Father Duffy's Story: A Tale of Humor and Heroism, of Life and Death with the Fighting Sixty-Ninth

In 1917, when America entered the Great War, Father Francis Patrick Duffy did something no chaplain was supposed to do: he followed his men into the trenches. The Irish-American priest who would later have a square in Times Square named after him served as chaplain to the legendary Fighting Sixty-Ninth (the 165th Infantry), and he refused to wait safely behind the lines while his boys went over the top. Instead, he carried stretchers through gas attacks at Lunéville, bled alongside them at the Battle of the Ourcq, and charged through the Argonne with the 42nd Division. But this isn't a solemn war memoir steeped in suffering. Duffy writes with a ferrier's wit and a storyteller's instinct, capturing the absurd humor of military life, the irrepressible personalities of his Irish Catholic soldiers, and the fierce pride of a regiment with a heritage stretching back to Antietam and Gettysburg. His commanding officer said Duffy kept the unit's morale alive. This is the man in his own words: raw, funny, courageous, and utterly unforgettable.