Confronted with the moral complexities of their duties in Vietnam, chaplains often found that one religious value conflicted with another.
Military chaplains know they must be moral examples to the troops or lose their credibility as clergy. They also know they must be able relate to those troops—on the base and on the battlefield—or lose their credibility as fellow soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen. In any war zone, those dual obligations can create moral dilemmas that make it difficult to minister on personal matters such as alcohol use, drug addiction and prostitution, let alone on the larger, more troubling offenses such as atrocities that emotionally stressed warriors may commit against civilians and enemy prisoners. In Vietnam there was another ethical quandary for chaplains: the morality of the war itself. In Bringing God to Men: American Military Chaplains and the Vietnam War, Jacqueline E. Whitt shows how chaplains dealt with those thorny issues.
When chaplains arrived in Vietnam, they had to make decisions about which issues were worth fighting over, set moral and ethical standards for themselves and adapt to different situations. They usually responded based on a combination of their own religious views, their understanding of the military situation and their perceived relationship to the soldiers and officers with whom they worked.
For many evangelical and conservative chaplains, alcohol use proved to be a serious testing ground. The choice to abstain seemed easy enough. But chaplains still had to relate to the troops and do so without compromising their personal beliefs or their ministry. In one example of how they walked that fine line, Army chaplain James Hutchens, who was uncomfortable with the heavy drinking that accompanied a ritual in which new unit members were inducted, decided to participate in the ceremonies, but he replaced the potent drink with lukewarm water. He understood the significance of the initiation but chose not to abandon his religious belief.
Moral issues such as profanity and prostitution likewise tested chaplains. Soldiers and officers frequently apologized for using expletives in a chaplain’s presence. Some chaplains defused the situation with humor, others confronted the issue as a problem and still others ignored it or dismissed it as an insignificant offense given the circumstances. There were similarly diverse, though generally negative, responses to prostitution and officers’ tacit or explicit approval of it. Some chaplains protested loudly. Others accepted it as an unavoidable if regrettable fact. Still others mentioned the strength of their own relationships with their wives at home, implying that their faith and marriage enabled them to resist temptation.
Chaplains who served in combat and close to troops had to handle these issues in a more delicate way than their colleagues in the civilian community or rear areas of the military. They consistently recognized the moral ambiguities and stress brought about by combat. Issues that may have been black and white in “the world” became gray in Vietnam.
Chaplains relied on their personal beliefs to make decisions. What chaplains should do in these circumstances was up for debate, and what they actually did confirmed that there were a variety of reasonable responses to different situations.
In some situations the moral and ethical lines seem to be very clearly drawn, and what chaplains should do is plainly evident. How should chaplains respond when faced with the killing of enemy civilians or prisoners of war, the mutilation of corpses, rape and torture? By the standards of international law, general orders, human decency and religious mandates, these acts are wrong. Surely in these instances, the chaplain should say something, do something, make noise, preach about it, alert authorities, alert the media, alert someone. But the evidence is unsettling. In the face of atrocities and war crimes, particularly those committed by Americans, chaplains appeared to do little in response.
However, it is unreasonable to expect that a chaplain’s ministry would eliminate immoral and unethical behavior—even at its most extreme. Chaplain Corps doctrine and field manuals consistently stressed that the chaplain’s primary function was to provide for the free exercise of religion among soldiers and to provide spiritual and pastoral care. Their mission, in the language of the Chaplain Corps, was to “bring God to men and men to God.” Chaplains’ functions serve to increase troop morale and combat effectiveness. Integrating chaplains into units was a matter of military, not religious, necessity.
Additionally, the chaplain’s role as a staff officer sometimes restricted the range of responses available. The commander, not the chaplain, held the power in the relationship. Some commanders worried that giving the chaplain a prominent role would make the men “soft” and diminish their combat effectiveness. Other commanders thought the chaplain’s role should be limited to counseling and spiritual support for individual soldiers, although some commanders did use chaplains to articulate specific values, including those related to the issue of atrocities.
