The West’s Secret Weapon: The Holy Rosary

by Mary Claire Kendall

Operation Enduring Freedom, as our military engagement in Afghanistan was called, began 20 years ago today—October 7, 2001.

 

Fittingly enough, the day we launched this fight for the West, was the 430^th anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, in which Christian forces defeated the fleet of the Ottoman Empire at the Gulf of Patras in the largest naval battle ever, decisively ending Ottoman designs for Mediterranean military expansion. More of a moral victory, it paved the way to the more militarily significant Battle of Vienna, over 100 years later, on September 11, 1683, in which Christian forces under the leadership of the King of Poland, John III Sobieski, dealt a decisive blow to the Muslim Turks.

 

From that September 11^th forward, the Turks ceased to threaten the Christian world, after which they retreated to their backwaters, plotting and planning when they would launch an offensive to weaken and try, ultimately, to defeat the West.

 

Some 300 years later, on September 11, 2001, at the dawn of the new millennium, they made their move. Without considering events since that horrific day in the light of this important centuries-long history, America and her Western allies will fail to capture the historic moment and understand the existential fight in which we find ourselves, a fight which includes the fact that many entrusted with our safety, in recent years, have, instead, given aid and comfort to the enemy on his long march to conquer the West. To wit:  

 

During the storming of the U.S. Embassy on September 11, 2012, the U.S., under the leadership of Barack Hussein Obama, did not lift a finger to save four Americans who were brutally killed, including our U.S. ambassador. That, in turn, set the stage for America’s disgraceful cut-and-run this summer from Afghanistan,  It began with the stealthy abandonment of Bagram Air Base under cover of night on July 1, 2021, after which, Americans, adhering to the Biden regime’s impossibly-tight self-imposed deadline, were forced to betray the code of American military conduct to never leave one of their own behind, even though, as in Benghazi, Special Forces had it in their power to go in and rescue them. In more echoes of Benghazi, servicemembers who lost their lives in Kabul were needlessly put into harm’s way. That morning, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin put top leaders on notice to prepare for an impending “mass casualty event,” Politico reported. As suspected, the ISIS-K attacker came from the prison population incarcerated at Bagram Air Base, released the day the Taliban took over. 

 

“I love my job,” Marine Sergeant Nicole Gee wrote in an Instagram post, her last, accompanied by a photo showing her holding an Afghan baby. Not surprisingly, she worked late on the evening of August 26, to continue helping those seeking to flee Afghanistan as the sand slipped through the hour glass. Thus, did Gee give her last full measure of devotion, not long after she posted that photo, in the blast that also killed 12 of her fellow U.S. servicemembers along with hundreds of Afghans. Not coincidentally, the attack occurred at the very spot, the Abbey Gate, of Hamid Karzai International Airport where Marines were shown receiving Afghan babies their mothers had handed them in hopes their children would find better lives. 

 

In contrast, Gee’s commander-in-chief, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., in a July 23 phone call offered Afghan president Ashraf Ghani continuing air support, vitally critical to the Afghan army’s preservation, only if he would address the Afghan government’s “perception” problem, Reuters reported exclusively.  In the transcript of the call, leaked to Reuters, along with the audio, on condition of anonymity, Biden tells Ghani, as he listened from the presidential palace, “I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there is a need, whether it is true or not, (emphasis added) there is a need to project a different picture.” 

 

Then, came the quid pro quo: “We will continue to provide close air support, if we know what the plan is.”  Ghani refused and without air cover the Afghan army folded and the country fell within days. Thus was the way opened to mass executions at the hands of the Taliban as they go door-to-door, aided by the “kill list,” seeking out freedom-loving Americans and Afghans.

 

It is a horror not unlike what occurred under the Nazi reign of terror when Hitler’s henchmen brutally tortured and killed some 20 million souls including six million Jews, plus countless other civilian and military war-dead.  

 

On the eve of our final departure, as reports of hundreds of Americans our government refused entry inside Kabul airport cascaded out, CENTCOM commander, General Kenneth McKenzie, Jr., claimed the administration wanted to help those “left behind” get out. Yet, when veterans sprang into action to save hundreds, if not thousands, of stranded Americans, the Biden State Department, effecting “the opposite of Dunkirk,” Erik Prince told Steve Bannon on the WarRoom (23:20-26:57) called regional governments and asked them “not to cooperate with these private organizations”—not to let their planes land. “Instead of tailwinds,” Prince said, “there’s a lot of headwinds.” It is a story that has been repeated over and over in recent weeks.

 

As these eyepopping developments in the U.S. surrender in Afghanistan continue by the day, it is undeniable that the whole Afghan debacle is a key piece in the extremist Islamic centuries-long push to conquer the West and its Judeo-Christian culture, underscored, in recent years, by the burning of churches in France, possibly including Notre Dame Cathedral, which mysteriously went up in flames on April 15, 2019, and miraculously survived, though not without significant damage. 

 

The pièce de resistance is that, in surrendering in Afghanistan, whereas Biden unconscionably gave many Afghan allies the cruelest of pink slips, epitomized by iconic images of Afghans desperately running toward that American C-17, some falling to their deaths, which Biden unempathetically dismissed; he inexplicably gave the Taliban a huge golden parachute—$85 billion worth of sophisticated weaponry, after which images of military tanks and vehicles being transported to Iran surfaced.   

One weapon the Jihadists will never have—the West’s secret weapon—is the Holy Rosary. 

Christian forces prayed the Rosary at the Battle of Lepanto then fought like hell and, aided by the Blessed Virgin Mary, won, after which, Pope Pius V, who had organized the coalition consisting of Spain and other small Christian nations, decreed October 7 the Feast of Our Lady of Victory, a.k.a. the Feast of the Holy Rosary.

Likewise, at the Battle of Vienna, King Sobieski prayed to Our Lady of Czestochowa for victory. Given Austria’s seriously depleted forces, the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, had implored the Polish sovereign to come to Austria’s aid in their fight against the barbarians. On September 11, 1683, 80,000 Christian troops, led by Sobieski and aided by Mary, defeated the 250,000-strong Turkish army.

 

The Virgin Mary was assumed, body and soul, into Heaven and, as Psalm 45:9 reveals, sits at the right hand of the Son of God. Not coincidentally, the Feast of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven is celebrated on August 15, the day the Taliban took over the Arg presidential palace.

