Stories of Faith and Courage from World War II

soldier.

As the battles raged on and around Guadalcanal in late 1942, U.S. Army forces were committed on the north coast of the Papuan Peninsula to take the port of Buna and to relieve another threat against Australia. As the campaign wore on, the Japanese defenders and the jungle took their toll:

The track is now knee deep in thick, black mud. For the last ten days no man’s clothing has been dry and they have slept when sleep was possible in pouring rain under sodden blankets… Every hour is a nightmare.¹⁸⁸

…The troops were riddled with malaria, dengue fever, tropical dysentery, and were covered with jungle ulcers.¹⁸⁹

…It was a sly and sneaky kind of combat which never resembled the massive and thunderous operations in Europe… In New Guinea, when the rains came, wounded men might drown before the litter bearers found them. Many did. No war is a good war, and death ignores geography. But out here I was convinced, as were my soldiers, that death was pleasanter in the Temperate Zone.¹⁹⁰

There truly has never been a good place for a war. However, these heroes of the early days of World War II in the Pacific endured more hardship than most. With tenuous supply lines and great uncertainty about the outcome, they fought on for interminable months. During the darkest days of the war, they not only survived they also turned the tide of battle and gave a glimmer of hope to an Allied cause that had up until then seen only defeat.

Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus… If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him.

—2 Timothy 2:3, 1112

^{Battleships and cruisers in formation. (National Archives)}

May 17 Savo Island

By the evening of the second day the invasion of Guadalcanal was progressing successfully. More than ten thousand Marines had landed and were in the process of securing their major objectives. Nineteen cargo vessels were beginning to move their stores of food, ammunition, and equipment ashore.

Although taken by surprise, the Japanese responded aggressively to this challenge. Within hours Vice Adm. Gunichi Mikawa launched a naval counterstrike from Rabaul, six hundred miles away. He personally led a task force of five heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and one destroyer south to destroy the invasion force off the beaches. Unfortunately, this threat was not detected by air search as it approached.

At 1:42 a.m. on August 8, 1942, Mikawa’s fleet passed Savo Island and made contact with the U.S. screening force, deployed about thirty miles north of the invasion beaches. In half an hour the U.S. Navy suffered one of the worse defeats in its history. Surprised and outmatched in night gunnery tactics, the U.S. force lost four heavy cruisers and more than one thousand men. At 2:20 a.m. Mikawa reassembled his largely unscathed but scattered ships, and pondered briefly what to do next. The now undefended transport fleet lay exposed only miles away.

At this moment, Admiral Mikawa made one of the most fateful decisions of the war. Considering his “victory” and the possibility of air attacks after daybreak, he turned north, away from the invasion beaches. The transport fleet and the 1^st Marine Division that it sustained were spared. The most perilous moment of the Guadalcanal campaign had passed.

This decision, made in darkness and under the stress of combat, saved America’s first offensive effort in the Pacific. This is another moment when we can see evidence of God’s providential hand moving to change the odds in a desperate struggle.

Daniel answered, “O king, live forever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight.”

—Daniel 6:21–22

May 18 The Parson

Radm. Robert Mills tells the story of an unnamed Kansas divinity student who enlisted in the Navy in 1941. Seeing an opportunity to serve his country and the Lord, the young man brought one hundred miniature Bibles with him when he reported aboard his first ship, the destroyer USS Ralph Talbot. Since storage on the ship was extremely limited, the Bibles had to go in his own locker. Also, no chaplains were assigned to destroyers, so he started holding worship services himself. The rough-talking crew attended sparingly and showed little interest in the Bibles. They did start calling the young man “Parson.”

In August 1942 the Ralph Talbot was assigned to support the landings on Guadalcanal. The Parson’s battle station was the Number 4 five-inch gun mount on the main deck. This mount was unshielded and ammunition had to be passed hand-to-hand across the deck from the ammunition hoist. The Parson was the last man in the chain and had to hand the sixty-pound shells up to the ever-moving gun mount.

During the night Battle of Savo Island the Ralph Talbot was heavily engaged, attracting the fire of at least three enemy cruisers. One of several shells hit the crew living compartment, flooding it with a mixture of seawater and oil. Another shell struck the main deck, as the admiral described while telling his story:

Of more instant concern, one incoming shell hit the underside of #4 five inch gun, bursting just behind the large brass and steel fuse setter, not three feet from where the Parson was busy at his battle station. The explosion and shrapnel killed the man on the Parson’s right, the man on the Parson’s left, and killed or injured nearly every other man in that gun crew. The Parson was untouched.¹⁹¹

After this incident, the crew regarded the Parson with a sense of awe. His church services on the fantail soon became overcrowded. The hottest items on the ship were salt-water-soaked, fuel-oil-stained miniature Bibles.¹⁹² Surely the hand of God was on this man dutifully trying to do God’s work in a difficult place.

But you, O Lord, be not far off; O my Strength, come quickly to help me. Deliver my life from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs.

—Psalm 22:19–20