Valor Friday

Longtime readers of my articles will be aware that I have a soft spot in my heart for military chaplains (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). I’ve covered them extensively over the years, and today’s subject is another. He was suggested to me by Poetrooper. After looking into it, ol’ Poe knows exactly the kind of story I like to tell.

Father Albert Braun is memorialized on his grave marker as “Apostle to the Mescalero Apaches.” In between his ministering to the Natives in New Mexico, he saw fit to serve his nation in both World Wars, seeing combat action in both conflicts.

Braun was born with the name John William Braun, but appears to have changed it to Albert William at some point before entering the service for World War I. Born in 1889 to German immigrant parents in Los Angeles, he was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in the Franciscan Order in 1915. He would be assigned to the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico.

We previously discussed a long-time resident of the Mesacalero, Private Charles McVeagh. He was a recipient of the Medal of Honor for actions during the Indian Campaigns in Arizona while a member of the 8th US Cavalry.

With the entry of the US into the Great War in 1916, Braun asked for permission to join the Army. With the church leadership’s eventual assent, he enlisted at El Paso in June 1918.

Now Chaplain Braun, he joined the 6th Infantry Division. The division had just been activated the previous November and shipped overseas in the same month Braun joined them. Not entering the Western Front until September, just two months before the end of the war, the division saw 43 days of combat in just 69 days at the front.

The men of the 6th ID first saw action in the area of Vosges, France from early September and into mid-October. By October, the hundreds of thousands of fresh, eager American troops flooding into continental Europe were putting the Germans back. Steadily, the German Empire was being pushed out of France, Belgium, and the other occupied lands.

To capitalize on the momentum, the Allies planned a massive offensive that would be called the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. The operation was to push the Germans back to at least the Rhineland and further if possible. All of this was happening as the Allies and the Germans were negotiating an end of the conflict. Each side wanted to end the war with the most territory possible, no matter the costs in men and machine.

Into the forests of the Meuse-Argonne went the 6th Infantry Division, among more than 1,000,000 men of the Allies. We’ve talked about many men and units involved in this offensive, as valor was a common trait among these soldiers, sailors, and Marines.

During battle, a chaplain’s job is to provide inspiration, medical care, and minister to the dying. For a Catholic chaplain, this includes providing Last Rites for those on death’s door. In battle, the worst of the casualties die where they fall. Usually in the most contested parts of the battlefield.

Being unarmed, chaplains are not expected to charge into battle with the rest of the men. A chaplain, though an officer, cannot lead soldiers in combat. Assigned to the battalion, or a higher level of command, chaplains are permitted, even expected, to remain in the relative safety of the command post. The best of chaplains though, stay with their flock, wherever the flock may go.

This was how Father Al Braun thought. He thrived in adversity, both in war and peace. He was to be with his men. On 14 October, as men of the division left their trenches to attack the Germans, Braun was among the first wave. Charging over the walls, Braun’s participation was strictly unauthorized. Facing enemy small arms, machine gun, and artillery attack, Braun was soon injured.

Shrapnel from a German shell burst into his face and jaw. Despite his wounds, the chaplain remained with the men. As they too sustained injuries, he provided care and ministry to them. He refused to leave his post, in the midst of the battle.

For his bravery under fire, Braun was awarded a Silver Citation Star to be affixed to his WWI Victory Medal. In the early 1930s, this would be changed to the Silver Star medal that we’re more familiar with now. It was and remains the third-level award for combat gallantry. He was also a recipient of a Purple Heart for his wartime injuries.

With the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month striking, the War to End All Wars came to its conclusion. The men of the 6th ID, with their comrades in the Allied armies, fought right up to the end.

While the guns went silent, the 6th ID remained deployed for a time. They returned to the states in June of 1919 and many of the men were mustered out. Among them was Braun.

Braun returned to his ministry in New Mexico after the war. Prior to his stint in the Army, Braun had determined that the Mescalero needed a new church. The existing adobe structure was too small and in a poor state of repair. On his return to the Apache, he set about to build a new church.

Braun received permission, but no money, to build a new church. He envisioned a grand cathedral such as he’d seen in Europe. Something that could stand for centuries and serve as a memorial to those lost in the war.

With $100 of his Army pay and his pass to ride the railroads for free, Braun traveled to Philadelphia to meet with noted architect William Stanton. Stanton was inspired by the good Father’s mission and designed a stone church for the man.

Braun called in a favor from friends and with the help of community volunteers they broke ground in 1920. They dug the foundation (as deep as seven feet in places) by hand. From there he had a stonemason friend from Santa Barbara come to help guide construction.