 

Quite clearly, Mary is playing a powerful role in the victory of the West.

Postscript: On August 31, I posted Eric Clapton singing “Holy Mother” with Luciano Pavarotti on Facebook. As I wrote that day, “Beautiful! ‘Holy Mother,’ I feel confident, will bring us through the tragedy and uncertainty we are living through in the wake of the ill-conceived, catastrophic Afghanistan exit... that Eric Clapton posted this song on July 15, anniversary of my dear mother’s going to heaven, speaks to my heart... she had such a special devotion to ‘Holy Mother.’” 

*******

Image #1: Sandro Botticelli’s “Madonna and Child” Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan.

Image #2: Painting of the Battle of Lepanto by an unknown painter. 

*******

Mary Claire Kendall is author of   Oasis: Conversion Stories of Hollywood Legends, published in Madrid in 2016 under the title  También Dios pasa por Hollywood. She recently finished Oasis II as well as a biography featuring the covert pre-satellite surveillance of the Soviets out of Midway Island.

Nov 11, 2012,10:49am EST

Doolittle's Raiders And The Miracle That Saved Them*

 Mary Claire Kendall Contributor
Opinion
I write about Hollywood legends and real life.

The USS Hornet with 16 Army Air Forces B-25s on deck, ready for the Tokyo raid (U.S. Air Force... [+]

My thoughts go to the Doolittle’s Raiders this Veterans Day, four of whom I recently spoke with during the 15th Annual American Veterans Center conference.

April 18th of this year marked the 70th anniversary of the “Doolittle Raid” on military targets on the Japanese home island of Honshu—a pivotal, morale-boosting retaliatory strike, just 131 days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, demonstrating Japan was vulnerable to U.S. attack.  Tom Casey, Raiders manager, set the scene at the AVC forum featuring them:

... It was a Saturday morning, the Empire of Japan. The City of Tokyo was very busy at midday, when suddenly the citizens of Tokyo heard the sound of aircraft engines flying very low overhead and they looked up and they saw the underbody of a twin engine bomber. They were expecting to see the big red ball insignia of the Japanese Air Force under its wings. They didn’t see a big red ball; they saw a very little red ball inserted in a bright white star in a blue circle. What they were looking at was the insignia of the United States Army Air Force. The aircraft was a North American B25 model B.  And, at its controls was one of America’s top aviators, Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle.  To his right was the very young lieutenant Richard Cole. On board also was a navigator, bombardier and a crew chief gunner.  Within the next few minutes the citizens of Tokyo would hear the sounds of bombs going off within their city. Within the next hour, the citizens of the Empire of Japan and other major cities like Yokohama and Kobe would also hear the impact of bombs going off as 15 other B25s found their designated targets and started bombing the Empire of Japan.

Immortalized in Oscar-winning Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), starring Spencer Tracy as Lt. Col. James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, the raid was the only time in U.S. military history that United States Army Air Forces bombers launched from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. Seven of the 80 men who flew the mission did not survive.  Of the 16 B-25s that flew, 15 were destroyed and one, Plane #8, was lost after it made an emergency landing in Vladivostok because of a malfunctioning carburetor. To this day, it has yet to be recovered. The film is based on the 1943 book by Captain Ted Lawson (Van Johnson), who piloted Plane #7, “The Ruptured Duck,” so named because a minor training accident on takeoff scraped the tail. The Ruptured Duck made its post-raid crash landing off the coast of China, resulting in the most serious injuries of all.  Lawson lost his left leg.

The four Doolittle’s Raiders (out of five survivors) at the conference included:

•  Lt. Col. Richard Cole (97), Doolittle’s Co-Pilot, Plane #1;
• SSgt. David Thatcher (91), Engineer Gunner, Plane #7, The Ruptured Duck, who saved his crew and was played by Robert Walker in the film;
• Major Thomas Griffin, Navigator, Plane #9, whom Doolittle tasked with going to the Pentagon to get Japanese maps and charts, trusting he would stay mum on the mission, more secret than the Manhattan Project; (Later captured and held in a German prison camp, he played a key role featured in The Great Escape); and
• Lt. Col. Edward Joseph Saylor, Engineer, Plane #15, who saved his plane by changing the engine on the Japan-bound carrier.

These men are the very best of America, embodying humility, grace, courage, humor and love of country. Truly they are the “salt of the earth.”

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and the Real Raid

SSgt. David Thatcher, asked if he thought Robert Walker did a good job playing him in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, said "Oh, yeah."  Thatcher also said the film “followed the book well” and “was pretty accurate.”

“I did enjoy it,” said Major Tom Griffin. “I thought they did a good job by and large. They had a few little mistakes and exaggerations but other than that they did a good job telling the story.”  Asked about Robert Walker playing Thatcher, Griffin said, “That’s a handsome young man, naturally. He looked at me and didn’t want to play me.”

Lt. Col. Ed Saylor said his character was featured “a little bit” in the film when “I came in and sat down with Capt. Ted Lawson (Van Johnson) before they took off” and thought “It was pretty accurate.”

Of the real raid, Griffin said: “It was a great challenge to us and we were all very proud of the part that we played in that. It was a dangerous raid.”

Saylor described his amazing feat repairing the engine in Plane #15:

I had to take an engine off the airplane on the flight deck of the carrier and take it down to the hangar deck and take the back half of the engine apart and do some repairs in there and put it back together and back on the airplane.  Working on an airplane, you couldn’t lay any tools, anything on the deck. It would go right overboard. Every tool and nut and bolt and everything had to go up inside the airplane and then I had to find it.

Then, he chuckled at the memory of this seemingly impossible task.

Lt. Col. Richard Cole said he did not realize in the immediate aftermath the great boost to morale the raid provided. As he told me, “At the outset we were told we would get to come home if we survived the mission.” But he said, “There were 20 of us that didn’t get to go home, so we had no idea what took place after the raid. Fourteen months later we were able to come home.” But, “All of us didn’t realize at the time I don’t think the effect of it.”

Had he seen the film?  No, only snippets, he said. “I’ll get my grandson to make sure I watch it.”

‘Boy, am I glad to see you!”

