July 28
The chaplain was up before dawn with the aircrews, sharing their last moments before another mission. He listened to the briefings and assignments, and followed their route laid out with tape across the map. As he looked at the young airmen he was almost overcome with feelings of love and fear. He knew them well, and he admired and loved them deeply. He also knew that, “For some of them it was the dawning of their last morning in this world.”297 For all of these men he was a link to home, and, as always, he gravely received their messages. This morning he was deeply moved when one man asked him to, “Tell my mother I know she is the real hero.”298
The chaplain pondered the bond between mothers and sons and concluded that both were soldiers with difficult roles to play in a difficult war, but…
The greatest soldiers are the mothers of men. While men go to battle-fronts mothers endure a bloodless martyrdom. Theirs is fortitude’s braver part, for their hearts, life-laced and “love-laced” to their sons, must endure the hungering interval when human hate makes them childless in motherhood, long before they face the sorrows of death.299
The chaplain’s thoughts turned to history’s greatest example of a heroic woman, the mother of our Savior. “ Enduring her sufferings, by her compassion, Mary then became the strength and consolation for sorrowing mothers through the ages. She who had seen the shadow of death over His whole life from the crib to the Cross, could do nothing to help her dying Son.”300 May God bless all mothers who have to stand aside as their sons go into harm’s way. They send them into the world with the gift that is the most Christ-like of all gifts: a mother’s love.
When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.”
July 29
After a particularly harrowing mission through heavy flak Tommy Hayes landed his P-51 at home base in England. He described what happened as his aircraft finally rolled to a stop: “I climbed out of the cockpit, got on my hands and knees in the mud to kiss the good earth and thank the Lord.”301 When his crew chief realized what he was doing, he got down beside him and joined in.
Hayes was a veteran pilot from Portland, Oregon. He had seen action early in the Pacific flying P-40s and had been with the 357th Fighter Group in England since its first combat mission. He was a little older and wiser than many of his fellow pilots, eventually rising to command a squadron of P-51s flying escort missions deep into Germany. He saw more than his share of aerial combat and downed eight German aircraft. His family at home was never far from his mind.
When I left the States for Europe, I left my wife and daughter of sixteen months. We each had a job to do and we talked about that. I know the stress was greater for her than for me. She wrote me a letter every day. We lived our lives together by our letters. It helped when I shot down a plane and the local paper or radio had a story or a few words on the local boy, Major Hayes. If she hadn’t had a letter for a week or more, at least on this date she knew I was okay. I was not a drinking man. We both trusted in prayer.302
A priest once used a simple blackboard diagram to illustrate how a couple can strengthen their relationship. He drew two separate lines from the bottom of the board converging into one point at the top. The lines represent our separate lives and can, in fact, go in any direction. However, if both parties in a marriage continually strive to grow nearer to Christ at the top of the board, they will also grow closer to each other, as their lines converge. This has been an enduring image in our marriage as my wife and I have tried to keep our focus on this common goal, to be one in love and service to our Lord.
So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.
July 30
Max Woolley bailed out of his P-38 fighter at 18,000 feet. Wounded by ground fire on the way down, his descent seemed to take forever. His parachute was riddled by bullets and almost useless by the time he hit the ground hard near Charleroi, Belgium. In a dazed state, fully expecting to be captured, he was instead picked up by a Belgian family and taken to their home. Woolley stated later that during this time,
“Prayer was the greatest source of inspiration for me… It gave me strength, consolation, and a way to talk, to plead for help and life itself.”303 The Belgian family hid him from the Germans and gave him all the care that they could:
They sacrificed their safety and gave me the best they had to offer, a place to rest, food from their sparse pantry, wet towels to subdue the stifling heat from being crammed into an eighteen-inch high enclosure and to wipe the blood and infected pus that oozed from my wounds for almost two months.
I’ve often asked myself, ‘Could I befriend a bloody, dirty, wounded man whom I had never before seen, share my scant supply of food, jeopardize the safety and welfare of myself and my family?’304
Each of us would have to agonize over this question. What would I do? Looking at our “WWJD” (What would Jesus do?) bracelets, we know what we should do. Jesus answered the question emphatically while explaining the phrase “love your neighbor” to a legal expert. He told the story of the man who was robbed and beaten beside the road. He was passed by a priest and a Levite, both “religious” men, who did not stop. A Samaritan, even though considered a foreigner, did stop to render assistance. Even though we know that we should follow the example of the Samaritan, few of us would find the courage within ourselves to do what the Belgian family did in this story. There is only one source of such strength, and that is Jesus Christ himself. When we prayerfully ask, “What would Jesus do?” we can also expect him to give us the resources to do it.
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
July 31