The raw materials for the building were all locally sourced. The construction was all done, by hand, by Braun, volunteers, and some fellow Franciscan friars who had fled religious persecution in Mexico. Work was stopped in 1924 when Braun was called away from his mission. It was restarted on his return in 1927. The church is described as;

“The Mission is laid out in the form of a cross. It is 64 feet wide and 131 feet long. It is 50 feet to the rafters, and 80 feet to the roof peak. The tip of the cross on the bell tower is 103 feet high. The bell tower walls are four feet thick at the base.”

As you’d imagine, making a large stonework church by hand with your laborers all being volunteers, work was slow. It was not until 1939 that the church would be considered complete. The dedication party was held on 4 July of that year.

The parishioners had been using the incomplete church for some time though. While the building was “finished” it wasn’t actually complete for many years. It would have wood shutters over the windows until a local glass shop finally installed proper stained-glass in the 1960s. It’s now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Along the way at least one man died as a result of the construction. When Braun had returned to the Mescalero in 1927 he’d not come alone. He was accompanied by Father Salesius Kraft, a German Franciscan brother. Kraft had been a German artilleryman during the war, and he petitioned the church to allow him to join Braun in New Mexico. He perished in the construction project while unloading one of the heavy stones from a truck. Crushed by the block, he was buried next to the mission.

While working as general contractor on his massive construction project, Braun continued to seek adventure in the name of service. Thrice he and a fellow priest posed as businessmen and made the treacherous journey into Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution. They went to buy Franciscan property, to prevent it from being seized. The revolution had seen mass religious persecution, including the outlawing of foreign-born ministers.

Braun also became a source of refuge for Franciscans fleeing Mexico. He converted a barn to use as quarters and provided food. To cover the expenses, Braun took a job with the Civilian Conservation Corps as chaplain for all New Mexico and west Texas CCC camps.

Braun, a man now working essentially three full-time jobs, only saw this as a challenge. He said, “Christ told his apostles to go out into the world, not to sit at a desk and move papers around.”

With his New Mexican cathedral finished, Braun was once again thrust into national service. I can’t find record if he had remained in the reserves after the First World War or if he re-enlisted, but in any case, Braun was back in the Army by 1940.

Braun reported for duty 1 November of that year at Fort Sam Houston. He initially helped to recruit more chaplains before insisting on an overseas post. He received orders for the 92nd Coast Artillery Regiment, stationed in the Philippines.

Braun arrived at his new post on Corregidor in April 1941. The 92nd Coast Artillery was part of the Philippine Scouts. The unit was made up of enlisted Filipino men and regular US Army officers.

On 7 December 1941, Japan famously launched their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, thrusting the US into World War II. Since the Philippines are on the other side of the International Date Line from Hawaii, it was 8 December 1941 on the South Pacific islands. Just a few hours after the Japanese success at Pearl, they launched a major offensive on the American-allied Philippines.

In command of the forces at the Philippines was General Douglas MacArthur. Braun, who appears to have held the rank of major at the time, was with the senior officers of the command for much of the major events for the next few months.

Braun gave the invocation for the inauguration of Philippine President Manuel Quezon on 1 January 1942 at Corregidor. He was present at the memorable evacuation of MacArthur in March (after which Dugout Doug gave his “I shall return” message). While MacArthur escaped to Australia, he left behind thousands who soon fell to the Japanese.

Now under the command of General Jonathan Wainwright, the defenders of the Philippines held out until May of 1942. Their valiant, hard fought defense of the islands lasted far longer than they should have. Braun was there when Wainwright surrendered to the enemy.

Though now prisoners, the valiant resistance to enemy aggression of the 92nd Coast Artillery didn’t go unnoticed. They received three Presidential Unit Citations during the time period of 7 December 1941 and 9 April 1942.

Braun’s first order of business was to convince his Japanese captors to permit the policing and burial of the badly decayed dead strewn about. I don’t know how he did so, since the Japanese weren’t generally agreeable to such demands. Perhaps it’s because at 52, he would have been quite a bit older than most of the soldiers, on both sides of the fighting.

The Japanese then forced marched the prisoners, between 60,000 and 80,000 Filipino and American troops, to Camp O’Donnell in Capas, Tarlac. The distance marched was more than 60 miles, and variously reported as just short of 70 miles.

The men, who had been fighting for months, and already in poor health as a result, were treated very poorly by their captors. The Japanese had nothing but utter disdain for anyone who surrendered. They treated their prisoners as less than human as a result.

The trip across the island became known as the Bataan Death March. The men were marched, hands often tied behind their backs, with minimal food and water. Disease, fatigue, and illness were rampant. If a man fell down, or couldn’t keep pace, he was often summarily executed by the Japanese. The dead were buried in mass graves as hundreds died each day.