Cole recounted the reunion scene in China after the raid:

I’d been walking all day. I came out on a clearing and looked around at what looked like a little military compound... so I walked down and a young soldier took me to a building and I sat at a table and on the table was a piece of paper with a sketch of one airplane with five chutes coming out of it and a bunch of hieroglyphics and so forth. And, I got him to take me where he took the individual (who did the sketch) and I walked in and lo had behind there was Col. Doolittle. I said, ‘Boy, am I glad to see you!’ And, he greeted me and was glad I wasn’t injured and later on that evening, they brought in the rest of the crew and we were all together at that time.

Cole’s expression of relief can only be appreciated if you have some understanding of the “great challenge,” as Griffin characterized it, that the mission entailed.

The Mission—Development and Execution

After Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt immediately called in his military Chiefs of Staff and asked them to find a way to attack Japan in retaliation. With no base to launch an attack from, they were at a loss.  Roosevelt went so far as to call Joseph Stalin to see if they could launch from Russia but he said no; he was practically losing to Germany in the west and did not want to start a war with Japan in the east. Then something fortuitous happened. In early January, Admiral King, Navy Chief of Staff, asked Francis Low, a young Navy captain, to go down to Norfolk, Virginia to do an inspection tour on the newest carrier, the USS Hornet, then going through its sea trials. As he was leaving Norfolk a week later, flying over the Navy station, Casey said:

... (Low) just happened to look out the window and saw two Army bombers doing touch and go landings on what appeared to be a runway that was clearly marked off as an aircraft carrier. This was, of course, set up for Navy training. He made a mental note of that.

When he got back to Washington he started asking around to see if it’s “possible for a twin engine bomber to take off the deck of an aircraft carrier.” No one could answer the question. Finally, Hap Arnold, Chief of Staff of the Army, though also unable to solve his quandary, said, “But, I have a gentleman, I just commissioned and his job right now is to run around the United States and visit automobile factories, converting them into airplane factories. His name is James H. Doolittle, Major James H. Doolittle.”

A marvelous collaboration was about to begin.  The United States Navy had already developed contingency plans, working out all the logistics, setting up an attack fleet, and moving the Hornet to California in lieu of Pearl Harbor, where it would “stand by.”  The Navy “looked at the four types of twin engine bombers the Army was flying at the time,” said Casey.  “Two of them were discounted immediately.” Built by Boeing, “they had these long wings that just couldn’t maneuver on the deck of a carrier.” So it was down to two twin engine planes, the brand new B26 and the North American B25.

The Navy gave Doolittle the B25 and B26 to look at. After deciding the 26 “was too new and took too much runway,” Doolittle sat down with the Navy to get all the specs on the Hornet—“how much deck did he have, how long was it, how wide was it, how fast could this carrier go” then focused seriously on the B25. As Casey said:

Doolittle was an engineer by trade so he immediately put everything on paper and started to work out his plan, took the B25, got familiar with it real quick, found out what it could do and couldn’t do. He decided the B25 was going to be his airplane but it needed to be modified.  It was carrying a lot of equipment he didn’t think it needed, especially a big belly turret that was totally useless on an airplane. He removed that and started to design the airplane to take on more fuel...

After Doolittle completed the redesigned plane, the Navy then sat down with him to come up with a workable plan for the attack. “The carrier,” said Casey, “would go to a certain distance and launch the planes, the planes would hit their targets in Japan and then they would land in China”—in territories not captured by the Japanese.  They picked Choo Chow to land initially and refuel and from there they would head on to Chungking where they would turn their planes over to the Chinese National Air Force for safekeeping until they could be recovered.

On paper, the raid “looked like a wonderful blue print,” said Casey.

The author with, left to right, Lt. Col. Richard Cole, Lt. Col. Edward Saylor, SSgt. David Thatcher... [+]

Then, Doolittle got down to the task of recruiting and training men to “take the 25 off in less than 500 feet” and found Eglin Army Air Force Base in North Florida, which “was perfect because it had auxiliary fields north of the fields that were out of sight.”  Then he asked Hap Arnold for “the best B25 pilots.”  That turned out to be the 17th bomb group—four squadrons—located at Pendleton Field in Oregon. They were told “to pack up and head to Columbia, South Carolina.” They thought they were going to do mission work there. “But eventually they got orders to go to Eglin...”

Once they arrived at Eglin, they met Doolittle for the first time. Moving up the ranks fast—he was now a lieutenant colonel—he told them, Casey said, “I’m looking for volunteers to go on a mission, a highly secretive mission that’s going to take you out of the country for three months, that is very dangerous and if you don’t want to go, raise your hand right now and leave the room.”

Nobody left the room.

Next came the training. One day, Doolittle showed up with a Navy lieutenant and said, as Casey recounted, “Gentlemen, this is Lt. Henry Miller, United States Navy. He’s going to teach you how to take a B25 off of less than 500 feet.” There was real grumbling. One of the crew members challenged Miller, asking, “Have you ever taken a B25 off of 500 feet?” to which he replied, “No, but you will.”  After three weeks of intensive training, they learned how to do it—one aircraft actually taking off in 376 feet.  “This crew was fantastic,” said Casey. “They took this heavy aircraft that would normally take 1500 feet to get the nose wheel up” and were now getting all three wheels up in the required distance.

At this point, none of the crew, except for Griffin, still had any idea what the mission was. Weeks later, said Casey, “when Doolittle shows up he’s there to congratulate them and tell them, ‘Gentleman you’re leaving for California’” The planes were directed to go to a depot near the south side of Sacramento where they had some maintenance done.  “The next set of orders they got was to report to Alameda Air Station in northern California.”  Then the pieces started coming together:

They took off and as they’re coming into San Francisco Bay, getting their orders from the ground where to land, they couldn’t help but notice this ship standing next to the wharf. The ship was an aircraft carrier and had the shortest runway they ever saw and then they started to add it up real quick.

They landed, taxied up to the wharf and 16 B25s were hoisted onto the deck of the carrier—that’s all the room Doolittle had—and the carrier went out to the mooring, after which the guys were given a night on the town. The next morning the USS Hornet left San Francisco and, Casey said, it “goes under the Golden Gate Bridge, and when she comes out on the Pacific there’s two cruisers and four destroyers and a tanker waiting for them.”

