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0518-W2M-08/2010
Andrew J. Glaze
Sergeant
U. S. Army
WWII US Military
Dates of Service: 01/1943 - 1945
Rifleman/Chaplain Assistant, Co I, 7th Inf Regiment, 3rd Inf Div
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Jack was born to Andrew J. Glaze and Mable Pickering Glaze in D'Lo, Mississippi. (He is not a junior.) His father worked for Fink Vine Lumber Company as a manager of the hardware department. The family soon moved to Pelahatchie, where his father opened Glaze General Merchandise. Jack's earliest memory was walking to Pelahatchie Baptist Church, about three blocks from his home, where his mother was a musician and his father led the singing. His mother also taught music in the public school. In his spare time Jack delivered groceries from his father's store in his red wagon, worked in the family garden and picked cotton for other farms for ten cents per pound. He graduated from high school in 1940, then entered Millsaps College in 1941, intent on earning a business degree and working with his father in the store. There, while attending First Baptist Church in Jackson he "felt that the Lord was calling me to the ministry." Jack volunteered for service in the U.S. Army in 1942, and reported for active duty in January of 1943. At Camp Robinson in North Little Rock, Arkansas, he was trained as an infantryman. He sailed aboard the Louis Pasteur, a French ship, to North Africa and then to Italy aboard an LCI (Landing Craft, Infantry). He was assigned as a rifleman in I Company, 7th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division. He attended a Catholic Mass the day before he was to go "on line". After the service a soldier told him that the priest wanted to see him. The next day the priest, who was assistant division chaplain, asked Jack to join him as a chaplain's assistant. Jack began "handling religious services constantly", often for soldiers coming off the front lines. He visited hospitals, helped officiate burial services and wrote letters to next of kin. Jack was aboard an LCI for the Anzio landing, scheduled to go in on the second wave, while his chaplain was in the first wave. His company commander asked Jack to conduct a Sunday morning Protestant service. When Rome fell, Jack and his chaplain were among the first American soldiers to visit the Vatican. There, Jack met the pope. When the Allies captured Munich, Jack witnessed the soon-famous episode of the blowing up of the swastika above Munich Great Stadium He also drove his chaplain to Berchtesgaden, Hitler's mountaintop retreat. One night, while on guard duty, a German officer approached Jack and surrendered, along with 12 soldiers. Jack returned to America aboard the HMS Queen Elizabeth in May of 1945. Three or four Protestant and Catholic services were held each day to 25,000 troops aboard. He was discharged as a sergeant in late 1945 at Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, then worked at his father's store. He graduated from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, then from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. Seminary. On June 7, 1949 he married Sue Eugenia Johnson of Greenwood, South Carolina. (They would have four children, 12 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. He spent many years as a missionary in Argentina, where he wrote extensively and served as director (and was one of the professors) at International Baptist Theological Seminary in Buenos Aires. After preaching a service one night, he met one of the soldiers who had surrendered to him. The soldier then professed his faith. He was a visiting professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and in Kansas City; a professor of religion at Mississippi College in Clinton; and Chester L. Quarles professor of missions at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary from June of 1985 until he retired in July of 1994. Early in his career, Jack advocated integration in the South. He said he has "been called a communist." He also notes, "I have read Marx and Lenin. I know the basics of communism and I have fought against it." Jack considers his experience as a chaplain's assistant vital to his development as a Christian leader. His duties in "pumping the little organ, praying, leading the singing" gave him opportunities that, he notes, he wouldn't have had if he had been an officer. "It was a miracle of God's grace," he says of his World War II service.