Estimates of casualties from the Death March are inexact. At the most conservative estimate, 10,000 of the ~80,000 men died. Some are believed to have escaped into the jungle, but only 54,000 men arrived at Camp O’Donnell. The dead are thus thought to number more than 20,000.

The men were held at Camp O’Donnell before being transferred out in smaller numbers to various other prisoner camps throughout the Pacific. Conditions at the camp continued to be poor, with thousands dying from the poor conditions and frequent physical punishment from the Japanese guards.

While in captivity, Braun was unwilling to give up his faith and his duties as a minister. Despite the enemy prohibiting it, he continued to conduct mass for his men. Eventually he won over the guards and actually got permission to perform his services.

Braun risked torture or execution by smuggling food and medicine through the wire of the camps. His skills at stealing food from the kitchen to give to the sick earned him the nickname “Al Capone.” When one soldier commented to the priest that stealing is a sin, he replied, “Not during war. Letting men die of starvation is a sin.”

As MacArthur’s forces moved back to the Philippines, the Japanese moved the prisoners to the Home Islands. They moved them on horribly cramped, dark transport ships. The conditions aboard these ships were so poor they earned the nickname “Hell Ships.” On one such ship, with 1,000 prisoners stuffed into the hold of the vessel, Braun led the men in prayer. He kept their spirits up in these darkest of days.

By war’s end, more than three years had passed in his imprisonment. Braun was liberated at the prison Camp Omori in Tokyo Bay. He’d spent 40 months in captivity, tasting freedom again on 29 August 1945. He was a week away from his 56th birthday.

Standing more than six feet tall, the padre had withered away from a healthy 195 pounds to just 115 when he was freed. He’d suffered malnutrition, diphtheria, dysentery, pellagra, and several bouts of malaria. He received another Silver Star and a Legion of Merit for his service in his second World War.

He returned to the Mescalero, rededicating his church there on 11 November 1945 to the men who died in both World Wars defending the country. Soon though his physical injuries caught up to him and he was forced to leave the frontier ministry.

Braun spent the next few years recuperating from his wartime traumas at Army hospitals. He was sent to the Marshall Islands where he participated in Operation Sandstone (nuclear bomb tests). He spent two years in Hawaii, before retiring from the Army in 1949 as a lieutenant colonel.

He next went to Oakland before the church sent him to Phoenix. He wanted to “be out with the people.” So he requested that his new pastor send him to any Spanish-speaking mission.

He was sent to a Hispanic part of town, whose residents had to travel two miles on foot to reach the nearest basilica. Braun requested to live in the barrio with them for a year. His pastor denied the request, so Father Al went above his head. He got permission, and lived among his new flock in the Golden Gate Barrio.

Braun was able to report to his superiors that there were far more Catholics in the barrio than they thought. He’d been told by his pastor that there were 64 Catholics. In fact, Braun found a large community of 8,000. He’d spend his days traveling the area and meeting with families.

Braun requested to remain in the barrio, and not to be moved around like “all the others” until he had “completed his work.” In 1952 a small lot in the area was donated to the church. A simple palm-thatched roof structure became the church for the Golden Gate Barrio and surrounding neighborhoods.

For the next two and a half years, the padre conducted services from his small rectory. He began to acquire more land through donations and political activism. He ran fundraising in which he had every single person in his congregation buy at least one red brick.

Braun’s rectory was completed in 1954. Two chapels were also built. Once that was done, work on the church proper began. With a blessing from the bishop, they started construction on Santa Rita Hall in 1956, finishing it the following year.

Braun understood the importance of community. His church became the center of the vibrant community. They created their own self-help programs, including one that worked with wayward juveniles. One local juvenile court officer said of Father Al, “the number of juvenile cases dropped sharply as those persons under his influence began working together as family units and as a community.”

While Braun left the parish in 1962, he remained involved with the church there until his death in 1983 at age 93. Santa Rita Hall, during the late-60s, became a focal point in the civil rights age, specifically the Chicano Movement. In 1972 the church was the site of national attention when Cesar Chavez conducted his 24-day “Fast for Justice” there.

After Braun’s death, at his request, he was interred at the St. Joseph Mescalero Apache Mission in New Mexico. The one that he literally built. He’s buried in the church, near the altar. Hundreds of Apache, fellow veterans, and others turned out for his funeral.

Braun is remembered by those he served with in the Second World War as “The Hero Priest of Corregidor.” He had been given the Arizona Medal of Honor in 1965 and was entered into the Arizona Veterans Hall of Fame in 1979.

In his final years, Braun was confined to a wheelchair, having had part of his leg amputated. Though the body lacked, the spirit was still willing. He would wheel around the nursing home performing mass for the other residents and the nuns. A man who spent his whole life in service, Braun continued serving his people and his God right up until his final days.

Category: Army, Historical, Valor, We Remember