On the first day out, no one knew what was going on, which made for a tense situation. As Casey explained:

You guys who are in the Navy would appreciate this. You got a brand new carrier, you’re waiting to go to war, and overnight all of the sudden the Army shows up and puts sixteen ugly green airplanes on your deck. Your planes are on the bottom deck (along with you).

The result was predictable: “They didn’t treat (the Doolittle Raiders) very well. In fact, they didn’t treat them well at all.”

It wasn’t until the second day out at sea that “Doolittle called them in to a meeting along with the captain of the Hornet and for the first time he said ‘Gentleman, you’re going to bomb Japan.’” At this point the Navy “took over the microphone... and the loud speakers went up over the deck, explaining to the Navy the reason why the sixteen bombers were on the deck of their ship... The Navy’s attitude changed in a hurry,” said Casey.

The next few days “all the instructions went out,” said Casey. “Doolittle explained exactly how this was going to work. The Navy gave Doolittle the numbers.”  The Hornet would be joined by USS Enterprise with the two cruisers, four destroyers and tanker on the 12th becoming the Task Force.  The launch of the planes would take place 400 miles from Japan. It would be a night raid—shortly after midnight on April 19th—to minimize damage.  Doolittle’s aircraft would carry incinerators—bombs that spread fires.  

“The Hand of God”

Unfortunately on the morning of 18th of April 1942 at daybreak, things changed drastically when a perimeter of commercial trawlers around Japan, about 700 miles out, instructed to report on any shipping heading west, spotted the fleet. American intelligence was unaware of this perimeter.  Their cover was blown. “Doolittle flashes back to Halsey in the USS Enterprise, ‘I’m going’” even though he was about 250 miles further out than the target launch site. “Now, fuel became the big problem,” said Casey. But he located ten five-gallon cans the Navy had and put two on each aircraft. Still it would not be enough fuel (“70 lbs. per can”) to make their run and go on to Choo Chow to refuel for the final trip to Chungking. Plus, now they would be bombing in broad daylight. Nonetheless:

... the planes were prepared, the cruisers were prepared, the bombs were loaded, the fuels were topped off, everything was done and in a little over an hour Doolittle was sitting in position, the Hornet was turned into the wind, 30 foot seas, there was a pretty good breeze blowing across the deck.

At this dramatic moment, Doolittle took off, with his men looking up, wondering if it would work. Then, Casey recounts, they “follow Doolittle one at a time and head for Japan. Then they have to go down, they’re flying under radar, they’re flying across wave tops all the way to Japan.”

All 16 aircraft did make it to Japan, #8 peeling off and making that unfortunate landing in Vladivostok. Fifteen of them found their targets and bombed them.  Then, as instructed, they took the route around the southern end of the island and headed across the China Sea to China.

Up to this point, the weather was blue-skies beautiful.  However, nearly halfway across the China Sea they ran into treacherous storms, with lightning, thunder and high winds and rain, which cut off communications. The navigators lost sight of land and they were all running out of fuel—fast.

The mission was heading for a disastrous end, but then “a little bit of a miracle” happened, said Casey:

... They call it the hand of God. Little did we know that there was this wonderful stream of air running east to west. The planes got caught in that little stream of air... the jet stream. That gave them a 25 knot tail wind.  So now the aircraft were able to go a little bit further and all of the aircraft did meet or come close to China—some them got to the coastline, some of them went inland.

Three planes made crash landings on the ChinaCoast including the Ruptured Duck,sending three Raiders to their death. After the ditching and bailing out, SSgt. David Thatcher saved his crew by bringing them all together and protecting them until help arrived, for which he was awarded Silver Star.

The other 13 crews kept flying until their tanks ran out of gas. All of them eventually bailed out all over China, two crews landing in enemy territory.

Of the 80 Doolittle's Raiders who flew the mission, eight were taken Prisoners of War, seven died. In addition to the three who died over China, close to landfall, four of whom perished, three by execution, one beri-beri and malnutrition.

In the immediate aftermath Lt. Col. Doolittle told his men he expected a court martial upon his return to the United States, given the loss of all 16 aircraft and damage, though relatively minor, inflicted on their targets. Instead, the boost to American morale the raid accomplished prompted FDR to award him with the Medal of Honor.  He was also promoted two grades to Brigadier General and, during the next three years, was given command of the 12th Air Force in North Africa, the 15th Air Force in the Mediterranean and the 8th Air Force in England.

A “great challenge” was met and surmounted, yielding great success—thanks to the “hand of God.”

God bless our fighting men and women on this Veterans Day.

For more about the raid, see Brigadier General Jimmy Doolittle talking about it in 1980, courtesy United States Air Force. 

The author with Lt. Col Richard Cole, Doolittle's co-pilot.

Mary Claire Kendall

I write about Hollywood legends, with an emphasis on recovery. More broadly, I write about great stories, both the cinematic and real life versions. My book, "Oasis: Conversion Stories of Hollywood Legends," was published in 2015.

*In 2012-2013, I was a Forbes contributor, writing a column, "Old Hollywood and Beyond." This piece was published to great acclaim. I own the copyright and wanted to make sure I republished it to retain photos of me with Lt. Col. Richard Cole and the other Doolittle Raiders. I was reminded of these photos when my nephew, now a Navy Seal, recalled that occasion at the Navy Memorial in Washington, DC when he took them. When I went online I realize the Forbes site did not have them, but my blog site, with Forbes still had them, as least for now.

Hemingway Transformed, 98 Years Later

Among other projects, I am currently working on a book featuring Hemingway’s faith journey. I recently had the privilege of speaking at the Hemingway Society conference in Oak Park, Illinois where he was born and grew up.  Below are the text of my pre-delivery remarks.  — Mary Claire Kendall

***

Remarks by Mary Claire Kendall 
at the Hemingway Society Biennial Conference

“At Home in Hemingway’s World”
“Ars Longa, Vita Brevis . . . Aeternitas?—

Hemingway’s Religious Quest”

Monday, July 18, 2016, 2:45-4 PM

Dominican University, Riverside, IL

Good afternoon. My name is Mary Claire Kendall.

