endure. Keep me physically strong that I may better defend my home and my native land. Keep me mentally awake that my enemies may never again strike with surprise and deal with me in treachery. Uplift my morals that I may better maintain the honor of my country and reverence of my forefathers. Let duty to God and country be my most sublime aspirations, and kindle my heart and soul with the determination to die rather than yield the ideals of my world. O God, My Father, whatever duty befalls me when my country calls, may I acquit myself as worthy of Thy Guidance.
And when my combat’s over and my flying days are done I will store my ship forever in the airdrome of the sun. Then I’ll meet the Referee, Great God, my Flying Boss, Whose Wingspread fills the heavens from Polaris to the Cross.
…Amen517
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?
December 10
Chaplain Herb Van Meter wrote many letters to the families of fallen heroes and with great effort did his best to personalize each one. In April 1945 he wrote to the family of James Emory, a Marine killed on Iwo Jima.
As we left Iwo Jima you would know how hard it was to leave behind those who fought beside me. As the transport left the anchorage the troops stood silently, reverently at attention in their honor. Eyes were fixed on the flag flying in the Division cemetery over their graves. It was a holy moment. Words cannot express the thoughts that rise in a man’s heart at such a time. There were men thinking of James as there were men whose thoughts were with those who lie beside him under those white crosses. There were prayers and there were tears. We will not forget.
Time alone will heal the pain of separation from your son. Pride will help you face it now: pride in one who gave his life to his nation, pride in having given a gift so great. Faith will help: faith in those great causes for which Jim risked and gave his life, faith in the dedication of our people and nation to those causes. And most of all there is faith in Almighty God to help you, faith in Him who gives us life and in whose providence it is taken from us. God grant you that faith.518
It is one thing to believe that God is sovereign in the giving and taking of life when all our loved ones remain with us. To cling to that knowledge when a son has died, however especially in the brutal circumstances of war is taking that faith to an entirely new level. My own faith has not been tested in this way, and I pray that yours has not either. But to help safeguard our faith before it is even placed in the refiner’s fire, we would benefit from remembering to place our faith in the unchanging person of God and his son, Jesus Christ, rather than measuring our faith by our circumstances. (JG)
I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.
December 11
On March 21, 1945, a cemetery on Iwo Jima was dedicated to the fallen Marines and sailors of the 5th Marine Division. Chaplain Roland Gittelsohn delivered a moving sermon with echoes from Abraham Lincoln’s address at another great battlefield Gettysburg:
This is perhaps the grimmest, and surely the holiest task we have faced since D-Day. Here before us lie the bodies of comrades and friends. Men who until yesterday or last week laughed with us, joked with us, trained with us… Men who fought with us and feared with us… Now they lie here silently in this sacred soil, and we gather to consecrate this earth in their memory.
It is not easy to do so. Some of us have buried our closest friends here. We saw these men killed before our very eyes. Any one of us might have died in their places. Indeed, some of us are alive and breathing only because men who lie here beneath us had the courage and strength to give their lives for us. To speak in memory of such men as these is not easy. Of them, too, can it be said with utter truth: ‘The world will little note nor long remember, what we say here. We can never forget what they did here.’… These men have done their job well. They have paid the ghastly price of freedom. If that freedom is once again lost… the unforgivable blame will be ours, not theirs, so it is we, ‘the living’ who are here to be dedicated and consecrated.519
Every person who has lived through war thinks of lost comrades with feelings of sadness and guilt. We survived, and they did not. Chaplain Gittelson articulately spells out our only recourse. We have to live our lives in honor of those who gave theirs. To do this, we have to be a force for peace in the world, in our communities, and in our families. In this noble endeavor we have an all-powerful ally the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
December 12
In the 1940s the military services reflected the racial prejudice and segregation then pervading American society. Black American units were organized in each branch of the Armed Forces, but were not used in direct combat roles at first. Later in the war, this began to change as the long, slow process of improving racial relations gained momentum in the services and nation.
At Iwo Jima’s battlefield cemetery Chaplain Roland Gittelsohn, a Jewish rabbi, took a bold step for that time by addressing the issues of race and religion. He reminded the living of their eternal bonds with the fallen and one of their most important obligations to honor their memory:
We dedicate ourselves, first to live together in peace the way they fought and are buried in this war. Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helped in her founding, and other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and Whites, rich men and poor together. Here are Protestants, Catholics and Jews together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despised him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men there is no
