Stories of Faith and Courage from World War II

by Larkin Spivey

  The church must confess that she has witnessed the lawless application of brutal force, the physical and spiritual suffering of countless innocent people, oppression, hatred, and murder, and that she has not raised her voice on behalf of the victims and has not found ways to hasten to their air… By her own silence she has rendered herself guilty because of her unwillingness to suffer for what she knows is right.463

  James Dobson has used this quote to point to the present day church’s passivity on the issue of abortion.464 I am not qualified to comment on the validity of this criticism. Many individual Christians and churches have worked diligently in this area, especially to give viable choices other than abortion to troubled expectant mothers. I am very much in favor of this approach on the personal level. I am not so certain of what is appropriate on the political level. I believe churches and Christian groups are on dangerous ground when they seek power through the political process, no matter how worthy the cause. We certainly make our primary duty of bringing Christ’s message to the world more difficult for ourselves if we are perceived as trying to coerce others in matters of conscience. Our Founding Fathers wisely preempted this issue as they wrote the Constitution. Christians should be thankful for this freedom of conscience and for the freedom to use persuasion in changing the conscience of others.

  This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.

  —Hebrews 10:16

  November 7

  Don’t Disgrace Your Name

  Joe Graser was serving with Patton’s 3rd Army in Europe when he learned that his younger brother, Don, back in Ohio, had been inducted into the Army. He wrote a heartfelt letter to his brother giving him advice on being a soldier and a man:

  As Mom always said you are judged by the company you keep, so don’t be to [sic] hasty at first with whom you run around with, wait a while then pick out a buddy or so… you will see it’s very easy to give your religion up, while in the service, since no one is there to remind you about it, but always live the way you were brought up, over two years ago when I came in Mom told me, to be careful & never to disgrace my name, that is something that has always been on my mind, in whatever I do & surely has been a guidance to me.465

  My first thought on reading this letter was that telling a loved one not to “disgrace his name” sounds like advice from a bygone era. Today it almost seems a quaint notion. What would a young person now consider disgraceful? For many in today’s culture, probably little short of being caught committing a felony. Yet, the biblical imperative stands, to “ Honor your father and mother.” We do this by giving them respect and by doing nothing to bring them embarrassment or shame. I think it reasonable to expand the scope of this injunction to the family as well, so that our actions honor them and bring credit to them in the larger community.

  It is also important to remember that our Lord Jesus taught us an even more expansive view of how we should live in relation to these commands. We are called to fulfill these obligations out of love rather than obedience. When his love fills our hearts, we are able to lovingly bring honor to him, to our parents, and to our families. In love, we will never disgrace his name or our own.

  I will put my laws in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

  —Jeremiah 31:33

  November 8

  I Precede You

  Kim Malthe-Bruun was a Danish partisan sentenced to die for smuggling weapons to a resistance group. He wrote a last letter to his mother trying to comfort her with his thoughts about life after death:

  I am an insignificant thing, and my person will soon be forgotten, but the thought, the life, the inspiration that filled me will live on. You will meet them everywhere in the trees at springtime, in people who cross your path, in a loving little smile. You will encounter that something which perhaps had value in me, you will cherish it, to become large and mature.

  I shall be living with all of you whose hearts I once filled. And you will all live on, knowing that I have preceded you, and not, as perhaps you thought at first, dropped out behind you… Follow me, my dear mother, on my path, and do not stop before the end.466

  This young man’s expectations are not unlike many today. There is pale hope that something of himself will live on in the memory of others. He knows intuitively that he has thoughts and inspirations that are not going to die. But what happens to them?

  We need to appreciate the power of the gospel message to bring hope to those with this mindset. In Christ Jesus we are blessed to know exactly where we’re going. The young man in this story also has an intuition that in dying, he will go ahead of the living to a place where they will eventually come. Vague speculation is not necessary here either. Jesus has assured us: “I am going there to prepare a place for you”(John 14:2). Likewise, I believe it is true that, when our time comes, we in turn go to prepare the way for others. This is our joyful hope in Jesus Christ: he conquered death for us, so that we and our loved ones can be with him forever.

  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.