I am the author of Oasis: Conversion Stories of Hollywood Legends, featuring an all-star twelve, including Hemingway’s good friend Gary Cooper.

It’s wonderful to be part of this distinguished panel about Hemingway’s Religious Quest” on this, the first day of The Hemingway Society’s biennual conference in Hemingway’s hometown of Oak Park.

Five summers ago, no sooner had I finished writing an article about Cooper and his faith journey, than Hemingway was splashing into the news. It was the 50th anniversary of his death. Knowing how close Hemingway and Cooper were and that they died just weeks apart—Coop on May 13—I began to dig deeper into Hemingway’s life.

That August, I began to read The Sun Also Rises, a paperback copy of which I happened to buy for a dollar years earlier at the now-defunct Vassar Book Fair in Washington, DC.  I was coming off a very stressful year after my own Hollywood hazing and each night, feeling totally wired, something amazing happened. Within fifteen minutes or so of reading this literary masterpiece, I was fast asleep. His writing was just so beautiful and calming. There was so much depth beneath the tip of that iceberg!

On the afternoon of Friday, September 9, as my quest to understand this legendary writer intensified, I felt, somewhat mystically, as if Hemingway was saying to me, “It’s about time.”

A few days later, on Tuesday, September 12, coincidentally the Feast of the Name of Mary, I reached out to Charles Scribner as I tried to glean more important pieces in the puzzle of his life and he told me, “Hemingway called himself a Catholic [having been baptized by a Catholic priest in Italy during WWI]…”  

By November 2011, my friend Fr. C. John McCloskey, known as “the convert maker,” having brought a who’s who to the Catholic Church, introduced me to his friend Redd Griffin of Oak Park, who had studied Hemingway’s spirituality for 25 years. His knowledge was encyclopedic. Our conversation that first Sunday before Thanksgiving 2011 went on for four hours as I furiously scribbled away.

I was hooked and soon, instead of an article, I was working on a book proposal.  To my shock, Redd would live just 12 more months—suddenly dying, almost a year to the day after our first phone seminar.

He had guided me well that year as I climbed Mount Hemingway. That summer I interviewed Hemingway’s son Patrick for a Forbes article published on Hemingway’s birthday, titled “Hemingway on Hemingway and Hollywood.”

And, that November, just before Redd died, I fortuitously reached out to H.R. Stoneback seeking guidance as I continued to write my proposal. On July 8, 2013, I wrapped back around to what Charlie Scribner had told me, and wrote another Forbes piece, this one titled “Hemingway Transformed, 95 Years Later.” 

Then, “Oasis” intervened as well as life tragedy, namely the sudden death of my beloved mother Claire.  But, in the summer of 2015, out of the blue, I heard from “Stoney” on August 11, the Feast of St. Claire, and eve of my mother’s birthday, no less, asking if I had found a publisher and would I like to speak at this conference?  A good omen, I thought.

So, without further adieu, I give you, “Hemingway Transformed, 98 Years Later.” 

***

Hemingway Transformed,

98 Years Later

By Mary Claire Kendall

In the summer of 1918, as World War I was entering its final bloody stages, Ernest Hemingway, like most American youth, answered the call to serve in this “war to end all wars.” Then, as now, the same sectarian and religious rivalries convulsed the world.

Ernest Hemingway in Milan, 1918

Within weeks, Hemingway was seriously wounded and nearly died. The experience would transform him into not only a great writer but a man of great faith. The former we know all too well—embodied in such epic works as A Farewell to Arms, made into an Oscar-winning film starring Gary Cooper. The latter we know little of.

That the underlying theme of his writing—and his life—is “sanctity,” according to Hemingway scholar H.R. Stoneback, has everything to do with what happened in the heat of battle in Fossalta, Italy along the Piave River, and its immediate aftermath, 98 years ago this month.

***

Given defective eyesight, the Army rejected Hemingway.  So, he joined the American Red Cross Ambulance Corps and, on May 23, 1918, just 18, set sail for Europe from New York with his fellow enlistees.

After crossing the Atlantic, it was “Paris and red tape,” he wrote his friend, second lieutenant Henry Villard, followed by “temporary duty in Milano”—including the “shock” his first day while retrieving the dead from a munitions factory explosion that, as he wrote in Death in the Afternoon (1932),  “a good number of these (dead)… were women.”

Afterwards he “strolled through the Galleria and into the vast dim cathedral,” he wrote Villard, and arrived in Schio, home of the Ambulance Corps, on June 10, 1918. 

But Hemingway found Schio insufferably boring and soon managed to finagle an assignment running one of the “rolling canteens” the American Red Cross established, among a network of canteens, that got him as close to the front lines as possible.  He arrived at his new assignment on June 24, 1918, joined by his close friend Bill Horne.

As the second lieutenant in his section, Hemingway was allowed to eat in the mess hall with the Italian officers. It was there that he met Don Giuseppe Bianchi, a young priest from the Abruzzi region near Florence.  Just like the priest in A Farewell to Arms, Don Bianchi, wrote Carlos Baker in Hemingway: A Life Story, “wore a cross in dark red velvet above the left-hand pocket of his tunic” and, also like the priest in the novel vis-à-vis Lt. Frederic Henry, played by Cooper, “quickly befriended Ernest who treated him with sympathy and respect.”

At the end of June, Ernest’s rolling canteen was far from operational, leaving him to deliver chocolates and cigarettes on foot. 

He made quite an impression. As his friend Ted Brumback (“Brummy”) wrote Ernest’s family, as quoted in The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 1907-1922, edited by Sandra Spanier and Robert Trogdon, “The Italians in the trenches got to know his smiling face and were always asking for their ‘giovane Americano.’”  While Hemingway was enjoying himself capitally, Horne, Baker wrote, found “(t)he combination of inaction, mosquitoes, and gnawing silkworms” oppressive, prompting him to return to Schio on July 1st.

A week later, Horne heard the news that, as Baker wrote, “(a)round midnight on July 8thin a forward listening post on the west bank of the river near Fossalta, Ernest had been severely wounded.”