In his memoir, chaplain James Burnham tells about an incident in 1967 when he was assigned to a battalion attached to the 23rd “Americal” Infantry Division. The battalion commander told Burnham about rumors that one company was reportedly “shooting anything that moves.” He asked the chaplain to talk to the men. Burnham decided on an approach using “mild biblical injunctions”—namely “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and “whatever a man sows, so also will he reap.” He shied away from the more obvious “thou shalt not murder.” He warned against taking revenge and “doing things to make the peasants hate” American troops. Burnham reports that things soon returned to “normal” and the rumors stopped—but he frankly acknowledges he may not have had anything to do with it.
Other commanders took their chaplains’ advice and confronted an issue themselves. In 1967, recalled supervisory chaplain Parker Thompson, one of his chaplains with the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) reported that soldiers had been cutting off the ears of North Vietnamese soldiers for souvenirs. Thompson reported it to the division chief of staff, who reported it to the division commander. “Two days later our Commander had an officers’ call. It was the only one of its type I ever experienced in the 1st Cavalry. He directed that every officer be present, down to platoon leaders, at one of several sessions. There were no exceptions.” At the meeting, the commander warned: “What constitutes a crime in the United States of America, constitutes a crime in the 1st Cavalry. And I will prosecute anyone violating proper conduct to enemy personnel, living or dead. It’s a short step from mutilating a corpse to mutilating a person.” In this instance, the chaplain’s report to the commander resulted in a swift and strong response.
Creating a climate where atrocities would not happen—and would be punished if they came to light—could not be the chaplains’ job alone. Further, logistical challenges and manpower issues made it difficult for chaplains to provide comprehensive, consistent and continuous coverage to all units. Most troops saw a chaplain only once every four to six weeks. Chaplains occasionally used those opportunities to raise moral questions—evidence that they worked to establish a climate in which moral and ethical discussions were part of the daily rhythms of life. But that may have had limited effects. As in many other cases, the 1968 My Lai massacre is instructive.
At My Lai, a general shortage of chaplains meant that the company later held responsible for the massacre saw a chaplain only occasionally. The division artillery chaplain, Captain Carl Creswell, had dropped by a planning meeting the day before the mission. Creswell later recalled: “They were going to do insertion or combat assault or whatever it took in Pinkville,” a location he described as “quite frankly…the home of the 48th VC Battalion. And I went in there…it was just a courtesy call. I had no business there, chaplains do this, just stopped in to say ‘hello’ and meet the new commander.” Creswell noted that maps were laid out and a major said, “We’re going in there and if we get one round out of there, we’re going to level it.” Creswell continued, “I looked at him and I said, ‘You know, I didn’t really think we made war that way.’ And he looked at me and he said, ‘It’s a tough war, Chaplain.’”
Chaplains saying something or even being models of moral behavior could not necessarily prevent atrocities, but more difficult to explain are numerous charges that chaplains, once made aware of atrocities, did little to make them known or to stop them.
In the case of My Lai, though no chaplains were present at the massacre, division chaplains quickly became embroiled in the deeply flawed investigation and subsequent cover-up. The Peers Commission, charged with the formal investigation, placed significant blame on division personnel for not following through with their obligations to report potential violations of military law and conduct. It also advised that the two chaplains most directly involved, Creswell and Lt. Col. Francis Lewis, be court-martialed.
Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, a helicopter pilot, reported what he had seen at My Lai to Creswell, the division artillery chaplain, according to the commission. Creswell did not report the matter to his commander, but did go to Lewis, the division chaplain. Lewis allowed the matter to pass without making a substantive effort to bring it to the attention of his superiors. The commission concluded that neither chaplain performed his duty, but the Army declined to file charges against them.
In his defense, Creswell said he “should have done more” but had—albeit to a minimal extent—followed the chain of command and reported the massacre to his supervising chaplain.
Other atrocities that never received the media attention or postwar scrutiny of My Lai most certainly occurred, though their extent and frequency are still hotly debated. Even in the limited number of atrocity reports, chaplains are often portrayed as doing nothing or perhaps going through a military chain of command but nothing more.
