The Message by Isak Romun

Someone threw a galley on my desk while I was out to lunch. I picked it up expecting to read a proof of my column. But it wasn’t that, it was the obits along with one or two slightly extended writeups on the deaths of the great, the near great, and the forgotten. One of the writeups told me that the last principal of the Hands Crusade had died.

The uncorrected article was brief and to the point.

Dorcia Brand, retired evangelist, died yesterday at the age of 58. She had been a guest at the Farnsworth Rest Home for upwards of a year. Death occurred as a result of an overdose of sleeping tablets.

Ms. Brand figured prominently in the late forties as the executive assistant to Buttolph de Strange, leader of the Hands Crusade. De Strange was executed in 1951 for the murder of Harry Gossett at the latter’s woodland cabin in California.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

“D, o, r, t, i, a,” I muttered. “She spelled it with a t.” Absently, I picked up a blue pencil and made the correction.

It was that galley, that writeup, that convinced me I should prepare this account. I suppose the brief two-paragraphs-plus-a-line made the next edition. I never checked.

It wouldn’t have mattered whether it made the next edition or not. Almost no one remembered Dortia Brand and few, I imagine, remembered De Strange. But between 1947 and 1950 those two shook up the country, were on the brink of turning it around as Butch de Strange promised he would. I wonder, futilely now, if he could have pulled it off if the then inexplicable and seemingly motiveless murder of Gossett hadn’t brought the whole thing crashing down.


The story really starts back in January, 1945, in a battered winter-whitened town called Bastogne. I won’t go into that part of it; even those who weren’t around then know about the Battle of the Bulge. Suffice it to say that Butch was in one of Patton’s tanks, speeding to relieve that nearly crushed outpost of American resistance.

From all accounts, and from his own story in a Crusade handout, Butch was not an atypical GI. Maybe more the happy heathen, but generally average. He drank, he caroused, he wenched, but unlike most of his olive-drab peers he didn’t feel accountably contrite about it when it came time to move out and face Jerry. He wrote that he used to kid the Catholic boys as they stood in line for confession before a move-up or a push. After Jerry, though, it was back to fun and games for Butch, for the boys in line, for everyone.

In England, where De Strange staged before Normandy, there was plenty enough to turn the golden-haired head of a Stateside country type, particularly if predisposed. But in France’s liberated cities, in the food-hungry and grateful towns between the cities, there were unlimited opportunities for a handsome swaggerer to swill deeply at life’s trough. Until it was time once again to persuade the Wehrmacht to give up yet more real estate.

That was how it was with thousands of GI’s, including Butch de Strange, until De Strange got to Bastogne.


We can only speculate now that there had to be a buildup, that the inconsistency between the rest-and-recreation life and the life up front must have made its impression on Butch. The suffering had to have helped too — the drained, wan faces, the emaciated bodies, the towns without young men, the ruins, the necessity and idiocy of war. By the time he reached Bastogne, it seems, given a sensitivity of which even he was unaware, Technical Sergeant Butch de Strange was separated by miles of subtle and unexpected changes from the Corporal Buttolph de Strange who light-years before had crashed ashore at Omaha Beach.

How Bastogne must have looked to him as his tank pushed toward it, I don’t know. I was inside the town and saw it from that viewpoint. The sun had broken through on that day of deliverance. Earlier, C-47’s had flown over and dropped us the wherewithal — the food, ammo, and plasma — to hold out a while longer as we awaited arrival of Patton’s tanks.

The town was desolation itself and I remember wondering why the ragged remains of our division bothered hanging on to it at all. It was a scene of death, the townspeople and soldiers shuffling about, the dead seeking rest. The only thing that seemed alive was the noise; the empty popping sound of small-arms fire, the overhead swish of incoming artillery, the crash of shells tearing apart an already torn-apart town. If there was any place back in 1945 that could have affirmed an atheist in his belief that there was no guiding intelligence directing the world, that place had to be Bastogne.

Well, that was Bastogne as it looked to me, and I suppose something of the same impression was made upon De Strange. I didn’t meet Butch there. By the time he got to Bastogne I was, thankfully, trudging to the rear on frostbitten feet — my ticket Stateside — as the liberating tanks came roaring into and through the town and out toward the German perimeter.

But not all the tanks went roaring through. Butch’s didn’t. It broke down beside a small, almost leveled church. And while the driver was trying out a little first-echelon maintenance on the engine, Butch got down, dropped his helmet on a tread guard, and went into the building.

Later he was to assert it was more than coincidence, that something caused the tank to break down and led him into the church. He held no doubt honestly, that he could remember no reasoning — curiosity or even the desire to get in out of the cold — for going inside the tottering structure. Surely it wasn’t devotion, he had shown little enough of that in his life. All he knew, or so he contended, was that he got down from the tank, dropped his helmet, and went in.