  —John 14:34

  November 9

  Pray for Ourselves

  General Patton asked his chaplain a startling question:

  “How much praying is being done in the Third Army?” The chaplain admitted that there were probably few prayers being said, other than by the unit chaplains themselves. The general leaned back in his swivel chair, looked at the other man intently, and declared:

  Chaplain, I am a strong believer in prayer. There are three ways that men get what they want; by planning, by working, and by praying… But between the plan and the operation there is always an unknown. That unknown spells defeat or victory, success or failure. It is the reaction of the actors to the ordeal when it actually comes. Some people call that getting the breaks; I call it God. God has His part, or margin in everything. That’s where prayer comes in. Up to now, in the Third Army, God has been very good to us. We have never retreated; we have suffered no defeats, no famine, no epidemics. This is because a lot of people back home are praying for us. We were lucky in Africa, in Sicily, and in Italy, simply because people prayed. But we have to pray for ourselves, too.467

  There is plenty of room to question General Patton’s theology. To consider praying one of three ways for men to “get what they want” is a very limited view of God and prayer. However, there is not much room to question his sincerity. He was genuinely thankful for the success of his army and mindful that it was not all due to his own military brilliance. General Patton provides a great example of a leader who is able to look beyond himself and to give credit to prayer and to God for his success. While times were good, he looked forward to the trials ahead and urged his men to stay close to God, reminding them and himself that, “We have to pray for ourselves.”

  Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.

  —Isaiah 55:6

  November 10

  Prayer for Clear Weather

  On December 8, 1944, General George Patton directed that every man in the 3rd Army pray for cessation of the rains that had bogged down the Allied advance. A chaplain drafted the prayer that was then printed on two hundred fifty thousand three-by-five-inch cards and distributed to the troops:

  Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously harken to us as soldiers who call Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies, and establish Thy justice among men and nations. Amen.468

  I had always considered this prayer a little bit of semi-sacrilegious theater on Patton’s part, until I read the story of the man who wrote it. Col. Jam
es H. O’Neill was chaplain of the 3rd Army and knew General Patton well. He vouched for the sincerity of Patton’s religious belief and of this appeal for God’s help. He considered the general to be a man who, “had all the traits of military leadership, fortified by genuine trust in God, intense love of country, and high faith in the American soldier.”469

  Two days after the prayer cards were distributed, the German 6th Panzer Army took advantage of the bad weather and poor visibility, launching their great last-ditch offensive through the Ardennes Forest. After stunning successes in the first few days, the fate of the German advance was sealed on December 20 when the weather cleared, allowing Allied air attacks to turn the tide of the battle. George Patton prayed for clear weather, and he got it at one of the most crucial moments of the war.

  He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples.

  —Luke 8:24–25

  American troops advancing into Germany. (National Archives)

  Crossing the Rhine in assault boats. (National Archives)

  November 11

  A Hymn Book in One Hand

  On December 27, 1944, the 551st Parachute Infantry Battalion launched a night raid on Noirefontaine signaling the first Allied offensive of the Battle of the Bulge. The moon was full and the night so cold that enemy land mines failed to detonate in the frozen ground. Charles Fairlamb was a radio operator with the battalion and found himself in the middle of a hard-fought battle lasting through the night.

  The next morning the 551st assembled for a long-overdue Christmas service. Still close to the front lines and exhausted, they gathered in a wooded area with faces still painted black and weapons ready. Fairlamb described the scene:

  It was cold and snowing, and nearly half the men had lost their voices because of bad weather. The trees, mostly pine, were beautifully covered with snow and decorated with tinsel which the Germans had been dropping to make our radar ineffective. It was the most impressive Christmas service I’ve ever attended. I don’t believe that anyone could be any closer to the real Christmas than we were that day. But it made you feel kind of funny standing there worshipping God while you had a helmet on your head, a hymn book in one hand, and a rifle in the other.470

  The contrast is stark. The peace of Christmas in the middle of combat. A hymn book and a rifle. This story could serve a useful purpose in reminding us to be thankful for the relative tranquility of our daily lives and worship. Or, in some cases, this story might mirror our daily lives. Sometimes our time in church is only a brief interlude to prolonged conflict, anger, or anxiety. When we find ourselves in such a state, it is time to take stock of our relationship with the Savior. It takes a certain amount of spiritual discipline, including regular prayer, study, and service, to keep Jesus at the center of our lives when we’re not in church. Only then will the rest of our lives take on that same sense of order and tranquility that we find in the sanctuary.

  Be joyous always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

  —1 Thessalonians 5:16–18

  November 12

  Guardian Angel

  As his company was fighting to take the German town of Dillingen, Arnold Brown saw a building that offered good observation of the enemy occupied area of the city. He climbed two flights of stairs and found a two-man forward observation team using the same vantage point to call in artillery fire. As soon as he arrived, the strangest phenomenon of his life occurred. He called it his “vision.”