Chaplain Joseph Dulany recorded several instances when he witnessed or heard about questionable behavior but did not report them or confront the men involved. He recalled seeing soldiers dragging women behind huts followed by screaming and crying, a truck driver intentionally running over someone on the side of the road and violent interrogation techniques.
Chaplains’ responses (or nonresponses) to atrocities have provided rich fodder for those who say conflicts between chaplains’ religious and military roles caused some of them to subordinate their religious identity to their military one. But a more careful analysis suggests the primary source of tension was an internal conflict related to their worldviews and their understanding of the various religious roles a chaplain held in the military.
As mainline and liberal religious communities coalesced more strongly against the Vietnam War, critics of the chaplaincy frequently called for chaplains to serve a prophetic function—in the tradition of Jeremiah and the Old Testament prophets. They highlighted the chaplains’ responsibility to advise commanders on matters concerning religion, morality and ethics.
Chaplains, however, usually understood their role differently. Consistently, chaplains said their primary role was a priestly, or pastoral, one. They were in the war zone as ministers, not prophets. Their allegiance was to service members, not to the nation or even moral ideals. In one postwar survey of Vietnam-era chaplains, most said their most important role was simply being present—near and with the troops. They also named counseling and visitation of the wounded as other priorities. Enlisted personnel and officers likewise ranked the ministry of “presence” as the chaplain’s most important duty. Officers ranked “counseling” second in importance, while enlisted personnel ranked “visitation of sick and wounded” second and “worship services” third in importance. Granted, “prophetic witness” was not one of the choices, yet the surveys indicate no “other” responses that would have placed this activity higher on the list. It is certainly possible to criticize chaplains for their failure to act as a prophetic witness, but it is intellectually dishonest to dismiss it as irreligious or a perversion of Judeo-Christian scripture, doctrine or practice.
This did not mean chaplains had a simplistic or even simply utilitarian view of atrocities or the appropriate responses to them. Dulany, who had not reported questionable behavior he witnessed, interpreted his inaction as a failure to fulfill his duties as a clergyman and an officer. He wrote, “[Were they] atrocities? I’m not confident that any I witnessed or knew about achieved this level, but morally questionable? Probably.” He asked himself, “What should my response have been? How could I have responded and maintained my stature and effectiveness as a unit chaplain? What can be learned from these instances that might be helpful to a chaplain in future combat settings?” Ultimately, Dulany had no answers to those questions. He remained conflicted.
The problem arose from conflicting religious expectations: Dulany was expected to set a moral standard but also to provide comfort to men in war, which he felt sometimes meant holding back on moral judgment. The question was how to fulfill all of his religious roles, not how to fulfill his role as both pastor and officer.
Not infrequently, soldiers’ responses to the horrors of combat could resemble religious rituals, and in these cases chaplains, too, could be swept up in the moment.
Chaplain James Johnson recalled that after a particularly intense firefight there were two dozen Viet Cong “sprawled on their backs. Each one must have at least twenty holes in his face and other exposed body parts. Someone in the column takes his white plastic spoon from his C rations and sticks the handle into a wound made by the fragments. The next soldier in line does likewise. By the time I pass the position, each dead VC has a dozen or more plastic spoons protruding from his body.” Though gruesome, the quasi-religious ritual and solemnity struck Johnson: “There’s no shouting or cheering as we pass the bodies. The defiant symbolism of ‘sticking it to them’ may be desecration of the dead, but this is a way of emotionally coping with what’s happening each day of this god-awful war.” He remained ambivalent, recognizing the action for what it was in a legal sense, but understanding and even sympathizing with the motive.
Some chaplains were surprised and disturbed by their capacity to hate the enemy, their little remorse for Viet Cong deaths and their ability to stomach the horrors of combat. After going with a platoon on a patrol in which several suspected Viet Cong fighters were killed, Johnson wrote in his wartime journal, “I admit I’m glad to see these dead VC[,] but as a Christian, I’m not proud of my feelings.”
