Letters (from UK), 1943/1944

Containers:

Box 1, Folder 2

Scope and content:

Cunningham is assigned to Great Britain as a chaplain. Censorship policy allows no direct information about his location or the military units he serves to appear in his letters. However, his general location in South Wales can be inferred (and is verified by letters written later when he had returned to the States). Provides miscellaneous details of his day to day life, though he also writes a good deal about personal family matters back home. Describes involvement with local churches and church groups. For example, he goes into some detail about a Methodist church social. He also writes of his participation in local church concerts (he sings tenor and has studied choral conducting at Boston University). He is warned by his "chief," the Area Chaplain, against working too much with civilian churches. Cunningham writes, "but if I prefer seeing homes, making friends of these fine people, speaking for Christ in youth groups, and singing to Service Men to going to the Officers' Club and listening to their profanity and obscenity and watching them guzzle their liquor, I think it is my business. Personally, I think I am doing a job that needs to be done, that other officers could well afford to do, making personal friends of these Allies of ours." Describes having a very busy schedule, running "from ships to Hospital to office to BOQ all day long." But by September 1944, he writes of having very little to do.

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