Stories of Faith and Courage From World War II (52 page)

In 2001 Paul Rinn was the featured speaker at a reunion of the World War II-era sailors of the
Samuel B. Roberts
and her sister destroyers. Rinn described in detail the heroism of his crew in saving the modern-day
Roberts
. He then told them the story of the bronze plaque with their names engraved on it:

It sent a chill through me on the night of the mining, as we were fighting to save the ship, to see crew members passing the plaque and reaching out and touching it, not just one or two guys but seemingly everyone who passed it. Clearly they were bonding with the heroism of the past.
³⁹³

And so, these sailors of a new era reached back into the past to connect with the courage and struggle of those who had gone before. They were reaching back to the men who had experienced the same fears and hopes, and who had fought the same battle: to save a ship and each other.

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

—Proverbs 17:17

S
EPTEMBER 23

The Proud and the Humble

Michael Conway was a Navy chaplain and one of the great heroes of World War II. When the USS
Indianapolis
was torpedoed and sunk in the Philippine Sea, he and nine hundred other sailors were left adrift. Few lifeboats survived the catastrophe, and most of the men had only their kapok life jackets. Father Conway made it his duty to swim from group to group offering spiritual support and encouragement. After three days and nights of tireless effort, the young priest quietly slipped beneath the surface and was gone.

In a
Saturday Evening Post
article, one of the survivors later recalled the chaplain holding services the day before the
Indianapolis
went down, and needing two mess decks to accommodate the large, overflow crowd. He was always popular with Catholic and Protestant sailors alike. It was reported that in this service, “He spoke on the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (or tax collector in modern translations), likening them to two sailors appearing before the captain of the ship.”
³⁹⁴

Unfortunately, the details of this sermon are lost, but it is not difficult to grasp the intended image: Two sailors accused of breaking regulations stand before the captain for judgment. One is unrepentant and defensive. He argues about the regulation itself and cites how often others break it. He will not admit a mistake. The other sailor has little to say, except to confess his guilt and express his remorse. Looking at each man’s similar service record, the captain makes the same decision you or I would make, and confirms the point made by Jesus in his great parable: the humble and remorseful are treated mercifully and justified by their earthly superiors and God. Jesus has little to offer those who justify themselves.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

—Luke 18:14

S
EPTEMBER 24

The Seagull

They ate the fourth and last orange on the sixth day. It was their last source of nourishment. An even deeper sense of doom settled over the men packed together in the three small life rafts, adrift on the Pacific Ocean. Hunger, thirst, sunburn, open sores, and untreated wounds magnified their sense of despair.

All the odds seemed stacked against this little group, except for one thing in their favor. Among them was the famous airman and World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker. The ex-military man considered himself the senior of the group, based on his experience, and felt that it was his role to hold the rest together. He became a lonely voice of encouragement. When the food ran out and discouragement seemed to peak, he started prayer meetings twice a day, with Scripture readings from a New Testament belonging to one of the men. The procedure was for each man to read a passage fitting to the occasion, even if some had never read from the Bible before. Rickenbacker found new meaning and a special beauty in the words of Psalm 23 and Matthew 6:31–34.
³⁹⁵

There were a few cynics in the group at first, until the afternoon of the eighth day. After a Scripture reading and prayer for deliverance, what Rickenbacker termed “a small miracle” occurred. As he was dozing, a seagull landed on his head. With great care he slowly reached up and somehow grasped the bird’s legs. They finally had a little food, but, more importantly, had bait for the fishhooks, which had been useless up until then. Their survival was insured. Rickenbacker said later: “There was not a one of us who was not aware of the fact that our gull had appeared just after we had finished our prayer service. Some may call it coincidence. I call it a gift from heaven.”
³⁹⁶

So do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom.

—Matthew 6:31–33

S
EPTEMBER 25

Mama Planted the Seeds

Eddie Rickenbacker was a great man. He was a hero of two wars, a pioneer of aviation, and a highly successful businessman. He seemed blessed with boundless energy and an ingrained optimism. He endured suffering and faced death more than once. After a disastrous airline crash he literally willed himself back from death, which he described as, “the sweetest, tenderest, most sensuous sensation. Death comes disguised as a sympathetic friend. It is easy to die. You have to fight to live.”
³⁹⁷
He fought this fight more than most men.

The source of this man’s amazing strength of character was a deep religious belief that he acquired as a boy and strengthened during his eventful life:

Never, even during my most mischievous escapades, had I lost faith in God. Mama had planted the seeds of religion too deeply in all of us for that. All through my childhood there was a warm, continuing family ritual. After supper… Mother would ask one of us to bring in the Bible… [She] would open it and begin to read. Her favorite passages were the Sermon on the Mount and the 23
^rd
Psalm, and they are the ones I remember best. She would often stop reading to discuss the meanings behind the Scriptures and how we could apply the principles of Christianity to everyday life.

