ON TRANSPORT N—

New Zealand Tablet, 22 May 1919, Page 13

ON TRANSPORT N

The great value of the service rendered by the Knights of Columbus in camps in the United States and in France has been evidenced in many ways, but it is doubtful if there has been a more impressive aftermath of K. of C. service than that which occurred recently aboard ship in the Irish Sea (writes John J. Donovan, from K. of C. headquarters, 16 Place de la Madeleine, Paris, in the Boston Pilot).

A British ship transporting more than 1000 American soldiers was forging eastward. To right and left and in front and astern were other transports, while just inside the horizon British destroyers zipped here and there with careful eye for the safety of the last American convoy to sail before the Armistice. High in the sky with the sun shining on their glittering framework were two “Silver Gleams,” aluminium painted British dirigibles.

It was aboard Transport N that a ceremony was performed that attracted to the decks every American aboard ship as well as many of the British officers. .American soldier/was to Ire admitted into the Catholic Church ; a soldier from Cleveland, Ohio, who had received his instructions aboard the ship. As the transport was off the coast of Donegal, Ireland, hundreds stood with bared head while Arthur Mclntosh, of Cleveland, Ohio, was baptised.

The ship was but a few hours out from an Atlantic port when Private Mclntosh sought out Rev. Father Van der Gruiten, of St. Michael’s Church, Goltry, Oklahoma, who was aboard as a Knights of Columbus chaplain en route to France. He told “Father Van” that he would like instructions, he said that at the camps in the United States he had been attracted by the service given the soldiers by the Knights of Columbus en route to France. He told “Father Van,” as he was popularly called, that he would like instruction. He had been impressed by the wonderful spiritual devotion of the Catholics and their regularity in attending service and the sacraments, and that all taken together had made such an impression on him that he desired instruction that he might become a Catholic.- - He had noticed the work of the secretaries; their unvarying courtesy,‘the brother feeling always in evidence between the Catholic soldiers and the secretaries and the splendid manner in which the Knights of Columbus workers received and cared for every man irrespective of ..race, creed, or col or. r j;s, . '• i’i*