British Vice Consul Claire Newman and Father Christopher Morley
More than 60 years after World War II ended, a Chattanooga veteran received military awards on Friday at a small formal military ceremony.
The Rev. Christopher Morley, 94, received the British 1939-1945 Star and the Africa Star for military service performed in the North African Campaign of the Second World War. Father Morley, now a resident of St. Barnabas, drove an ambulance for the American Field Service and was assigned to the British Eighth Army in the Western Desert as part of Middle East Unit No. 2.
At the war’s end, Father Morley received the Africa Star medal ribbon by post. He was subsequently invited to New York to be presented with the medal. Unfortunately, he was unable to attend and the medal was never forwarded to him. Relatives living in England researched the matter earlier this year on his behalf. The British Ministry of Defense Medal Office confirmed Father Morley’s entitlement to the medals and agreed to re-issue them.
“He is keen to talk to people about the dangers of war,” said Alison Morley Barry of Preston, England in an email of her uncle. “He had always felt standing up to evil and oppression in the world was the right thing to do, being the kind of man he is. He is more interested in the educational opportunities that would come with receipt of the medals than the prestige attached to them.”
Claire Newman, British Vice Consul at the British Consulate General in Atlanta, delivered the medals for the ceremony. Also present were Tony Woodruff of Indiana, nephew; representatives from the offices of Senator Bob Corker, Congressman Chuck Fleischman, and Mayor Ron Littlefield; and numerous friends and well-wishers.
“I am honoured to present these medals on behalf of the British Government to recognise Father Christopher Morley’s admirable service. Father Morley is a brave veteran who embodies the spirit of sacrifice and it’s a privilege to present the medals to him,” said Vice Consul Claire Newman.
“We are celebrating more than an individual today,” said Father Morley after receiving the medals. “Great Britain and the U.S. are very different countries. Nevertheless, with a common goal in mind, they managed to put together a most impressive military machine to overcome the evil of Hitler. Despite many discrepancies and disagreements, these two peoples sensed a common destiny and sense of values that held us together and enabled us to win the War. This is what we celebrate today, and in our hearts we continue to labour to maintain this unity.”
Father Morley still vividly recalls his war experiences.
“I thought Hitler was a terrible threat to England, and eventually, the United States,” he said, and chuckled. “I was very confident in my judgment in those days.”
As a young Cornell University student, Father Morley considered himself a determined pacifist. But a reading of Plato’s “Crito” and T.S. Eliot’s “Idea of a Christian Society” gradually modified his views.
“My classical studies led me to consider the citizen’s obligation to the state’s welfare,” said Father Morley. “And after Hitler’s many broken promises, I felt I had to do something in the War. The only way I could see to participate was in actual combat service.”
Father Morley’s attempted enlistment with the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy failed because, at the time, no spectacles were allowed, but when the British resurrected the WWI-era American Field Service, he signed up and was sent to the battlefront in North Africa as an ambulance driver. By the time he arrived in Tobruk, Libya in 1942, the Allies had already gained vast territories and captured many enemy soldiers. The British Eighth Army had relieved the besieged city of Tobruk and settled down for what was expected to be a quiet summer.
“We were advised to buy some books because it was going to be so boring,” Father Morley remembered. Reinforcing the “all is well” message was the fact that the British had brought in women nurses, who set up a hospital in a former Italian grade school, its slogan still prominently displayed on the classroom walls: “Believe. Obey. Fight.”
Father Morley recalled the day the quiet summer ended. At breakfast one morning in mid-June, the men listened to the BBC proclaiming that day “U.N. Day,” designating it as another grand day in the fight for liberation.
“I thought, ‘he doesn’t know what he’s talking about’,” said Father Morley. “It was June 14, ‘Flag Day’ back home, not U.N. Day.” By evening, the summer idyll was definitely over.
“Our unit sergeant, a tough little Brit, appeared at our bunkhouse with the order to begin evacuation of nurses and patients,” he said. “He relayed to us his low opinion of American soldiers, but said we’d changed his mind for the better, and called for a parting drink.”
Father Morley’s unit, its progress impeded by the worst traffic jam he’d ever seen, was the beginning of what became “the great retreat” to set up a defensive line in El Alamein, a Libyan town nestled safely between the sea and the Qattara Depression, against Rommel’s Panzer Army.
Historians regard this as the last stand of the Allies in North Africa, and a pivotal battle in the War, leading to the Axis surrender of North Africa in 1943.
“What I especially remember about that summer was the extreme heat,” said Father Morley. “We weren’t allowed to rest in the shade of the ambulances, which were targets of the enemy, so there was not much shelter from the blistering sun. And the flies – millions of them! You had to cover your face when resting, if you could get any rest with the nerve-wracking artillery shelling all the time.”
Father Morley also remembers the deplorable disparity between the enlisted men in the field and the British command, which lived luxuriously in Cairo and Alexandria.
“It was a great privilege to serve ordinary British soldiers,” he said.
There were, however, some pleasant interludes from the relentless German stuka (dive bombers). An ambulance driver asked to transport a patient after 4 p.m. to Alexandria was allowed to spend the night – a coveted assignment. Father Morley remembers Alexandria as a beautiful, ancient town. The driver could get a shower and a bed in the hospital, and could then go out on the town to nice restaurants.
“In WWII, Alexandria was rather like Paris in WWI,” he said. “It seemed sort of wrong to take a break from the War, but battle fatigue is a reality.”
And even in the midst of potential danger there were moments of sheer pleasure. Father Morley recalls such a night as a private on board a ship heading to England. He’d been assigned detail as a lookout on the bridge, and spent the night scanning the sea for the enemy.
“Those were the days when the only way to protect a ship was with the human eye,” he said. “We had no technology, no radar. And I’ll never forget the vastness of the ocean and how spectacular it looked under a full moon.”
Father Morley is the son of Christopher Darlington Morley, the noted American author, essayist, and poet. Christopher D. Morley, Jr. was ordained a priest in the American Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New York, and led parishes in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Chattanooga.
St. Barnabas is Chattanooga’s only independent, not-for-profit continuing care retirement community, offering rehabilitation, assisted living, retirement apartments, and long-term care on two downtown campuses.