A Canadian Chaplain in the Great War by Ross Hebb
A Review by Heather McBriarty
Without permission from his bishop, 30-year-old, Chatham New Brunswick-native, Father Benedict J Murdoch signed on with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1916 as a Roman Catholic chaplain. Serving in the training camps and the front-line trenches, and following the CEF into the Rhineland in December 1918, Murdoch experienced the hardships and brutality of the First World War firsthand and suffered what was later to be called PTSD.
In 1923, Murdoch, in an unsuccessful effort to exorcize the demons of war, published a memoir of his time ministering to the men of the CEF – before battle and afterward to the wounded and dying – called The Red Vineyard, referencing the harvest of blood of the 1914/1918 conflict. Last published in 1958, historian Ross Hebb presents Murdoch’s memoir, along with his introduction, running commentary, and an epilogue detailing Murdoch’s life after returning to Canada, not included in the original publication, in this book called “A Canadian Chaplain in the Great War: Revisiting B.J. Murdoch’s The Red Vineyard”.
A man who found so much beauty and humour in his travels and work with the CEF, not even Murdoch’s deep and abiding faith could protect his sensitive spirit from the horrors of the front and from the experience of living through intense shelling. Murdoch wrote such detailed and descriptive passages of the landscapes of France and its people, in and away from the front, of the soldiers, nurses, and doctors, that I felt I had been there. I was struck as he described walking in the open to the firing line, in complete terror for his life. Crossing a landscape from a nightmare, seeing the German lines but not a single living thing, nor hearing anything – not a bird, not a murmur of conversation from the hundreds of men he knew were hidden there in the trenches – there was only the occasional boom of an artillery gun. If you wonder how he and the officer accompanying him managed this walk, in full view of the Germans, they were, it was explained to Murdoch, too far for rifle or machine gun fire to reach them and the Germans would not “waste” a shell on two men.
Not to be outdone by Murdoch’s sensitive and evocative writing, Hebb’s sympathetic and insightful commentary weaves a subtle thread through this book, connecting Murdoch’s experiences with the bigger picture of the war. He helps to illuminate Murdoch’s sometimes restrained and unassuming revelations of his increasingly fragile mental health. Hebb also reveals the untold story of Murdoch’s life and struggles in the 1920s and 1930s, and his life as a recluse unable to resume his ministering, a sad ending to a life of promise.
Despite not being Catholic, or even religious, I still found this book incredibly fascinating, and the soldier’s trust in both God and their priest touching. I have read a lot of First World War histories, personal memoirs, and letters, but much of Murdoch’s writing, and Hebb’s, give a fresh picture of this conflict and new insights into the men’s experiences.
About the Authors
Although originally from Nova Scotia's South Shore, Ross Hebb is now a long-term resident of New Brunswick. A graduate of King's College and Dalhousie University, Dr. Hebb received his PhD from the University of Wales, Lampeter, in 2002. Along with volumes on Maritime Church history, he has also written about the golden age of shipbuilding at St. Martins on the Bay of Fundy. In 2014 he edited the collection Letters Home: Maritimers and the Great War, 1914-1918; in 2018, In Their Own Words: Three Maritimers Experience the Great War, and in 2021, A Canadian Nurse in the Great War: The Diaries of Ruth Loggie, 1915?1916. Dr Hebb is an Honorary Research Associate at UNB's Historical Studies Department. He has authored academic articles on B. J. Murdoch and on the literary accounts of Canadian First World War nurses. Dr. Hebb is married and lives in Fredericton, NB.
Born in Chatham in 1886, Father Benedict Joseph Murdoch joined the Canadian Army in 1916. His exposure to combat made him subject to what was then called "shell shock." To exorcise his mind of the war's legacy, Murdoch wrote The Red Vineyard in 1922. Throughout the 1920s Murdoch continued to struggle. From 1932 onward, he found peace as a recluse deep in the New Brunswick woods. He died in 1973.
Book Details
Publisher : Nimbus Publishing Limited (Sept. 24 2024)
Language : English
Paperback : 264 pages
ISBN-10 : 177471325X
ISBN-13 : 978-1774713259