The midnight mortar, Brummy wrote, “hit within a few feet of Ernest while he was giving out chocolate. The concussion of the explosion knocked him unconscious and buried him with earth.”  The Italian closer to the shell, Brummy continued, was killed and “another, standing a few feet away, had both legs blown off.” Ernest was heroic in saving a badly wounded third Italian:  “(T)his one Ernest, after he had regained consciousness, picked up on his back and carried to the first aid dug-out. He says he does not remember how he got there nor that he had carried a man until the next day when an Italian officer told him about it” and said they had voted to give him the valor medal.

Years later, Hemingway wrote in his usual cryptic style in a letter to Thomas Welsh, father of his fourth wife, Mary, as Stoneback reported in “Hemingway’s Catholicism and the Biographies,” that “In first war… really scared after wounded and very devout at the end.”  

In typical Hemingway fashion, he kept this secret about his fervent faith to himself when writing to his family on August 18, 1918, from the American Red Cross Hospital in Milan.  But, make no mistake, in spite of what his various biographers have previously written, Hemingway was a changed man. As Stoneback writes:

… (Hemingway biographer Jeffrey) Meyers (wrote that)… “A Florentine priest, Don Giuseppe Bianchi, passed by the wounded men, murmuring holy words and anointing them. There was no need for the priest to give Hemingway extreme unction; he was not in mortal danger and was recovering from his wounds.  Bianchi’s perfunctory ceremony was not (as Hemingway later conveniently claimed) a formal baptism into the Catholic Church.” (Hemingway: A Biography, by Jeffrey Meyers, p. 32; emphasis added). Aside from the patronizing tone of this passage… Meyers seems confused about the sacraments. If the priest did “anoint” Hemingway, what else could the sacrament have been but extreme unction? It is also, most likely, under battlefield circumstances, that obtained, that the priest would first speak the brief Trinitarian words of “conditional Baptism” and then administered the viaticum, the Holy Communion given to those in danger of death…

Hemingway—a bloody mess, with over 200 pieces of shrapnel, along with bullets, lodged in his legs, knees and feet—was holding on for dear life in that schoolhouse, where he received morphine and antitetanus and a Catholic “anointing.” That anointing, he later boasted, in his January 2, 1926 response to a letter from Ernest Walsh—an expatriate American poet and co-editor of the small but influential Paris magazine This Quarter, where Hemingway’s fiction was first published—made him a “super-catholic.” In this same letter, which Michael Reynolds included in Hemingway: The Paris Years, he wrote:

If I am anything I am a Catholic.  Had extreme unction administered to me as such in July 1918 and recovered… It is most certainly the most comfortable religion for anyone soldiering. Am not what is called a “good” Catholic… But cannot imagine taking any other religious seriously.

He was next transported to a field hospital for five days after which the Army transported him to the train for the trip to Milan and the American Red Cross Hospital, where he met and fell in love with Agnes Von Kurowsky, providing the romantic basis for A Farewell to Arms. Agnes, Stoneback wrote, remembered Hemingway asking her to go to Mass with him in Milan at the Cathedral he had visited on day one.

“To understand Hemingway’s writing,” his sister Madeleine (“Sunny”) always said, as told to me by Redd Griffin, “you need to understand his spirituality.” And, to understand Hemingway’s spirituality, you need to understand his Catholicism, catalyzed by that wounding so many Julys ago, on that battlefield in Italy, where soldiers were trying to settle, once again, with weapons, intractable sectarian and religious differences. 

UPDATE: Mary Claire Kendall spoke at the Hemingway Biennial Conference in Paris on July 25, 2018. A shortened version of the paper she gave was published in St. Austin Review in early 2019. She is currently working on a book about Hemingway's faith journey.

Journey to Liberty and Broadway

A makeshift memorial at the corner of Liberty & Broadway, November 9, 2001
Credit: Mary Claire Kendall

E

ach year, as the anniversary of 9/11 nears, I reflect on how I happened to travel to New York City the afternoon of Monday, September 10, 2001. 

I rarely traveled to Manhattan. Every other time I did manage a trip, it seemed some calamity would befall the town.  For instance, on a visit in August 1999, the subway system flooded after an unexpected deluge of rain courtesy Hurricane Dennis—the Menace.  

But, serendipitously, a meeting with a top city official I had told a client I could set up sometime in the fall was suddenly of great interest and when I called to set it up, we picked September 10th. 

So, a week after Labor Day, I boarded an Amtrak train bound for New York City just before noon to arrive in time for my 5 p.m. appointment.  The meeting would take place just a few blocks from the still-standing Twin Towers. Afterwards, I was going to have dinner with my friend John, and fully intended to return to Washington on 9/11.  But, after my 3 p.m. arrival in Penn Station, nothing went as planned.  I just couldn’t seem to catch a break.

Exiting the train station, I decided to walk from 34th Street to my hotel in Midtown. I love New York and its jam-packed sidewalks teaming with pedestrians—and relished the opportunity to soak in the city color. As a struggling writer, I relished saving money, too—in this case, the cab fare. 

As I walked, rain-threatening clouds soon gathered, quickly turning ominously darker, sending me scurrying to reach my hotel before the skies burst.  But, a torrential downpour soon forced me to run for cover inside a restaurant.

About ten to four, I finally reached my destination.  I was staying at the Chemists’ Club on 45th Street through my membership at Washington’s historic City Tavern Club (frequented by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams).  But, no sooner did I begin settling into my room, than I discovered, to my dismay, that the air conditioning was broken—necessitating a call to maintenance. They came right away; so, of course, I couldn’t get ready for my appointment.  

Clearly, on-time arrival for my 5 p.m. wasn’t going to happen.  So I called the official—an old friend— impressively ensconced in his penthouse suite in the shadow of the Twin Towers, hoping to reschedule for early the next morning. He told me to come when I could—he was working late and was flexible. 

Shortly after 5 p.m., finally on my way, I hustled down 45th Street to Grand Central Station, and braved more driving rains—this time aided by a helpful New Yorker. Then, I endured the passengers-packed-in-like-sardines-in-a-can subway experience. 

But, it was all worth it: Exiting the Wall Street station, I saw—with my naked eye, for the first time in my life—that heroic statue of George Washington heralding the New York Stock Exchange.  How impressive!  The whole scene captured my imagination for a brief transfixing moment—before more rain and my impending appointment yanked me back to reality.  A reality that put me on track to arrive an hour late—6 p.m.!

