Stand beside the stretcher where a young Marine lies, his lower face blown off by an IED just exploded down the road in Anbar Province. ........
"That day" was Sept. 7, 1944, when 23 year old Army 2nd Lt. Edward Treski descended into a war experience so hellish he could only be saved by a torpedo and a grenade. For two years, three months and 15 days he survived as a prisoner in three Japanese interment camps spread around the Philippines--places where the punished found themselves hanging by their arms at the camp gate or beaten with electric cattle prods while standing in water. Then in late summer of 1944 the men were tethered by ropes to hundreds of other emaciated prisoners. The guards gave the order for the men to march the death march tied together at their necks. After several hours, when one soldier would drop, their captor cut his rope off and threw his body into the ditch and sometimes stick him with the bayonet before moving on. There is so much more to this story and can be read in "World Magazine", May 22nd issue. It is the story of more courage and fire and passion than I can do justice on this blog. Edward's grandson writes "Could it be that God allowed Papa's peaceful, generous life--that somehow managed to flow out of those horrific experiences--to stand as a tribute to His grace?
What draws us each Memorial Day to examine this special kind of sacrifice, this peculiar sadness? Faith, hope, and love. First the test of faith. The family friend of young Army Cpl. Matthew Wallace told reporter Mindy Belz how he was "torn between confidence in Christ and his mssion, and the horrors of his daily life". We read of faith under fire this year from Commander Donovan Campbell's book "Joker One". Hope? The horrors of war can only point us to the hope of resurrected life. Jesus knew this, making plain in Matthew 24 that war is a sign of the close of the age. And hope is made alive in war survivors - men like Edward Treski who faced the worst of World War II suffering yet came home, married, went to work every day, and left a lasting legacy, a still more excellent way.
But what of love? What can a soldier's duty teach us of love? When faith and hope left him, and he despaired writes Campbell ("Joker One") he realized that love remained. "Love was expressed in the only currency that mattered in combat: Action--a consistent pattern running throughout the large and the small, a pattern of sacrifice that reinforced the idea that we all cared more for the other than we did for ourselves." Love was why one of his men walked backward on patrol, he said. Love allowed them to love their enemies. And to lay down their lives.
And there is a final reason we need a day to remember their sacrifice....We forget.
Memorial Day is not about hamburgers, hot dogs and swimming. It is not "just the beginning of summer". It is the moment to recognize the men and women who are fighting the wars, the battles and standing guard in other countries. It is about the injured fighters without limbs, eyes, strengh to eat independtly but when asked about their "injustice", they say with a resounding exclamation "I must return to my Unit....I must help them continue to fight for freedom".
What can you do on Monday to honor these men and women? What can you do to keep your children understanding and recognizing Memorial Day? Take your family to the parade in your town or neighboring town and stand in front of their memorial, hold a flag, say a prayer and teach your children about the magnatude of their sacrifice.
Please, honor our fighters, our injured, our dead and our Veterans on Monday, Memorial Day.
Article quoted: Remember Them by Mindy Belz. Article quoted: Humbled through Warfare by Donovan Campbell. Article quoted: To Hell and Back by: Edward Lee Pitts
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