  His mind suddenly became like a movie screen and he could see German soldiers with their distinctive helmets. The soldiers had a radio and were beaming in on his position. They were transmitting this information to an artillery battery where the guns were being aimed and prepared to fire. As this picture filled his mind he became confused:

  I hesitated. I thought, “What should I do? Should I tell these men to move? If I tell them to move and nothing would happen, they’d think I was cracking up…”

  When I hesitated, I felt something pushing me toward the stairway, just like wings, pushing me. When that occurred, I didn’t hesitate. When I got down off the last step, an artillery shell exploded in that room and killed both of those men.

  This was my evidence that I was going to survive this war, and that I did have a guardian angel.471

  We know that there are many biblical references to angels. This soldier’s amazing witness seems to confirm that these heavenly beings continue to do God’s work in the modern age as well. The Bible tells us that angels were created by God to act as his servants, to relay messages from God, give encouragement and guidance, and provide protection. Arnold Brown’s confidence that a guardian angel was looking over him is a powerful witness to the continued existence of this special way that God can directly touch our lives.

  He thought he was seeing a vision. They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and… When they walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him. Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches.”

  —Acts 12:9–11

  November 13

  Malice toward None

  After days of vicious fighting the American paratroopers brought in a wounded German soldier to their company commander. He had lain out all night in subzero weather with a severe wound in his leg from a.50 caliber bullet. Both of his arms and legs were frozen, and he was begging to be shot. The company commander later recalled:

  I couldn’t do it. I asked for a volunteer. Even if he survived, he’d have to have both arms and legs amputated, and this could have been a mercy killing. But these battle hardened soldiers that had been fighting Germans a few minutes before would not volunteer. One soldier, out of sympathy for the suffering and bravery of this soldier, lit a cigarette and held it to his lips. Another soldier brought him a hot cup of coffee and held it so he could get coffee until we got the litter jeep up there and sent him to the rear.472

  On another battlefield a British lieutenant described the attitude of his men toward enemy prisoners immediately after an intense battle: “We treated them very kindly, bringing in their wounded and giving them cigarettes. It is strange, but we are very poor haters.”473

  These Allied soldiers exemplified the Christian moral code for the merciful treatment of a defeated enemy articulated eighty years earlier by a great American president: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right…”474 Fortunately for us, mercy is an attribute of God himself, and he fully expects us to show this quality toward others, even in the heat of conflict.

  My judgments flashed like lightning upon you. For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.

  —Hosea 6:56

  November 14

  The Only Clean Thing

  The German attacks were almost continuous. The remnants of a British airborne unit was holding on to its tenuous position in a battered school building as casualties mounted and ammunition dwindled. Their mission was to defend the eastern side of the Rhine River bridge at Arnhem until relieved. Hours of waiting had turned into days, as the relief column was hopelessly delayed in heavy fighting. Meanwhile, an officer in the school building described the scene:

  By morning I had to issue more Bensedrine to face the dawn attack. No one had now had any sleep for seventy-two hours. The water had given out twelve hours ago and food twenty-four hours ago… The men themselves were the grimmest sight of all: eyes red-rimmed for want of sleep, their faces, blackened by fire-fighting, wore three days’ growth of beard. Many of them had minor wounds, and their clothes were cut away to expose a roughly fixed, blood-soaked field dressing. They were huddled in twos and threes, each little group manning positions that required twice that number. Th
e only clean things in the school were the weapons. These shone brightly in the morning sun, with their gleaming clips of ammunition beside them.475

  Clean weapons shining in the midst of a dirty and chaotic battle scene presents a powerful image. It reminds us of God’s armor, designed to protect us from the evils of the world. Although mostly defensive in nature, it also includes one powerful offensive weapon: “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”(Ephesians 6:17). When this weapon is kept burnished through constant study and application, we are prepared for the spiritual battles and chaos of this world.

  The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

  —Romans 13:12

  November 15

  Your Cross

  Jim Koerner saw too much. In fighting with the 10th Armored Division he saw buddies wounded and killed by small arms fire, artillery, mines, and booby traps. In December 1944 he was separated from his unit and captured by the Germans, suffering constantly from exposure, hunger, and Allied bombing attacks. After the war he continued to suffer nervous depression and had to take tranquilizers to function. His father had committed suicide before him, and twice, in his confused state, he held a gun to his own head. He declared that his salvation came in a prayer that he found in the wallet of a deceased friend: