Father Hart, Formerly Stationed at Camp Funston, Is Over There

The following paragraphs taken from a story in the Kansas City Star by Otto P. Higgins, its staff correspondent, with the Missouri and Kansas troops in the Bosges Mountains, indicate the esteem in which a chaplain is held by the boys over there:

“Father Hart, a Knights of Columbus chaplain, joined us Saturday afternoon and held Mass Sunday morning in the little French Y.C.M.A. down the hill a bit: Father Hart is a regular fellow, for he gets out and hikes over the mountains, down in the trenches, ducks from the shells and hits for the dugouts, just like the rest. He sleeps wherever he happens to be, and eats the same way. The boys are always glad to see him. Everybody calls him ‘Father’, Catholics, as well as Protestants, and the trend of the conversation never changes when he happens around.

“Many a man recalls the teachings of his childhood and turns back to his religion when he is in the trenches, and Father Hart is always handy to hear confessions, in the trenches, dugouts, shanties or on the roadside. When Death is stalking about all the time a man’s thoughts turn back to the days of his youth, and his mother and his God, I know.”