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Why They PrayANDREW CARROLLThe trials of war strengthen many troops' faith.
Bromwich's sentiments are hardly unique. "If God's chief work has been the creation of this earth and man on it, to date He and His work have been a glorious failure," Lt. Russ Merrell concluded in a July 1944 letter to his wife after seeing the aftermath of the horrific Normandy invasion. Whoever coined the now well-worn phrase that there are no atheists in foxholes — Ernie Pyle is believed to have been the first — was demonstrably wrong. They exist (there is even a statue, albeit small, erected in their honor in Alabama), and they have long argued that wartime faith cannot possibly be sincere or authentic but is merely a grasping and short-term reliance on divine intervention that desperate troops cling to in the maelstrom of battle.
Faith undoubtedly offers comfort and strength to those in need, especially troops confronting their own mortality. But this does not explain why so many troops go to extraordinary and potentially fatal lengths to worship a higher power. On May 25, 1952, Capt. Molt Shuler described to his wife, Helen, a church service he attended in the mountains of Korea. Despite the fact that gathering together made them vulnerable to mortar attacks, the troops were determined to have the ceremony and give thanks to God. With loaded rifles by their sides, they created an altar with ammo boxes and lined up their helmets on the ground as pews. (Makeshift services like these are common on the front lines of every conflict.) "Only a couple times in my life before this evening," Shuler wrote, "have I felt God's presence in such a way."
This presence becomes even more visible in the life-and-death context of war, where all that is frivolous and superficial is shorn away to reveal what is truly meaningful and lasting. Lt. Ray Stubbe, a young Navy chaplain serving in Vietnam in 1967-68, often reflected on this theme in his correspondence with friends in Wisconsin. "People benefit spiritually," he wrote in one letter, when they "face the loss of all the trivia of modern day society." After describing a litany of nightmarish hardships that his Marines had to endure, he noted: "You would be amazed at the faith expressed here. There are evidences of genuine and deep prayer life, of reading and knowing the Bible backwards and forwards, of sacrificial concern for others." These two words, "sacrificial concern," represent the heart of the matter. Countless troops have demonstrated their faith by risking their lives for their comrades in arms. (Ray Stubbe himself often came close to dying when he flew by helicopter through hostile territory to minister at Marine bases in the remote mountains of Khe Sanh.) One of the most famous stories concerns the sinking of the USAT Dorchester, which was torpedoed on Feb. 3, 1943, by a German sub. The chaplains on board — Rabbi Alex Goode, the Rev. George Fox, the Rev. Clark Poling and Father John Washington — refused to get onto the lifeboats so that there would be more room for others. The last anyone saw of the chaplains was the four men, locked arm in arm, praying together as the ship went down. This sacrificial concern, although it receives scant media attention, is evident in Afghanistan and Iraq as well. Staff Sgt. Brian Craig, who had lost and then regained his faith, handwrote a message to his father back in Texas, articulating how his newfound beliefs compelled him to act selflessly. "I think that the guys I work with know that I am different," he wrote on April 8, 2002. "I just pray that I make a difference in their lives. I pray that I am a good example of a man of Christ." It was his last letter home. Sgt. Craig, who had volunteered to seek out and destroy hidden ordnance that threatened both U.S. troops and innocent Afghans, was killed one week later when a bomb exploded in front of him. "Some of my colleagues have wondered out loud how there can be a God with all of this suffering," Lt. Col. Scott Barnes wrote in an October 2005 email home from Iraq. It is a question that transcends war and relates to any catastrophe involving loss of life, and theologians and philosophers could not have provided a more impassioned answer: "Where is God?" Col. Barnes went on to write. "He is in the will of the sergeants helping organize a blood drive as only they can, He is in the hearts of the troops who immediately rolled up their sleeves to give what they had to save a dying brother whom they don't even know." Like those who came before and after him, Col. Barnes saw the worst of human nature in a war zone. But in the selflessness of his brothers and sisters in arms, he also witnessed the best.
Walter Bromwich would almost certainly agree. At the end of his letter to his pastor, the young World War I private finally decided: "God is in this war, not as a spectator, but backing up everything that is good in us. He won't work any miracles because that would be helping us do the work He's given us to do on our own. 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." ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Andrew Carroll. "Why They Pray." Wall Street Journal (March 9, 2007). This article is reprinted with permission from The Wall Street Journal © 2007 Dow Jones & Company and from the author, Andrew Carroll. All rights reserved.
THE AUTHOR Andrew Carroll is the editor of Grace Under Fire: Letters of Faith in Times of War, Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families, and War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars. Copyright © 2007 Wall Street Journal
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