Once in the church, he saw nearly total destruction. Nothing was whole. Candle racks were twisted, turned on their sides. One wall had crumbled. On two of the others the Stations of the Cross were burned frames or shattered heaps below the shadow areas from which the plaster had fallen. Against the third wall, the altars stood — or had stood. The main altar was gone, a gaping hole in the wall opening onto a littered yard beyond. One of the side altars was a mound of rubble. Only the right-hand altar still stood, pocked and chipped and peeling. Its statue, God the Father, blackened and broken but still recognizable, stood in its niche, arms outstretched to the faithful — arms without hands, for they had been blasted away. A double amputee, true to the times.

But what held Butch’s attention was a crudely lettered sign, the unknown effort of some dog-face. The sign was hung from the statue’s neck by a rope — the kind that came with the issue shelter-half — and read:

I HAVE NO HANDS BUT YOURS

In one of the late-night sessions I used to have with Butch after I got the assignment to dig into his Crusade he told me of his mental turbulence at that moment. Thoughts tumbled over each other, the new struggling to displace the old. The whole statement burned itself into his consciousness, but the word yours kept repeating itself in his thoughts, a riotous mix of the aural and visual.

He couldn’t recall how long he stood rereading that sign, wholly, in part, word by word (YOURS! YOURS! YOURS!), his mind drawing back from the message like a child avoiding bitter medicine.

Butch said he wrestled there, resisting what he later acknowledged to be a clear challenge. He turned away from the statue and its sign, almost wrenched himself away, telling himself he needed time to think through this new and unbidden experience.

He got it — more input to the later Crusade mythos. As he stepped from the church, a German shell hit his tank, demolished it, killed his crew, and completed the job of reducing the church to tumbled stones and granulated plaster. Butch received a light hit, a piece of metal through his thigh. Light but disabling. Enough to knock him down, put him out, and mark him for an extended period of convalescence at some rear-area hospital. Plenty of time to think.


He awoke in a Belgian hospital managed by a religious order. So it isn’t surprising that the first thing he saw was a crucifix tacked to the wall opposite his bed. At that moment of waking he didn’t know that nuns ran the hospital, and his sight wasn’t too good, so what his tortured mind saw was the cruciform centered in a rosette of light, framed by haze. It was as if he were looking down a long dark tunnel, at the end of which salvation beckoned.

Shutting his eyes didn’t help. This new image was burned behind the lids. That was when, he told me later, he gave himself over to The Message. In that hospital bed, the Hands Crusade was born.

When he at last opened his eyes the room fell into focus and the crucifix was just that — a crucifix on a wall. But this realization didn’t turn him around; The Message had gotten through. Butch de Strange was converted. Born again, as we say nowadays.

He noticed there were others in the hospital room and that a second lieutenant, turned out in a nurse’s crisp whiteness, was standing beside his bed with an oral thermometer.

“You’ll be all right,” she said. “Open up.”

“I know,” he said, and opened up.

That’s how he met Dortia Brand, then a twenty-six-year-old officer and gentlewoman, by Act of Congress, of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. The army medics had taken over the Belgian hospital, which explained Dortia’s presence among the wimples, veils, and flowing skirts.

I can’t believe there was instant communication between Butch and Dortia, some immediate understanding that bound them together in what he saw now to be his work, but they contended that some such thing happened. I prefer to lay whatever link was forged between them as resulting from the long-into-the-night discussions she would later describe as “revelatory.” From the Crusade accounts, they spent those hours hammering out the consequences of The Message and planning the structure of the organization that would bring it to a waiting, war-sickened world.


They started in the States about a year after they both left the army. They had (correctly) assessed the need for the Hands Crusade and the efficacy of The Message, however it was they framed it. Shortly after opening shop they attracted hundreds, then thousands. Their base of operations was right here in Paulsburg, and one day my editor called me in and gave me the assignment.

“Monahan, do you know anything about this Hands Crusade?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“This guy, De Strange. He preaches commitment and service, then sends everyone back to their own church.”

“Is that bad?”

“I don’t know. He may have something up his sleeve. See if there’s an angle.”

That’s how I met De Strange and Dortia. We got along from the first, were on a first-name basis at the start, though I’m not too keen on people calling me Oscar. I had to break off an ongoing exchange of European war stories so I could get around to telling them that my main purpose in being there was to expose the Hands Crusade if I could. Their reaction to that was strange; there wasn’t any. They continued to be warm and congenial and even offered to help me peek into every nook and cranny. I said thanks, I’d find my own nooks and crannies. But I did accept a guided tour of their plant.