It was my mother who taught us to pray… But formal prayer was only the beginning. Mama taught us that the Lord above was a friendly God, a Presence who was interested in our problems and sympathetic to them. Thanks to her influence, I have always talked to God in my prayers… full of confidence that He listens and responds.
³⁹⁸

This passage presents a perfect prescription for the spiritual development of children. A warm and secure family atmosphere provides the foundation. Reading Scripture together teaches biblical knowledge, and also serves to bring the family closer together. Finally, the parent who explains the power of prayer and leads his or her children by example into a deeper appreciation of it gives them a lifelong resource and path to their own relationship with God. Scripture, prayer, and family form a powerful basis for spiritual growth.

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

—2 Timothy 3:14–15

S
EPTEMBER 26

Payback

Fred Hargesheimer bailed out of his P-38 fighter over New Britain, an enemy-held island seven hundred miles north of Australia. For seemingly unending days and nights he struggled through the mountainous terrain and dense jungle. Fighting exhaustion and discouragement, he recalled his youthful days as an Episcopalian lay reader and recited the 23
^rd
Psalm over and over every day: “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me…”
³⁹⁹
On the thirty-first day a group of natives found him in wretched condition and took him to their little village of Ea Ea, on the north coast of the island. There they nursed him back to health and hid him from frequent Japanese patrols. Eight months later, he was rescued by submarine.

After the war, Fred returned to Ohio where he started work, married, and had children. As time went by, he kept thinking of Ea Ea and the people who had saved him. In 1960, with his family’s blessing, he used their vacation money to make the eleven thousand-mile trip back to New Britain. There he got the sense that maybe a simple “thank you” wasn’t enough for these wonderful, but extremely poor people.

During the next ten years Fred raised money at home and made several trips back to New Britain to build a school, a library, and a clinic. He started a small oil palm farm, which proved a valuable source of revenue to the village. In 1970 he and his wife moved there to teach in the school. He explained, “These people were responsible for saving my life. How could I ever repay it?”
⁴⁰⁰

Fred Hargesheimer didn’t just repay a debt. He demonstrated a Christ-like love for these people whom he came to know so intimately. He gave more to them of his time and his money than they had any reason to expect. Christ demonstrated a love even greater than this by giving up his very life for a world that did not deserve it. This is a love that flows from the nature of God and is fortunately not based on the merits of mankind.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

—Romans 3:23–24

S
EPTEMBER 27

Seventy-eight Degrees

A war correspondent wrote a graphic description of one of the Navy’s smallest ships:

A DE, my friend, is a Destroyer Escort. It’s a ship long and narrow, something like a destroyer but much smaller. They are rough and tumble little ships. Their decks are laden with depth charges. They can turn in half the space of a destroyer.

They roll and they plunge. They buck and they twist. They shudder and they fall through space. They are in the air half the time, under water half the time, their sailors say they should have flight pay and submarine pay both.
⁴⁰¹

The men of USS
Conklin
(DE-439) experienced their share of rolling and plunging during antisubmarine duty in the Pacific. In June 1945, however, they were struck by a typhoon with seas of a magnitude seldom seen by any sailor. After a night of violent wind and waves, the storm reached its peak at about 5:00 a.m.

Suddenly the men on the bridge saw an incredibly huge wave building off the port bow. Seconds later they were thrown around like matchsticks as the little ship was knocked over on her side. Three sailors were killed as the ship lost all power and fuel oil flooded the decks.

The
Conklin
’s inclinometer measured a roll of seventy-eight degrees, past the point of no return for a ship of her type. After seventy-two degrees the laws of physics decreed that she should keep rolling. In the next instant, however, another wave struck the ship at just the right angle to knock her upright. The
Conklin
survived her ordeal thanks in part to the desperate efforts and superb seamanship of her crew. Most of them, however, ever after felt that they had experienced a miracle and the hand of God acting to save their little ship and their lives.
⁴⁰²
Human hands could not have brought the
Conklin
back from a seventy-eight degree roll.

He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples.

—Luke 8:24–25

S
EPTEMBER 28

Turn On the Lights

On June 19, 1944, Japan committed all its remaining carrier forces in an attack on the U.S. invasion fleet at Saipan. During an eight-hour air battle over the Philippine Sea the Japanese carriers were practically stripped of their aircraft as 375 were shot down by American flyers. The next day a U.S. carrier force under Adm. Marc Mitscher was released from its defensive role at the beachhead to seek out the enemy aircraft carriers.

After a long day of empty searching, a scout plane finally sighted the Japanese fleet late in the afternoon. Mitscher knew that a strike at that distance would mean a night recovery of his own aircraft, for which his pilots were not trained. He nevertheless felt the need to seize this fleeting opportunity to strike a decisive blow, and so launched his aircraft as darkness was approaching. At about sunset this strike found and successfully sank one Japanese aircraft carrier and damaged two others.

Now, in total darkness, more than two hundred American pilots found themselves low on fuel and looking for a place to land. The U.S. carriers were steaming toward them, but, as always, were under blackout conditions to protect against air and submarine attack. As some aircraft were starting to run out of fuel, Mitscher faced another crucial decision: to risk his ships or his aircrews. He finally turned to his chief of staff and said, “Turn on the lights.”
⁴⁰³
Suddenly the fleet was illuminated with running lights, flight deck lights, and star shells exploding overhead. Landing signal officers with fluorescent batons waved in the aircraft. One naval officer on the scene called this, “One of the war’s supreme moments.”
⁴⁰⁴