For God and Country

chapter 1 | for god and country

Chaplains’ School

Wednesday, April 15, 1942 Bade farewell to family, several of whom saw me off on the midnight train out of [Boston’s] South Station for Philadelphia.1

Thursday, April 16, 1942 7:30 a.m. – Arrived in Philadelphia. After struggling into my clothes in the Pullman upper berth, I discovered that my new life as a Naval Chaplain with collar and tie was starting inauspiciously. I began the day by losing a collar button.2

8:30 a.m. – Celebrated Mass at St. Joseph’s Church in Willings Alley, the oldest Church in Philadelphia. Fr. [Leo H.] O’Hare, S.J. was a princely host. Called home.3

11:10 a.m. – Took the train for Norfolk, Virginia via Delaware, splitting the State down the middle with a ride to the tip of Cape St. Charles (Chesapeake Bay).

No sooner was I settled in my seat than a man of about 42, with a splendid physique, maneuvered down the aisle with a pronounced list to starboard.

He spotted the Chaplain’s cross and greeted me like a long-lost friend, a soldier in World War I. “Hi, Chaplain!”

His life history followed. The conductor came along, to whom the drunk said, “Hey look at that rank,” pointing to my gold braid, Lieut. j.g. “I’d shoot the Gospel for a rank like that.” Then he wandered off down the aisle, war-whooping “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” Then back to me, now writing, with the conductor. “Look at that, writing about me. He’ll use me in a sermon. This is what he’ll say: ‘My dear brethren, once I was riding on a train down to Norfolk, Virginia from Philly and on that rain was a man who was a drunkard. He had been dissipating for three days.’” Then he sailed off down the aisle again, singing his song, “Deep in the Heart of

1 Born in Scotland, Foley was raised in the Boston metropolitan area, the oldest of eight children of Irish immigrant parents, Francis and Catherine. Francis died when Foley was a young man. Diary keeping, it should be noted, was a practice forbidden to American officers and enlisted men for fear the documents would fall into enemy hands and provide useful intelligence. Foley’s diary, which he wrote for his family in the event he did not return, seems particularly problematic, with notes on ship movements, “scuttlebutt,” personnel, morale, and military installations that could well have been of some interest to German or Japanese military intelligence. Shortly after Foley enlisted, Navy Secretary Frank Knox issued a general communique that began: “The keeping of personal diaries by personnel of the Navy is hereby prohibited for the duration of the war. Personnel having diaries in their possession are directed to destroy them immediately.” Foley makes no reference to this order in his diary, and writes about openly making entries in a notebook as he went about his duties aboard ship.

2 Originally assigned to the Army, Foley convinced his Jesuit superiors to see to it that he was appointed to the Navy. In a March 3, 1995 interview with Steve O’Brien, then a history doctoral candidate at Boston College, Foley notes “having learned to swim in salt water at eight years old and liking the ocean and living next door to it and having taken a voyage [to England, for his Jesuit studies] . . . I had salt in my veins. It had to be the Navy.” O’Brien’s thesis, based on Foley’s diary, was published as Blackrobe in Blue: The Naval Chaplaincy of John P. Foley, S.J. 1942 –1946 (iuniverse 2002).

3 Founded in 1733 by Joseph Greaton, an English Jesuit, Old St. Joseph’s, as it’s referred to, is the oldest Catholic Church in Philadelphia.

A wall plaque in the church pays tribute to William Penn (1644–1718), who founded the colony of Pennsylvania in 1687. Penn died in 1718. In 1701, as the colony’s “first proprietor,” granted religious toleration. The plaque reads “When in 1733 / St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church / was founded and / Dedicated to the Guardian of the Holy Family / it was the only place / in the entire English speaking world / where public celebration of / the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass / was permitted by law.”

5 | chapter i: chaplains’ school