It was a quick walk-through because there wasn’t much to it and what there was was incredibly shoddy — a few unpainted offices with furniture that looked like Salvation Army rejects. The only decorations were religious pictures and here and there the official Crusade poster showing the handless God and The Message: I HAVE NO HANDS BUT YOURS. In each office, two or three hungry-looking individuals checked mailing lists, stuffed envelopes, drew up speaking itineraries, and did those things people out to save the world do.

I asked questions and got ready answers. The money came from a handful of well-to-do individuals, just enough to keep the headquarters operational, provide the volunteers with meals that made army K-rations look like something from the kitchens of the Ritz, and finance, by cheapest common carrier, the increasing number of trips De Strange was making.


“It looks clean,” I told my editor.

“How about De Strange and that girl? You know.”

“No.”

I must have sounded defensive because he smiled, overly wisely, I thought. “There’s some payoff, Monahan. Dig.”

“There’s no digging to be done here. Not in Paulsburg. The big rallies are over here. But he goes on the road next week.”

“Follow him,” my editor said, the smile staying.


I got to know De Strange even better on those road trips. He was a hulk of a man, but like many big men he was graceful in movement and gesture. Since the war he had sprouted a thick beard that seemed to fit his new character; all he needed was a robe and a couple of stone tablets. His eyes were deep, piercing, seeking — eyes that had seen, and read The Message.

And there was his voice, a virtuoso instrument. Yet it had no flash value; it wasn’t employed to awe people into belief. The Message was pure exposition, delivered clearly and with conviction. A session would usually end with a simple, “Go, be His hands.” There might be a hymn or two as the commitment cards were signed if Dortia, who acted as advance agent, could scare up a volunteer chorus or band.

That was it then, I concluded. The operation was clean, no one was on the take, no one wanted to exploit anything or anyone. It was just a pure, simple message. It seemed too good to be true, and I could understand my editor’s skepticism, but I believed Butch when he said he wanted to change people within themselves and through existing institutions. He didn’t want to tear anything down, merely to strengthen it. He was building temples, he told me. Every commitment card was the blueprint for a temple.

And that’s the way I wrote it: nothing exciting, but the truth.


That was in 1947 and that was when Butch and I parted company. He and Dortia went on to other rallies, other cities, collecting commitment cards, and I went on to new stories.

It wasn’t until three years later that our paths crossed again. In mid-1950 the wire services gave us the bare bones of a story about Butch de Strange. He had traveled to California, presumably to seek out a man named Harry Gossett. He had traced Gossett to an area near a small town in the Rockies foothills. He had stayed one night in a hotel in that town, asked around about Gossett, and the next day trudged up the hills to Gossett’s cabin. The day after that he was back in town, closeted in his hotel room, where he stayed for four days until they came to get him. Gossett’s body had been found, his head parted with a hatchet found in the cabin and later identified as belonging to De Strange. Some items of small value missing from Gossett’s cabin were found in De Strange’s hotel room. Butch was being held on murder one.

I remember registering incredulity. This wasn’t the De Strange I knew and had traveled with. In the three years between 1947 and 1950 the Crusade had become big, had developed into a force. De Strange was getting to the people who counted, people in elective office, people strong in industry and the unions, people who could really put The Message to work. And then the leader blew it all with murder and petty theft. It was unbelievable.

But I had other things on my mind then — the chance for a column, the possibility of syndication, a professional interest in something that had just started up in Korea. De Strange and his troubles occupied little of my time or my thoughts until some months later when my editor summoned me.

“You got to know this De Strange pretty well,” he said.

“Pretty well. Back then.”

“I want you to cover his trial.”

“I’m not sure I want to.”

“A story like this can make it for you, Monahan — give you a lock on that column.”

So I covered the trial.

Not that it was much of a trial. Butch didn’t want counsel, so counsel was appointed. Butch wouldn’t cooperate, wanted to plead guilty, so a plea of not guilty was entered for him.

The young court-appointed defense counsel did all he could for him, but Butch did precious little for him. The lawyer tried for insanity but it wouldn’t stick. The prosecutor’s case was very strong. De Strange journeyed to that foothills town seeking out Harry Gossett. He set out with the death weapon strapped to his belt. Gossett’s valuables, minor indeed, were found in De Strange’s room. The jury was out a shamefully short time.

That night I got word that Butch wanted to see me. I had been reporting the trial from the press table, and though we had never gotten together he must have noticed me there. In one of his brief statements, he had said he would talk to no one. I hadn’t tried to get to him — not out of delicacy but because I knew that when he said something he meant it.

Now he wanted to talk to me. Any reporter would have gladly donated to charity the bonus he would surely get for an exclusive interview with Buttolph de Strange. Yet I was reluctant to go.

