion, 143rd Infantry

Yes, I know there are no infantry chaplains. There are just chaplains, Army of the United States, and they serve with whatever branch they are assigned. But in the 2d Battalion, 143d Infantry, 36th Infantry Division, we had a chaplain who loved the Infantry so well he must be called an Infantry Chaplain. He hated the need for Infantry, but he loved the men in it. There were a lot of men who were better men and better soldiers for knowing him. And the men loved him; not the vapid, wide-eyed, phony adoration Hollywood awards its movie chaplains, but the love of occupationally unhappy men for one who was also unhappy but who seemed to have something to believe in. He was a better and braver man than we were, but he never knew it

Actually, I know little about Fintan A. (he would say it stood for Aloysius but we always suspected he was kidding) Murphy, and he is about 37, I should say. He is a Franciscan priest, a native of Buffalo, N.Y. He came overseas, it was rumored, with a gorgeous beard which he removed shortly after he reported to the Division chaplain.

He never did anything dramatic nor did he ever mouth a historic phrase. He never hiked great distances, nor did he ever save a battle by whispering a quick word of advice to the harried battalion commander. In the first place, our battalion commander was never harried. In the second, if he had been, Father Murphy wouldn’t have known what to do about it. He never even tried to learn. He figured his mission was not to be a battalion staff officer, but to be a friend of the Infantry soldiers and officers in the battalion. He made it a fulltime job.

The first time I "Saw" Father Murphy I couldn’t see him. I was on my way back to the hospital, my face and eyes covered with a bandage. The ambulance dumped the several of us at a clearing station. Someone lit a cigarette for me. I sat on a bench, shaking a little, I think, trying to forget my troubles. I heard a quiet, friendly voice ask hesitantly, "Would you like some hot chocolate, Captain?" I would, and a few seconds later a hot canteen cup was placed in my hand. I sipped it, wondering why the man had gone away, I wanted to talk. But when I heard his voice next to me I realized he’d been sitting there, quietly. He asked the usual questions. When I told him I had Fox Company, he said "When you get back I’ll see you there. I’m going up to be the battalion chaplain. My name’s Murphy. How about another cigarette?"

When I reported back to the battalion some time later, I was introduced to him, and he remembered me. He was average-sized, easy-mannered, informal. He wore glasses and through them I saw sympathetic eyes. His lower lip was pendulous; he had the mouth of a man of humor, and the jaw of a stubborn man. I could see everyone liked him.

I saw him often. He was interested in everything. He would accompany the battalion commander on tours of the lines, and he would talk with the soldiers briefly, getting inside them with simple, honest questions about their homes and their families and how old were they, and wasn’t the Infantry a hell of a way to fight a war. And the men would grin at him and sometimes pat him on the back, and when he walked on they would look over and nod appreciatively at the soldier in the next hole. When an officer reported back to the battalion CP, Father Murphy would ask him about his company or platoon, then go out and cajole the cooks into fixing up a thick sandwich and a cup of coffee for the runner. He’d carry it out and sit on the ground with the runner and chat. Unlike some chaplains I knew he was never stiff or theatrical or patronizing or maudlin. And when the officer came out of the CP his runner would wave at the chaplain as he walked away. And like as not the soldier would look back and ask the officer, "Say, isn’t that Murphy a hell of a guy?" And the officer would say, "You’re damn right."

I suppose Father Murphy performed his priestly functions well. As a nonCatholic I wouldn’t know. My contacts with him were purely military or personal, but these things I remember.

We were making one of the constant attacks in the hellish Vosges Mountains in France. There had started the awful, familiar sound of small arms fire, the opening bars of a grim symphony. I had been with the left platoon. Everything was OK there but the fire on the right was more intense so I started for that flank. I circled toward my command group for a check. Just before I reached them the inevitable .50mm mortars began shelling us. The shells seemed to be dropping as thick as snowflakes and I crawled the last few yards. Everyone was flat of course—what with the bullets and mortars—and among them I was startled to see Father Murphy, watching me intently.

I snaked over to him. "What the hell," I said inelegantly, "are you doing here?"

He grinned a little weakly. "I thought I ought to get the devil scared out of me.

Another time my company was in reserve, my orders to attack through George Company as soon as they got across a valley and got a foothold in some heavily defended woods. But they never did; their casualties were tremendous and their assault failed. I got permission from the battalion commander to get my company worked back out of that hot spot and attack further around to the right. I was standing on the road, urging the men over and behind a high ridge for cover from the damned artillery which started to scream in when we left our protective gully. One at a time the men dashed across the road, bent low, panting, up and over the ridge. But one dullard stood upright and looked back to see what the artillery was doing. Furious, I shouted, "That’s right, Jones, just stand there long enough and you’ll get your tail shot off." He woke up, dove out of sight.

"I’m awfully glad you said ‘tail" Captain," a voice behind me drawled. "Anything else would have been vulgar."

Of course, it was Father Murphy. What he was doing there I don’t know, either.

But he was by no means a hard man. On one of his trips with the battalion commander through my area, I heard him ask a soldier where his home was.

"Over there," answered the lad, cheerfully, pointing to his foxhole. Father Murphy turned away quickly, and I saw his eyes fill at what he later told me was one of the most pathetic remarks he had ever heard.

His sympathy and sensitivity were sometimes expressed in a more practical way. A rifle company commander, after a ghastly five-day-and-night battle which finally won a little wooded hill in the Vosges, was called back to the battalion CP for his defensive position orders. He had lost over eighty men in his company, he was exhausted, punch-drunk. He wanted some understanding and, figuratively, someone to hold his hand. But the battalion officers were too busy, of course, for any such foolishness, so the officer left, so undone he was actually close to tears. He had carefully contained himself while in the CP, but he hadn’t fooled Murphy. When he left the CP room the chaplain left with him. They sat down on a rock and lit cigarettes and the company commander talked. Murphy listened and from time to time patted the officer’s knee and nodded his head. It was a spiritual transfusion for the officer, but it was a long time later before he realized that Father Murphy had said hardly a word.

Murphy got a Purple Heart for sticking his chin out. He also got a Silver Star and there never was a decoration more generally applauded. When he was able to leave his hospital bed, he would tour the wards to visit men from his battalion. His entrance was always noted the same way. All the soldiers, the Protestants and Jews among them, would lift their heads or sit up and call him to come over. But his popularity with those of other faiths wasn’t strange for he never limited his affection or help to Catholics.

The only time, in fact, I ever heard him suggest any kind of group distinction was to the tank officer whose company was attached to our battalion and who asked the chaplain about Mass.

"I don’t know what your tankers need me for," he said, "they’ve got four inches of steel around them." But of course he welcomed them to his service.

Father Murphy got back home, all right. He’s now teaching history at Siena College, a Franciscan school near Albany, New York. I often picture him in his robes, quietly listening and nodding, smoking his pipe, pushing his glasses back up his large nose. I’m sure the other priests like him and admire his intelligence and his razor-edge humor. But I shouldn’t suppose any of them ever suspect that one time, not so many months ago, that quiet man’s regimental commander (a heavily decorated hero) called the Division surgeon to see if he could get Father Murphy discharged sooner from the hospital.

"Please do what you can to get him back," the colonel said. "that man’s worth one of my battalions to me."