Grace Under Fire Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  The American Revolution

  The Civil War

  World War I

  World War II

  The Korean War

  The Vietnam War

  The Gulf War

  The War on Terrorism

  Postscript

  Acknowledgments and Permissions

  The Mission Continues…

  Copyright

  To our nation’s military chaplains

  and the other brave souls who have brought—

  and continue to bring—words of faith

  to American troops around the world.

  They can laugh about foxhole religion but every front line soldier embraces a little religion and are not ashamed to pray. When you face death hourly and daily you can’t help but believe in Divine Guidance. My faith in God has increased a thousand fold. He pulled me thru when nothing else could….

  The weather is still terrible rain & snow flurries all the time, my feet haven’t been dry for over a week. I’m trying to write as I duck down in my hole every time I hear artillery shells whistle towards me. They are bursting all around and I wonder when one will have my name on it. We were pulled out for a couple of hours to see a show the other day. I saw Marlene Dietrich and her show in person a few miles back. They held it in a shell splattered Catholic Church. It’s really a pity these beautiful old churches being devastated over here.

  Well dear I guess I better get down and stay down. I don’t like these “incoming mail deliveries” and seen too many hit by not being down. So all my love dear. Your hubby, Al

  —Thirty-two-year-old Sergeant Alvin McAnney Jr., writing to his wife in the fall of 1944 in Luxembourg

  Opposite:

  A lone American soldier stands inside a bombed-out church “somewhere in Europe.”

  The scorched and water-damaged prayer book that survived the fire that destroyed the Carroll family’s home

  Introduction

  A confession: Years ago, after I started seeking out and preserving wartime letters, I came to the conclusion that God did not exist.

  I hadn’t always been a nonbeliever. I was raised in a conservative, Christian household, and although I had questioned my faith as a teenager, by the time I graduated in 1988, I felt that I had truly embraced Christianity with all my heart and soul.

  And then two weeks before Christmas 1989, when I was a sophomore in college, my father called from Washington, D.C., with terrible news—a fire had swept through our home and destroyed almost everything we owned. He was phoning from a neighbor’s house while watching firefighters douse the few stubborn, remaining flames as we spoke.

  I had just started preparing for my midterm exams and was looking forward to coming home to celebrate the holidays. “Home” was now gone. We moved into a rental property several blocks away as our house, burned beyond recognition, was rebuilt.

  Initially, I was so grateful that my father wasn’t caught up in the blaze and had escaped unharmed that my faith in God was actually strengthened by the experience. (Even our little beige cat, Claude, had bounded out safely, though he did seem a bit perplexed by the whole incident, wondering what on earth we had done to his house.) One of the only possessions of mine to survive was my grandmother’s prayer book. Slightly charred and water damaged, it was in relatively good condition; a small miracle among the ashes.

  For me, the worst thing about the fire was losing all of my letters. They weren’t Civil War missives or correspondence from any conflict, just personal letters from old friends traveling overseas, high school classmates describing their first year in college, and my parents, who had written me poignant messages at significant moments in my life. While not historically significant, the letters were a tangible connection to loved ones and a priceless record of cherished memories. And then, on that day in mid-December, they literally went up in smoke.

  Over the next few years I became more interested in handwritten correspondence, especially as e-mail became more prevalent, and I was curious to know what other people did with their old letters. I was shocked to find that many veterans I talked to said that they had tossed their wartime letters in the garbage. Some felt that their children wouldn’t want them, and they were all very modest about their time in the military. “I was no hero,” one former soldier insisted. “I wasn’t a general or anyone famous, just a young grunt doing my job.” No one in my immediate family had ever served in the armed forces, and I grew up not knowing a single person in uniform. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that, when veterans threw away their old letters, we were losing something as a nation.

  In the summer of 1998, I decided to start an informal effort called the Legacy Project to encourage Americans to save their wartime correspondence. On a whim, I wrote to “Dear Abby” and asked if she could promote the initiative to her readers. Much to my surprise, “Dear Abby” said yes. I was thrilled but, as it turned out, totally unprepared emotionally and logistically for what was going to happen next.

  Three days after the “Dear Abby” column ran on November 11, 1998, a clerk from my neighborhood post office, where I had set up a small PO box, called and asked, “Is this Andrew Carroll?” He did not sound pleased.

  “Yes,” I responded hesitantly.

  “You need to come down here now and get your mail.”

  I apologized profusely and said I would bike over immediately.

  “Bring a car,” the clerk advised.

  Sure enough, I had bins and bins of mail waiting to be picked up. I vividly remember sitting outside the post office in my car, tearing open the envelopes and discovering letters from every major U.S. conflict: the American Revolution, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and even peace-keeping efforts in the Balkans. (The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were still years away.)

  What I was not expecting were the personal messages to me from the spouses, parents, and siblings of the veterans who had written the enclosed war letters. Mothers shared with me stories about their young sons, some of them only teenage boys, whose lives were cut short in Vietnam. The adult children of men killed in Korea or World War II explained to me what it was like growing up without a dad and how they got to know him only through the letters he had written home before dying. And the wives of combat veterans described how their husbands had returned to the States completely changed and had refused to talk about the terrible things they had seen firsthand.