Chaplains identified a host of scriptures, doctrines and practices that could be used to rationalize a more restrained response to atrocities. Jerry Autry, in his memoir about his service as a combat chaplain in Vietnam, wrote: “You can think what you want about My Lai—it’s awful and tragic any way you look at it because of bad decisions, poor judgment, and a thousand and one other things. But, in a situation like war, where your men are being killed daily, you’re in a constant state of anxiety; you don’t know who the enemy is, and bad things happen. Judgment can become impaired. Some days, it’s pretty clear what’s right and wrong, but about a guy like [2nd Lt. William] Calley [commander of the unit responsible for the My Lai massacre], who maybe didn’t have much emotional sophistication and was not overly smart, I would never be too judgmental.…At some time during his sojourn in Vietnam, an officer would be thrown into a chaotic, confusing situation. Maybe this is not what happened with Lieutenant Calley, but he certainly was ill-prepared and ill-equipped. Understanding, tempered with mercy, is not a bad thing.”
These rationalizations could reflect poor logic, but they still represented religious values. They do not show a chaplain’s forsaking his religious role in favor of a military one.
Sometimes, if only occasionally, chaplains did do something. When chaplains heard about atrocities, they were to act as spiritual advisers to soldiers who may have been involved, seek justice on behalf of the victim and uphold regulations. An illustration of that response is chaplain Claude Newby’s actions when he learned of a truly horrific war crime in 1966 that would be recounted in a New Yorker magazine essay “Casualties of War,” which later became a book and movie.
Newby was a spiritual adviser to a man who told the chaplain another soldier had confided to him that he had witnessed a war crime while on patrol. The team had kidnapped a Vietnamese teenager, forced her to come on a patrol with them, then repeatedly raped and beat her. Eventually, members of the team brutally murdered her before they returned from the patrol. A soldier who refused to participate in the beatings, rape or murder came to Newby at the urging of his friend, seeking spiritual guidance. Newby counseled the witness through the emotional process of taking the allegations to the commander. He also worked with the commander to counsel other members of the unit who had heard about the atrocity, and he was a witness in the courts-martial hearings.
On the whole, though, cases such as that one were relatively rare. When they were confronted with war crimes or atrocities, chaplains tended to emphasize their duty to provide pastoral care and spiritual support over their duty to ensure or enforce moral behaviors.
Just as chaplains used a variety of religious lenses to respond to questions of morality in war, so too did they use religious ideas, especially as perceived through the lens of the Cold War, to consider the morality of the Vietnam War. Their interpretations of the war’s morality were especially important as they led soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen in worship and provided religious counseling. If chaplains could not credibly discuss the morality of serving in war, and of this war in particular, they risked losing the trust of those they were there to serve. Even so, chaplains were wary of engaging in this sort of theological exercise. Soldiers in combat needed reassurance of their moral goodness, perhaps of their salvation, because they also needed to remain militarily effective.
Army chaplain Hutchens recalled that the sermons he gave before his unit deployed centered on the “responsibility to our government (Romans 13), the sixth commandment (‘Thou shalt not kill’), and the problem of the Christian serving in the Army.” Hutchens explained that what the soldiers were doing was not only morally defensible but also their duty.
In the cramped quarters of troopships, isolated at sea for three or four weeks at a time, troops had ample time to question the morality of war and to participate in worship and Bible study. Chaplain Curt Bowers said the most common question was, “Can I be a Christian and still kill?” He answered using various examples from the Old and New Testaments to reassure soldiers of their duty and morality. Yet he cautioned readers of his memoir not to frame that question solely in philosophical or theological terms. In combat, soldiers did not enjoy the “luxury” or safety of classrooms; they “were wrestling to find the real flesh-and-blood answers” because their battles would deal in flesh and blood, rather than pen and paper.