It was a lovely appointment in which we reminisced about the good old days: we had met at the Reagan-Bush Midterm Reunion in 1982! And, he was very helpful as to the business purpose of my visit—authorizing a $2500 seed grant by the time the appointment wrapped at 6:30 p.m.

After saying goodbye, I was, of course, blissfully unaware as I exited the building, how blessed I was that, in spite of all the obstacles, we had not rescheduled for the morning of 9/11.  Such a plan would likely have put me either on the subway, approaching Wall Street, as the terrorists slammed 747s into the North Tower, or outside looking up in horror at the towering inferno—this time running for cover not from rain but falling debris.  

But, all these “what ifs” were now non-existent.  I had had my appointment.  Now, it was onto the business of soaking in more awe-inspiring sights, if not more rain—on my own.  You see, John, the one I was due to have dinner with, was taking his good old time returning from his country estate on Lake George—so depressed was he over his mounting stock market losses.

Walking along Lower Manhattan, I soon stumbled onto a now-shuttered restaurant at the top of 14 Wall Street, J.P. Morgan’s old apartment, and followed the labyrinthine passages to the top.  Entering the restaurant, the view of the beautiful Statue of Liberty standing majestically out in the harbor, was overwhelming. Little wonder J.P. Morgan chose this space as his living quarters! 

As I gazed upon this powerful symbol and essence of American Democracy from that lofty perch, September 10th, I had no doubt, was an evening I would never forget.

Statue of Liberty, October 6, 2008.

It was closed for three years after 9/11, and was not completely open until 2009.

But, it couldn’t last for long—especially since I was by myself.  So, stepping off cloud 9, I departed, heading back down the labyrinthine passageways. Once outside, I made my way back to the Wall Street subway—amidst, you guessed it, the rain.

Arriving at Grand Central Station, the continuing driving rains made it impossible for me to walk the few blocks along 45th Street back to the Chemists’ Club. But, as I had experienced earlier, my walk back to the Club was again eased by the hospitality of a wonderful New Yorker—this time an investment banker from Switzerland named Pierre, who had worked in the city for 15 years.

As he dropped me off at the Club, I expressed heartfelt appreciation and, smiling warmly, he exhorted to me, “Now say nice things about New Yorkers.”  Pierre’s statement—prescient, even omniscient—echoed in my mind after the September 11th attacks, after which all anyone had to say about New Yorkers in the immediate aftermath was of the most positive, affirmative nature. 

T

he morning of September 11th, the bright sun warmly bathed the city and clear blue sky cheered the heart. I woke up about 8:30 a.m., having stayed up late the night before meticulously planning the next day’s complicated and busy itinerary.

When I groggily arrived in the Chemist Club lounge around 9 a.m. for a much-needed cup of coffee, local news was covering a story—a seeming replay, I thought, of my August 1999 visit, highlighting yet another emergency caused by the city’s aging infrastructure.  But, a coffee sip later, I awoke to the tragic reality unfolding before my eyes and that of the gathering crowd in that little lounge. A plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers—the North Tower—shortly before 9 a.m.

Within minutes, a second plane crashed into the South Tower.  Everyone watched the unfolding drama, witnessing—along with the rest of the world—those two iconic skyscrapers transformed into towering infernos. 

As the minutes ticked away, the tension rose concerning the fate of these world famous buildings and, more importantly, everyone inside of them.  Then, at 9:59 a.m., our worst fears were realized as the South Tower collapsed—less than an hour after being hit.

Stunned silence gave way to more tension and more apprehension, as we waited and watched—the seemingly inevitable coming at 10:28 a.m., when the North Tower collapsed.   It had been burning for 102 minutes.

Both towers had collapsed like sandcastles on the beach children petulantly destroy. Only now, the attackers were no innocents but rather twisted terrorists intent on destroying the symbols of American wealth at the heart of our financial empire.

T

hat afternoon, I joined my friend John atop his building at 57th and Park as we sat somberly watching in the distance smoke billow up from Lower Manhattan. It was surreal. New York City was soon reduced to a near ghost town.

Later than evening at Elaine’s, John and I witnessed another incredible scene at this “bastion of artists and liberal Upper East Side aristocracy,” as he described it, frequented by the likes of Woody Allen, George Plimpton, Michael Cain, and others. Conservative Republicans generally and President George W. Bush, in particular, were a breed apart—as incompatible as Texas oil to their creative water at Elaine’s, recently shuttered, in the wake of the owner, Elaine Kaufman’s death.  

Yet, as President Bush addressed the nation and the world on television twelve hours after the terrorist attacks, customers in Elaine’s immediately began hushing everyone to “Be quiet, be quiet!,” so anxious were they to listen, intent on hearing his every word.  You could literally hear a pin drop—unheard of for liberal Elaine’s. 

If there was anyplace in America that could demonstrate right and left were now determined to fight and destroy this terrorist menace—together—it was Elaine’s!

In spite of the huge attack earlier in the day—some 3,000 souls lost, impacting their families and the surviving rescue workers—John recently noted how “life went on for almost everyone else.” It was true—at least for the moment.  There we were at Elaine’s enjoying a delicious steak dinner at the Woody Allen table, as Elaine, her usual gracious self, was playing her nightly role: den mother, leading lady of society, and, most importantly, guardian the Upper East Side Café Society.

But, make no mistake, our life had changed.  The Army was about to “stand up” the Joint Personnel Effects Depot to deal with the casualties of this first attack in what, would soon be christened The Global War on Terror; and young, or not so young, were enlisting, or re-enlisting, in the military services to join the effort. 

Smaller, tangible reminders of the attack were, of course, everywhere.  The next day I will never forget when the wind shifted and the Midtown Manhattan condo where I was staying, owned by John’s merchant banking firm, was suddenly enveloped with putrid air billowing up from Ground Zero—a grisly combination of toxic waste and burning human remains.

Then there was the reality that no restaurants were open in the immediate aftermath—except the wonderful Jewish Delis. There, I shared stories with stranded visitors like myself, including a grounded airline pilot from Australia, as well as shell-shocked New Yorkers like Al Sarnoff, the nephew of David Sarnoff, founder of NBC, who, coincidentally, knew a friend of mine, TV programming legend Mike Dann. 