  The war letters themselves chronicled these horrible sights in unflinching detail: innocent civilians caught in the crossfire during major battles, the wholesale destruction of entire towns and cities, close buddies getting killed or grotesquely wounded, and, in some of the World War II letters, the mass graves and concentration camps that held the bodies of countless men, women, and children murdered by the Nazis.

  Certainly I was aware of the harsh brutality of war before I launched the Legacy Project, but in going through letter after letter, it was no longer remote and abstract. It had become shockingly real and human. I was reading the names of the people impacted by this violence, seeing the images they were recording, and hearing the anguish in their voices. The endless accounts of terror and cruelty became unbearable, and one question began to consume me: “Why does God allow such evil to continue?” My heart had become so hardened that I no longer even tried to listen for an answer. My mind was made up. God, I decided, must not exist.

  But while I had given up on God, He had not given up on me. I discovered, like most who have lost faith at some point in their lives, that He never stops sending us messages of hope. Sometimes we’re just unable or unwilling to see them.

  As I kept reading
the letters pouring in from all around the country, I started to find letters by troops who had reflected on the very same doubts I was raising. “How can there be fairness in one man being maimed for life, suffering agonies, another killed instantaneously, while I get out of it safe?” a young private fighting in World War I named Walter Bromwich wrote to his pastor back in Pennsylvania. “Does God really love us individually or does He love His purpose more?” Bromwich, however, had maintained his faith. “What I would like to believe is that God is in this war, not as a spectator, but backing up everything that is good in us,” he went on. “I don’t know whether God goes forth with armies but I do know that He is in lots of our men or they would not do what they do.”

  Almost ninety years later a U.S. Army officer and doctor, Scott Barnes, who was treating the wounded in Iraq, sent his friends and family an e-mail that also tried to answer the question, Where is God? “He is in the O[perating] R[oom] guiding the hands of the surgeons,” Barnes wrote. “He is in the will of the sergeants helping organize a blood drive as only they can, He is in the hearts of the soldiers who immediately rolled up their sleeves to give what they had to save a dying brother whom they don’t even know.”

  One by one, letters like these began to reveal themselves, and I was struck by their diversity. Fathers deploying overseas wrote touching letters to their children, encouraging them to “take care of mommy” and dedicate their lives to God. Troops who had survived hellish battles and, in one case, the sinking of a ship, described how they had put their trust in God and made it through unscathed. Sweethearts exchanged heartfelt messages promising to stay true to each other no matter what temptations were laid out before them during their separation. Military chaplains put themselves in harm’s way to offer words of comfort to frontline troops in need of spiritual guidance. Family members on the home front, who represent the unacknowledged heroes of every conflict, repeatedly reminded their loved ones fighting abroad how proud they were of them as they waited anxiously for their return. Overall, the letters I was finding were riveting, poetic, candid, and intimate, and they accentuated the bravery and decency of those who serve. And, most of all, they spoke profoundly not only of destruction and death, but of everlasting life.

  The Marines, soldiers, airmen, and sailors who wrote these letters were hardly naïve about the realities of battle; indeed, most were seasoned combat veterans who had seen the worst of human nature and still held fast to their beliefs. “Perhaps some may feel that we are in vain and view the eventualities of war through rose-colored glasses, but if that were so, then how could we believe in prayer and that a world of peace is possible?” a Jewish soldier named Joseph Portnoy wrote to his wife, Ruth, in August 1944. “No,” he went on, “as long as we can believe that our lives are still molded by God’s will, and believe in his justice, we can never be accused of deliberately sugarcoating our senses.”

  The faith of these young men and women, who were insightful beyond their years, had a profound impact on me. The beauty and wisdom of their words and the courage of their actions both inspired and humbled me. Most important, they revived my faith in God. They made me a believer again and showed me, as I hope they will show others, that even in the bleakest of circumstances, with God’s help, we can overcome all adversity. Through Him, we can endure any hardship. Because of Him, we are never alone.

  At its heart, this book is not about war. It is about courage, devotion, honor, resilience, and, of course, faith. It is about individuals who have encountered trials that rival the burdens of Job and have nevertheless persevered. Even if we are not in the military, every one of us wages smaller, more personal battles each day—against despair, sin, and doubt—and these letters are a powerful reminder that no matter how tough the contest, there is always reason for hope.

  Ultimately, the extraordinary individuals featured in this book have not just written about genuine faith, they have lived it. They have risked their lives for others, demonstrated compassion to those in need, and, despite all that has been demanded of and sometimes even taken from them, expressed only gratitude for the blessings they do have. They embody the words found in 1 Peter (5:10): “The God of all grace,” the scripture reads, “after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” And they have shown to me—as I hope they will to others—the true meaning of faith and that there is no greater victory than to have one’s belief in God restored.

  With trust in Him, life’s battles are already won.

