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In the eighth grade, he took a test to get into the seminary, only because it meant he could get out of school for a day. Of the 79 students enrolled with him, only nine were eventually ordained. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park. He was not skilled in Latin, Father Davenport said in his memoir. Art got in other trouble as a seminarian.
He once drove a brand-new Jeep belonging to a father into the Russian River because he tried to put his arm around the girl he had taken out for a ride, he said in his memoir. The girl later wrote to him saying: Archbishop Mitty wanted him to study canon law, but he signed up to be a chaplain at the Presidio to avoid that fate, Father Davenport said.
Instead, however, he soon received a call saying: You baptize, you anoint, you hear confessions, give them instruction, take care of them, put them to bed when they're drunk. I did that a lot of times, too," he said in his memoir. After training, Father Davenport was sent to Korea on a troop ship. The first day on the ship with 3, soldiers, he spread the word that if anyone wanted to say confession they could come by his room. Well, I went for 36 hours straight hearing confessions," he said in his memoir.
He took breaks only for food and the bathroom. They were going to war. While in Korea, a solider came to Father Davenport and said he hadn't been baptized but wanted to receive Holy Communion. So the chaplain baptized him with his canteen and gave him communion, and did not see him again. One of his most memorable experiences in Korea came after an enemy attack that left all the officers dead. The commanding officer asked Father Davenport to stay with the soldiers.
The chaplain volunteered to stay. There were dead kids too. Although he was a non-combatant, Father Davenport was left with a gun, and he thought about whether it would be wrong for him to use it if the enemy were attacking one of the wounded. Then, he said in his memoir, "the helicopters came in with rockets and kept the Communists from coming through," so he didn't have to make that decision.
Father Davenport admits in his memoir that he did a few things as a military chaplain that might not have been considered priestly, including punching a lieutenant who kept poking him and calling him "Chappy," trying to break his driver of using "the F word" and instead starting to use it himself; and threatening to shoot a Korean soldier who refused to help pull a stuck American Jeep out of a river.
Father Davenport was given the nickname Father Lucky after narrowly missing being killed several times during his two years in Korea. You hope you can say something personal, that you met this kid or had seen him or something like that. They would ask if he had suffered and you would say no. But you don't know whether they suffered," he said in his memoir.
Father Davenport did not romanticize war. No one ever wins war," he said. After returning from Korea, Father Davenport became an assistant priest at Nativity until he was asked to go to Vietnam. He met another military chaplain on the way from Travis to Vietnam, an Episcopal priest. So we're sitting there sipping on martinis, flying off to war. It was funny," Father Davenport said. In Vietnam he was saying nine Masses every Sunday. He had 21, men he was in charge of, a third of them Catholic.
On top of a Jeep even.
He usually slept on an air mattress. You put your poncho down and you hope it doesn't rain. If it rains, sometimes you wake up and you're floating. Father Davenport's Father Lucky nickname continued to be apt during his five years in Vietnam. Once, while a passenger in a helicopter, a bullet came right between his legs. He said no, "but I just wet my pants," he said.
In Vietnam he also helped a priest who had founded a leper's colony, getting nurses and doctors from Sequoia Hospital to donate an X-ray machine for the colony. He visited there and toured the wards with the father. He made me touch them. He also visited a village that had moved from the north to the south "for their faith.
Not long after, the Communists blew up the entire village. After the war, Father Davenport said in his memoir, the communists also hung the priest who had started the lepers' colony, took all its medication and abused the nuns. In Vietnam, Father Davenport was in charge of the other chaplains, including one who hid when they were under attack. He suggested that chaplain be sent home. Near the end of the war, Father Davenport bought a golf club at the PX in Saigon and brought it back with him.
He didn't have golf balls, so he had someone cut a board up into squares so he could practice. Expected dispatch within 7 - 11 working days. Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it. Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image. Is this product missing categories? Checkout Your Cart Price. The week before, he had a life that was rosy: We all need God.
Thus began his unexpected journey of discovering a deep-rooted vocation to the priesthood, and bringing Christ to his fellow men at home and on foreign battlefields. Army Colonel, from his "priesthood by osmosis" to failing Latin class. Journey with him to his parishes that extended from the quiet gardens of Menlo Park, California, to the wartime battlefields of Korea and Vietnam.