There’s nothing more calming in difficult moments than knowing there’s someone fighting with you.
The Someone Fighting With You
I was in a prayer meeting for Ukraine on March 27th with friends across Canada. One friend commented on the intervention of God and the miracles that occurred during WWII that turned the tide against evil. We prayed for God to do it again in Ukraine.
And I invite you to pray to that effect as I head back to Ukraine.
There are many big stories of God’s intervention that led to providential turning points in wars that gave the outcome of freedom that we enjoy, and perhaps, take for granted today. This is a story of a very personal experience that illustrates a timely answer to prayer.
Anyone who has “felt the rumble of the guns”, “heard the snap of the bullets” or “fired in anger” knows intimately the comfort that comes from knowing that you are not fighting alone, and what greater “foxhole buddy” can there be than God?
Countless soldiers can testify that during their time in combat, “The Lord (was) my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I (was) helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.” (Psalms 28:7).
Difficult Moments
One such witnessing veteran was 1LT Andrew Carrico, the grandfather of the author who wrote, “God, the Angels and World War II Miracles.” During World War II Carrico was a paratrooper in the famed US 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 11th Airborne Division. As a platoon leader in Company D, Carrico saw some of the worst fighting in the Pacific Theater and after nearly a month of brutal and bloody warfare he wrote home to his wife Lois, “I heard more than one man say, ‘If I didn’t learn anything else I learned how to pray.’ I don’t want you to let me forget God when I come back, honey, because He certainly hasn’t forgotten me.” (letter, December 28, 1944)
Carrico and his platoon were starving, isolated on a mountain, under enemy fire, with heavy casualties and inaccessible because of monsoon rain. Several miles away, division commander GEN Joseph M. Swing noticed that Chaplain Lee Walker was going to parachute jump out of a Piper Cub to visit Carrico and his weary comrades on the front. Knowing of just how fierce the fighting was up in the hills, Swing told Walker, “The Chaplain doesn’t have to go there.”
Chaplain Walker
Thinking of the boys battling up in the mountains, Walker replied, “That’s where the Chaplain is needed.” He then loaded into a Piper Cub for his static line jump.
Once on the ground, “Chappie” found HQ3-511 and invited them to join him for a service at noon. After sharing encouraging selections from the Bible, Walker declared, “Now men, we are ready to ask for supernatural help from God. Let us all pray.”
With helmets and rifles in hand, the battle-tested paratroopers all knelt in the same mud they had slept, fought, bled, and buried friends in as Chappie prayed on their behalf. His words of faith and humble pleadings warmed their hearts and renewed their spirits. Indeed, after the foxhole church service, the men returned to their place on the line, feeling fortified in spirit, even as their bodies was slowly wasting away from starvation.
As they sat in the mud, looking up towards the overcast heavens for a moment of quiet meditation, they were startled when the never-ending rain clouds slowly began to part to reveal a beautiful blue tropical horizon. Chaplain Walker had hardly packed his things when the hungry men of HQ3 began cheering when a single C-47 transport flew overhead to drop badly needed supplies and rations.
In the eyes of HQ3, God had heard the Angels’ prayers and many in the 511th PIR agreed that “Chappie Walker’s Miracle” met all the requirements for sainthood.
No wonder decades after the war, the men of the 511th PIR voted Dr. Lee Walker “Trooper of the Decade.”
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