In the heat of combat, few chaplains or soldiers were asking moral questions, and chaplains did not expect moral ambiguities to cloud soldiers’ judgment. “Survival is a man’s primary concern,” chaplain Raymond Johnson wrote. “Therefore, it’s not fair to really pose the question of whether or not you can love your enemy under such conditions.” But once soldiers were out of immediate danger, Johnson concluded, morality and theology must necessarily re-enter a soldier’s (or chaplain’s) conscience. He suggested that while “love your enemy” could not be a fair directive in the field, it became relevant as soon as the enemy was captured. A soldier was “responsible for rendering an answer to the question, ‘How do I treat my enemy?’ He becomes a real person. You must treat him as one who deserves to be called a creature of God.” This careful parsing of scripture and context suggests that chaplains did occasionally grapple with theological questions during the war.
Philip Caputo, a Marine officer and author of the memoir A Rumor of War (See “Vietnam War Books,” pg. 30), recalled that a conversation with a chaplain angered him but later caused him to question the morality of the war. Caputo was a platoon leader in 1965, and his unit suffered 84 casualties in two months, including 12 killed in action. In the mess hall one day, the chaplain said: “Maybe you could explain what we’re doing over here. You’ve been a platoon commander. When we got here, we were just supposed to defend the airfield for a while and then go back to Okinawa. Now we’re in the war to stay and nobody has been able to explain to me what we’re doing. I’m no tactician, but the way it looks to me, we send men out on an operation, they kill a few VC, or the VC kill them, and then pull out and the VC come right back in. So we’re back where we started.…I think these boys are getting killed for nothing.”
Caputo, put off by the chaplain’s statement, responded that, all things considered, the Vietnam War was “not that bad a war” and 12 KIAs were a minimal cost. The chaplain pushed back, emphasizing that 12 lives were lost and 12 families destroyed—and for what gain in the end? Caputo wrote: “The chaplain’s morally superior attitude had rankled me, but his sermon had managed to plant doubt in my mind, doubt about the war. Much of what he had said made sense: our tactical operations did seem futile and directed toward no apparent end.”
The chaplain’s words, along with “the events of that day, which had made a mockery of all the Catholic theology the Dominican and Jesuit priests had preached to me in high school and college” made Caputo question not only the execution of the war but also its meaning. Caputo had been taught that “man’s body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit; man is created in the image and likeness of God; have respect for the dead.” But combat challenged those lessons, and he concluded, “Well, the four temples…had undergone considerable demolition, and it was hard to believe a Holy Spirit had ever resided in them.” That was the prophetic ministry that homefront dissenters wished chaplains would provide, but this example is nearly alone in published accounts.
After the attacks by Communist forces in the 1968 Tet Offensive, chaplains were increasingly aware of religious dissent at home, demoralized troops and the apparently waning chances for military success. Chaplain Thomas Des Champs recalled thinking, “During that spring of 1970, I knew what the national news back home could not tell; we were not winning this war.” He chose to reassure soldiers, even though he considered the situation hopeless: “As God’s emissary to the troops, I found myself telling them everything would be ‘all right.’ But in my heart, I knew that everything wasn’t or couldn’t be ‘all right.’” One might argue that Des Champs had abdicated his religious responsibilities in favor of military ones. Des Champs viewed it differently. He reinterpreted a religious conviction to accommodate new circumstances: “To combat the impact of the horrors of war, I adopted a philosophy of divine confidence that even while the world appeared to be going to hell, God was still in control.”
Chaplain Corbin Cherry’s collection of poetry, From Thunder to Sunrise, is particularly critical and anguished about the morality of the war. In an early poem Cherry laments, “There is no way that I can justify this war / these lives that are snuffed out each day” and “The greatest crisis that we will have to face, / as we remember those that died here, / is to recall all of the things / that we have done in this place.”
For most chaplains, however, the morality of the war figured little in their recollections of Vietnam. The war, and their presence in it, was a fact, an unavoidable culmination of choices, circumstance and luck. Even Cherry resigned himself to the duty that called him to Vietnam. In anticipation of his arrival there, he wrote, “All of this seems so simple right now. / I fly there, / I get off the plane and do my job.”
Jacqueline E. Whitt is associate professor of strategy at the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama. This article expresses the opinions of the author and does not represent the views of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, the Department of the Air Force, the Department of the Navy, the Air War College or the Air University.
Originally published in the December 2014 issue of Vietnam. To subscribe, click here.
