Chaplains' Tours

Sight-seeing tours of the Holy Land, conducted by U.S. Army chaplains, have become so popular among U.S. forces in Cairo that they now have to be booked two to three weeks in advance. In the past 13 months some 3,000 officers, nurses, enlisted men on furlough or convalescent have taken the tours, which cost under $30.

The idea came to Chaplain Jack Paul Morrison while he was the Ninth Air Force's senior chaplain at Cairo. Last week Baptist Chaplain Morrison, now post chaplain at Miami Beach's Army Air Forces Training Center, recounted some of the tours' highlights.

From Cairo groups of 30 to 35 (60% Protestant, 35% Roman Catholic, 5% Jewish) entrain for the 350-mile railway trip (in open cars) to spend two or three days in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Says Chaplain Morrison: "It takes about twelve hard hours to see the highlights."

Most popular sights: Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, Jerusalem's Via Dolorosa (Christ's road to Calvary), Omar's Mosque and Solomon's Temple, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Church of All Nations, the Dead Sea ("every one of the boys would take a swim although the water is so salty that you can hardly stand on the bottom").

Tel Aviv, built mainly by American Zionists, is also an attraction. Says Chaplain Morrison: "It is the nearest thing to the U.S. that you will find in the Near East. Almost everyone speaks English. You'll hear many a Bronx accent. There are nice-looking girls, excellent beaches, and best of all, good cold beer. A bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon coming out of the desert is quite a treat."

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