Reluctant, but not crazy. I went.

He hadn’t changed much. Except for the eyes. They were kind of drawn-in and watery. Why not, I thought — he must know of the reports. The Crusade was falling apart. Gossett’s murder was too off-trail, too puzzling. And Butch had offered no explanations. The Crusaders had been prepared for anything but weakness from De Strange; they weren’t ready for the revelation that he was, after all, human. No one stepped in to take over. Even Dortia Brand failed. She was found early one morning in her bathroom with both wrists slashed — a suicide attempt thwarted then only to succeed decades later.

After half-hearted greetings, I asked Butch about the breakup of the Hands Crusade.

“It would have happened anyway,” he said.

“I don’t understand. What does that mean?” I asked him.

When he didn’t answer, I asked why he sent for me if he wasn’t going to talk.

“For old times’ sake, Oscar. We had some good sessions back then, some good talks. And you were fair — you didn’t find things where there was nothing to find. Even though you didn’t — couldn’t find anything wrong, you might have written a funny story, poked fun at the Crusade. You didn’t. Others weren’t so charitable.” He turned those watery eyes on me. “Why did I send for you? Do they still call them scoops?”

“Our younger people sometimes do.”

“I want to give you a scoop.”

“Okay, give me the details.”

He thought a while, then said, “How will a step-by-step account of the murder do? The anatomy of a killing, something like that?”

I replied that that would do nicely. I was right, too. Because of that story, I’m told, I almost won a Pulitzer. I also got the column, wide syndication, lots of visibility. That interview was my making in spite of the fact that I was dissatisfied with it. It merely reinforced the illogic of Butch’s act. I told him that, told him the story was short on motive.

“That’s all you can print — what I told you,” he said. “For now, anyway. If I told you more, could you keep it under wraps at least until the Crusade is forgotten, until all this is just so much uninteresting history?”

“Off the record? Sure. But don’t tell me anything you don’t want to tell me.”

He looked grim. “I have to tell someone. So someone will know why I did it. Before I’m a dead man.”

“There are appeals.”

“Not for me.”

“At least one is automatic. Isn’t that the way it works?”

“Maybe, but it won’t change things.”

“You want to die.”

“Yes. For what I did to Gossett. No one has that right. I found that out in Europe. You must know I fixed the trail that led them to me.”

“Why?”

“I stole those things to cover up the real reason I killed him. The hatchet was just a woodsman’s tool. When I started out, I had no thought of using it that way. Do you know who Gossett was? Can you guess?”

I shook my head, but in my mind I examined the possibility that Gossett had succeeded where others had failed and had dug up something about Butch and Dortia.

But it wasn’t that. Butch explained. “He’s the one who painted that sign and hung it on the statue. I’ve been trying since the beginning of the Crusade to find that man. I had expected him to come forward of his own free will and share the triumph of the Crusade with me. A number of men claimed to have hung the sign, but their stories didn’t check. But I had been getting leads, piecing them together, until Gossett’s name surfaced. No one else knew — only I knew. People gave me bits of information, but only I put them all together and got Harry Gossett. It was fairly easy to trace him once I had his name.

“So I went to that town, hiked up to his cabin, met him, and laid before him the prospect of his full partnership in the Crusade. He said yes, he made the sign, and that he had recently vowed to connect with the Crusade and make a statement to the press. But then he laughed, Oscar, and he told me why.

“I never realized that The Message could have more than one meaning, that you could read those words at least two ways and that I had read them only one. Gossett told me his — that the hands were the hands of man. Even before they were broken off. That the sign could have read just as well: I HAVE NO HANDS BUT YOURS BECAUSE I AM YOURS — YOUR INVENTION. Man made God — man is God. Oscar, Gossett didn’t believe!”

We talked a while longer, De Strange using the time arguing that he had done what he had done in an effort to protect the Crusade from Gossett. But even then, exposed to Butch de Strange’s persuasive powers, that wouldn’t wash. It was a cop-out. The Crusade would fail in any case. He could have explained Gossett away, said that God even worked through unbelievers, and so on. No, he killed Gossett for another reason, one he wasn’t telling me — perhaps wasn’t telling himself.

I’m reminded of something the Frenchman Jean Guiton wrote: What lies deepest in me, I believe, is a horror of premature certitudes, of beliefs and unbeliefs too hurriedly adopted.

De Strange didn’t want to die, as he said, because of what he did to Gossett. He wanted to die because of what Gossett did to him.

For just as the sign in that lost Bastogne church had, in an instant, changed Butch de Strange from heathen to Crusader, so had the truth, the substance of an atheist’s sick humor, returned Butch, full circle, to his former condition. A condition he was forced to accept, but with which he couldn’t live.

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