Sarnoff, expressing what everyone was feeling, suggested I contact the big wigs I knew in Washington to tell the President to get up here and fast.  Of course, plans were already being laid and the day I left, Friday, September 14, Bush visited Ground Zero, and famously stood on that pile of rubble and addressed the firefighters, and the world.  

When he started speaking, the firefighters said they couldn’t hear him, and he said, “I can’t talk any louder” and, using the bullhorn, began communicating as best he could, telling them, “I want you all to know that America today is on bended knee in prayer for the people who lost their lives here...” As he continued, the firefighters again said they couldn’t hear him, at which point, in a moment historians say Bush became president, he blared into that bullhorn, “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you and the people who knocked all of these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” 

It had been a week of Big Apple Big Chill moments with friends and strangers alike—extending over several days, because I was leery of returning to Washington via train.  But, I finally traveled back to Washington by car with a friend on Friday, after she finished a week-long seminar at IBM’s White Plains Headquarters. Once home, I exhaled. My little apartment never looked so good!

***

Finishing the Journey...  

T

wo months later, the figurative and literal dust having settled, I felt magnetically drawn to the city again. And, on November 8th, I traded in my September 11th Amtrak ticket for a visit I prayed would turn out much differently.

The only hotel available through my City Tavern Club membership this time was in Lower Manhattan, near Ground Zero, which was fortuitous. While, officially, I had come to New York to screen a friend’s film in the Miramax building on Greenwich Street, and try to advance some screenwriting projects, my real purpose was to come to terms with the enormous catastrophe of two months earlier. 

So, after settling into my room, I soon ventured out and discovered that the closest city officials would allow visitors to the World Trade Center pit was the intersection of Liberty & Broadway—near the very tip of Manhattan Island.  The symbolism was riveting.

The next day, starting at Liberty & Broadway, I did a few “man on the street” interviews and soon rediscovered the truth that America’s wealth lies in her people.

Two telephone technicians, Thomas and Joe, were working diligently to extend communications cut off by the attack. They talked with me, my tape-recorder rolling, in front of Old St. Paul’s Church steps from Ground Zero. (Miraculously, St. Paul’s had sustained no damage whatsoever.)

“Everyone,” said Thomas “is still in shock.” He reported that his close friend, an FDNY firefighter in Ladder 10 a few blocks away, had died—his body just recovered the previous week. “There wasn’t much left of him,” he said—DNA providing essential proof of his identity. Asked if it helped knowing their friends died “in the line of duty,” they both chimed in that it was “small consolation.”  But, in fact, their heroism was great consolation. As Joe said, “The firefighters (like cops)—they run in, they don’t care, they take their job with real heart…You got to have a big heart to be a firefighter—no matter where you are.” 

Ground Zero, corner of Liberty & Broadway, November 9, 2001.

Credit: Mary Claire Kendall

In a nearby coffee shop, workers for Blackman Moring Steamatic (BMS) Catastrophe Restoration shared their perspective. BMS’s catastrophe division had opened in 1981 to help restore large commercial loss and was now the premier contractor for large loss insurers. But, in all those years, they had never seen anything like the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster: “Property loss is one thing.” But, the loss of so many lives—“incomprehensible!”

Nancy Leo, BMS Vice President and Regional Director, told me she had worked for the New York Port Authority for 10 years and that the clean-up after the February 1993 World Trade Center terrorist bombing required “running 3000 people” a day.  The morning of September 11th she was scheduled to meet with Larry Silverstein’s operations people to secure his new investment. The meeting, she said, was providentially pushed back to later that morning.

With weary sadness in her eyes, she told me, nineteen of her friends and associates, plus 700 other Port Authority employees, were not so lucky.

Author at Ground Zero, corner of Liberty & Broadway,

while conducting "man on the street" interviews, November 9, 2001

Next on my spontaneous itinerary was a visit to Our Lady of Victory Church, where I spoke with Fr. Peter Gnanashekar. The morning of September 11th at 8:47 a.m., he said, “time seemed to stand still.”  While assisting at mass he said he heard a “big sound” after which a man, covered in debris, rushed in to report the attack followed by someone reporting a man, covered in blood, had dragged himself to the Church, seeking the Last Rites. Fr. Peter’s colleague, Father Andrew Cieszkowksi, immediately administered the sacrament to this man, who had been struck by flying debris. He was, said Fr. Peter, Ground Zero’s first visible victim.

Others, going out to see the scene with their own eyes, came back in utter disbelief.

Spurred on by the mayhem, Fr. Peter said everyone began to pray fervently “in the front of the tabernacle and Blessed Mother’s statue,” and then, “spontaneously to pray aloud.”  As the dust came pouring in, people started taking altar cloths to cover themselves, holding tight through the final 10:30 a.m. tower collapse.  Then, as the debris in the Church cleared, everyone—in a state of shock—began going to confession, asking for a quick absolution, believing their demise was imminent.

Various angles of Our Lady of Victory Church, November 9, 2001.

                                                                                            Credit: Mary Claire Kendall 

Every Wednesday after September 11th, he told me, Our Lady of Victory held an hour of prayer to help people cope with grief and to provide mental and spiritual solace. The purpose, he said, was “to share, to heal, (and) to grow as we try to face this one with faith.”

On my way back to Penn Station for the return trip to Washington, I spoke with a man on the subway. Like all the others, he expressed a profound sense of loss and emotional shellshock. Every time, he said, he got off the subway near Ground Zero to walk to his home or place of work, the foul odor emanating from the burning pit “always makes me feel immediately depressed.”  

But he found one silver lining.  In spite of widespread communications and social disruptions—phones and buildings rendered totally unusable—human innovation and ingenuity, he said with a smile, helped their community to adapt. Young children would run around the neighborhood taping notices to all the front doors to announce scheduled meetings taking place in the park or significant news.  Then, his thoughts and spirit slumped back as he lamented, “If only human emotion could adapt as quickly.”

Note: My interview with Fr. Peter Gnanashekar at Our Lady of Victory was also included in my companion piece for National Catholic Register, titled “Journey to Liberty and Forgiveness.”  See http://american-politics-and-policy.blogspot.com/2011/09/journey-to-liberty-and-forgiveness.html .