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Wickham, whom Gerecke had replaced as head of City Mission in 1935 and was now a first lieutenant at Fort Hayes in Ohio, said his ten months in the chaplaincy had given him a perspective on the type of person it required.
    â€œWhen I review in my mind the type of work required in the many situations that arise, I am confident that Brother Gerecke could efficiently and with distinction serve as a Chaplain,” Wickham wrote. “He is very personal in his presentation and can inspire men. He can be emotional as well as stern. . . . I know of no reason why he will not make a GOOD chaplain, and the army knows there are too many of the other kind.”
    Wickham’s letter to the synod’s Army and Navy Commission was dated June 2, 1943, the day before Gerecke told Alma he planned to volunteer. At least a dozen men, and probably many more, knew Gerecke was joining the army before he told the mother of his children.
    A week after the tense moment in the kitchen with Alma, Gerecke received word that the synod’s Army and Navy Commission had approved his application and forwarded it to the army’s Chief of Chaplain branch.
    On July 15, the U.S. Army named Gerecke a chaplain (1st Lt.) and ordered him to report to Chaplain School at Harvard University a month later. In his last City Mission newsletter, written in August 1943, Gerecke told the delegates that he’d be replaced by an able pastor to lead the agency, but that Moments of Comfort would be “suspended for a time.” He thanked people for listening.
    â€œMy dear Friends, I ask your blessings upon my new assignment,” he wrote. “You and many others have sent good wishes for great spiritual blessings as a chaplain in the Army. . . . Keep your eyes fixed upon Jesus. If I have blundered, forgive me, please. If I have done normally well, thank God for it.”
    Then he quoted two verses from the Old Testament. From Genesis: “The Lord watch between me and you when we are absent one from another.” And from Deuteronomy: “The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.”
    As Gerecke left the safety of St. Louis for the heart of the most violent, destructive war man had ever fought, he might have added a proverb he penned himself in the November 1941 City Mission newsletter. “God give us strength, to carry on through the shadows.”

CHAPTER 3
    God of War
    Before you join battle, the priest shall come forward and address the troops. He shall say to them, “Hear, O Israel! you are about to join battle with your enemy. Let not your courage falter. Do not be in fear, or in panic, or in dread of them. For it is the Lord your God who marches with you to do battle for you against your enemy, to bring you victory.”
    â€”DEUTERONOMY 20:2–4
    H ENRY GERECKE RECEIVED A letter on June 23, 1943, from the army’s Chief of Chaplains office informing him that he’d been provisionally recommended for the Chaplain Corps. Three days later, he sent a letter back to Washington. “Kind Sir!” Gerecke wrote. “The day I receive the official assignment shall be the happiest day of my life. My family, including two fine boys in the Army, are agreeable and praying blessings on me. There is no intention of backing down.” On August 17, 1943, he said good-bye to Alma and fifteen-year-old Roy and reported for duty at Harvard the next day.
    When he arrived on campus, Gerecke was given a welcome letter written by the army chief of chaplains, General William R. Arnold, the first Catholic priest to become chief of chaplains and the first chaplain to rise to the rank of major general, a tradition the army has maintained ever since. Arnold called himself “a priest in khaki,” but before entering the priesthood, he had held a number of jobs. He’d worked at his father’s cigar-making operation in Worcester, Ohio; at a steel mill in Muncie, Indiana, where he was a bar