  The American Revolution

  James Williams, Serving in the War of Independence, Tells His Son Daniel That He Is Off Fighting in Defense of Their “Rights and Liberties”

  Few letters by U.S. troops who fought in the American Revolution exist today. Compared to other major conflicts in our nation’s history, not as many letters were written; there was no postal system to speak of, paper was scarce, and a significant number of soldiers were illiterate. Unfortunately, of the letters that were sent from the front lines (and they were usually hand-delivered through an informal network), many were lost or damaged over time. But what is remarkable about the relatively small number of letters that have survived is how similar the sentiments are to those expressed in correspondence written today. The language is much more formal, but the emotions are very much the same. On June 12, 1779, thirty-eight-year-old James Williams of Hanover, Virginia, penned the following letter to his son Daniel, explaining to him that he is now the man of the house and to place his trust in God.

  Dear Son:

  This is the first chance I have had to write you. I am, by the cause of Providence, in the field in defence of my country. When I reflect on the matter, I feel myself distracted on both hands by this thought, that in my old age I should be obliged to take the field in defence of my rights and liberties, and that of my children. God only knows that it is not of choice, but of necessity, and from the consideration that I had rather suffer anything than lose my birthright, and that of my children.

  When I come to lay down in the field, stripped of all the pleasure that my family connections afford me at home—surrounded by an affectionate wife and eight dear children, and all the blessings of life—when I reflect on my own distress, I feel for that of my family, on account of my absence from their midst; and especially for the mother, who sits like a dove that has lost its mate, having the weight of the family on her shoulders.

  These thoughts make me afraid that the son we so carefully nursed in our youth may do something that would grieve his mother. Now, my son, if my favor is worth seeking, let me tell you the only step to procure it is the care of your tender mother—to please her is ten times more valuable than any other favor that you could do me in my person.

  I am sorry to have to inform you of the melancholy death of Anthony Griffin, which took place on the 11th instant, while out with a scouting party. Alighting from his horse, and leaning on his gun, it accidentally went off, shooting him through the head. He never spoke after the accident. This is a fatal consequence of handling guns without proper care; they ought to be used with the greatest caution. The uncertainty of life ought to induce every man to prepare for death.

  Now, my son, I must bid you farewell. I commit you to the care of Providence, begging that you will try to obtain that peculiar blessing. May God bless you, my son, and give you grace to conduct yourself, in my absence, as becomes a dutiful son to a tender mother and the family.

  I am in reasonable good health at present, and the regiment as much so as could be expected. The death of Griffin is much lamented. I hope in God this will find you, my son, and your dear mother and the children, all well. My best compliments to you all, and all enquiring friends.

  I am, dear son, with great respect, your affectionate father,

  Jas. Williams

  The Civil War

  Before Facing His Brother Percival in Battle During the Civil War, Thomas Drayton Castigates Him for Turning Against His Native Land—and God
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  Percival Drayton Writes to a Cousin About the South’s “Unholy Rebellion”

  As the War of Independence represented a conflict between a young country and its motherland, the Civil War was figuratively—and, at times, literally—a clash between brothers. Thomas Fenwick Drayton and his younger brother Percival were originally from South Carolina, but their father, a congressman named William Drayton, moved the family to Pennsylvania after he retired from public office. The brothers had relatives and acquaintances in both the North and South, and, as tensions between the two regions escalated, Percival believed that his loyalty should be to their adopted home and, more important, the United States of America. Both men, it turned out, believed they were on the side of God. On May 1, 1861, Thomas wrote his brother the following letter.

  My dear Percy

  I returned last night from Montgomery—where I had been on some postal matters, in anticipation of the period when the Contracts at Washington, shall have been annulled by those who hold hateful dominion there. And how you Percival Drayton can consent to hold a commission under a Government—whom I know you cannot sympathise with—and whose vandal atrocity in the imitation of a most cruel war, clearly indicate what more atrocious & bloodthirsty attempts at subjugation will hereafter be attempted, such as stealing negroes, burning houses, John Brown raids to butcher helpless women & children, cut the dikes of the Mississippi and drown thousands of families “like rats in the hold of a ship.” These & Such incursions & barbarities with which we are threatened by the northern borders—who already possess the reins of Government—if that can be called one,—where universal terror reigns as freedom of opinion is denied.

  But enough—it wont do for you and I to quarrel—though in politics, we are divided. I had understood at our last interview—that although you would not take sides with the South—you would not do what you now have done,—take position against her, but that, you would resign and return to private life! But this is impossible—you cannot at such a crisis be a neutral. William Drayton—had he not died—would never have acted with you and retained a commission under an administration whose acts show it lost to all sense of justice, magnanimity and honesty, and in this hour of heartfelt sorrow, I pray Almighty God, that your convictions of duty—will never prompt you to set foot upon your native land as one of Lincoln’s brutal cohorts, breathing fire & destruction upon a people who to repeated overtures of peace and earnest demands to pursue their own destiny in their own way, have been replied to with taunts and the sword brandished over their heads with the scornful division of presumptuous superiority, as from a superior race.