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Show AMERICA IN ACTION j .THE SOLDIER'S RELIGION The next time someone tries to tell you that the 1942 American soldier sol-dier has "lost his religion," . the women's interests section of the war department suggests that you tell him the following true story from its recently issued pamphlet "The Soldier and His Religion." It happened at Camp Croft, S. C, a replacement training center with a peak strength at any given time of 16,500 men. A total of 81,488 soldiers sol-diers attended Sunday services held by the army chaplains or approximately approxi-mately 5,000 men per Sunday during dur-ing the hot summer months of June through September. To the mother's common query "Does my soldier son have a chance to go to church?" the pamphlet gives a reassuring answer based on statistics from the Office of the Chief of Chaplains: "In many camps, church attendance attend-ance is better than civilian church attendance in comparable population popula-tion areas." Today's soldier has abundant opportunity op-portunity for religious worship, but no compulsion. His commanding officer of-ficer will not make him go to church. When the emergency mobilization of men caused the army population to sky-rocket, there was an inevitable inevita-ble lack of chapels. The government govern-ment took immediate steps to remedy rem-edy the situation. Today there are about 600 chapels in use or near-ing near-ing completion. These chapels look like the small-town church back home: simple framework, slanting roof, tall steeple, seating capacity of about 400. The chapels are widely used. In one year, 118,990 services were held in them. Gen. George C. Marshall, chief of staff, quoted in the booklet, gives this message to the soldier's mother: moth-er: "There should be no fear that any young man will suffer spiritual loss during the period of his military service. On the contrary, we hope that the young soldier will return to his home with a keener understanding understand-ing of the sacred ideals for which our churches stand." |