Fr. Christopher Berlo, C.P. (continued)
Extreme situations call for extreme measures. By five o'clock that evening I had personally reappropriated my passport and bluffed my way out of the building by starting an argument between the sentry and his corporal and by midnight I was holed up in a beer tavern owned by a friend of mine in Wiener Neustadt, a city thirty miles south of Vienna. By nine the next morning I had secured my exit permit from a female employee of the county in Neunkirchen; at noon I said a hurried goodbye to my confreres in the Styrian Alps and had taken to the road as a fugitive, with 27 American dollars in my pocket. Thirty days and 8600 miles later, I landed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard determined to ask for a Chaplain's commission in the US Army.
Two hours after I left the Monastery in the Styrian Alps, a car with Gestapo agents drove up with the intention of arresting me for espionage. But not even Hitler's agents could arrest a man until they had caught him. They followed my trail back to Vienna, on a troop train to the Czech border, back to Leipsig, to the Polish border, then to Berlin, where for a while I succeeded in getting lost among the three million inhabitants. During this time I watched an English air raid on Germany's capital from the Propaganda Minister's backyard. Goebbels was in the underground shelter; I had a box seat outside. By bribing a native with a generous supply of meat ration tickets—they were no use to me for their original purpose—I secured the information I wanted and shortly thereafter managed to board a Swedish railroad ferry at Sassnitz harbor while German troops were loading for Norway at the same pier, and by the following morning I was in Trolleborg, Sweden, where I was received and cleared by armed military guards. After a short rest in Stockholm, where a friendly hotelkeeper brought me up to date on my rations, I continued on, mostly by train, to the north. At Haparanda I was fed courtesy of the mayor and spent the night in a sleeping car in the railroad yards. Then over to Tornio in Finland and a day-long trip with a wood-burning locomotive built in 1906, to Rovaniemi on the Arctic Circle.
The Finns were most courteous, but food was almost unobtainable, and for the first time I passed out from hunger. The same night I continued northward, on a kind of bus, over the Arctic Highway, destination Petsamo, about 400 miles away. This was between the first and second occupation of Petsamo by the Russians and at this time exactly 12 buildings remained standing in that city. I counted them.
Here I spent almost a week, watching the German artillery on one side of the bay and the Russian pieces on the other side, and finally the rescue, a gleaming white American ship, an Army transport, in the harbor. The magic "Sesame" to this ship was not money, but an American passport. A couple of weeks later I was again in the land of the free, and the Statue of Liberty never looked so welcome.
Early in 1943, my superiors finally released me for service in the Army and after a year of infantry training with the 75th Division in the USA, I was sent to the Pacific. For obvious reasons, I was not sent to the European Theater of Operations. For the next two years I followed the course of the fighting from Australia to Japan, first on New Guinea at Milne Bay and Finschafen, then with the 40th Division in New Britain and then with the 19th Infantry Regiment of the 24th Hawaiian Division. With these experienced jungle fighters I made the initial invasion of the Philippines on the left flank of Red Beach at Leyte and within the first week of that important campaign, hand buried 151 of my men, every one of them a hero. Later I took part in the invasion of Mindoro and the other jobs handled by the West Visayan Task Force, including the Islands of Romblon and Verde, the landing at Tagaitai Ridge and up through Ft. McKinley to Manila, and finally the entire Mindanao Operation. With the 19th I also went to Japan after the surrender and was the only Catholic Army Chaplain on the Island of Shikoku.
In the spring of 1946 I returned to the USA and after some leave time, served at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, Camp Lee in Virginia and Ft. Knox, Kentucky and was then sent to join the Army of Occupation in Germany. There I was Chaplain with the 15th Constabulary Regiment and was known as the flying Padre, for every Sunday I visited my various troop units with a small liaison plane to conduct services. Recurrent attacks of malaria, contracted in the South Pacific, finally terminated my tour of duty in Europe and in 1948 I was again returned to the United States. But before leaving Europe I was able to visit the places where I had worked before the war and it afforded me no small gratification to see that my religious work of the pre-war days had survived the ravages of war and is now flourishing with renewed vigor.
In 1946 I made the acquaintance of Mr. Carl Gubisch and learned of his ambition to make the study of our Constitution available to every man, woman and child in our country. His plan produced a sympathetic response, for I had been nursing the same idea for many years. Then by mistake I was sent a copy of a Communistic booklet on our Constitution, "The Founding of the Bourgeois Republic," which so infuriated me that I started at once with the composition of our booklet, "Know Your Constitution".
I sincerely hope that this booklet will have as universal a coverage as possible and do its part in the education of Americans to our priceless heritage of life, liberty and happiness, its share in the saving of our country, and if possible the whole world, from any and every kind of totalitarianism.
At the present time I am duty Catholic Chaplain at Percy Jones General Hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan.
CHRIS J BERLO
Ch. Capt. USA
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The preceding resume was written by Father Christopher in 1948. It was graciously sent to the BERLO FAMILY REGISTER & HISTORY by Vickie and Ernest Berlo, San Francisco, California, in September 1984. Many thanks to Vickie and Ernest for sharing this wonderful find with all of the relatives.
From BERLO FAMILY REGISTER & HISTORY by Peter W. Berlo
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