We Were (Are) Soldiers

Here is yet another journaling from a few years back, December 23, 2004 to be exact. It bears much meaning to me yet......

Last night I finished watching the movie, “We Were Soldiers,” starring Mel Gibson, about the Viet Nam war. Gibson starred as Lt. Col. Hal Moore, of the 7th Calvary (Remember Custer?) who led his troops in the assault of La Drang Valley in 1965. It was a bloody, violent movie that got to the horrors of combat and the terrors that our soldiers faced there. So intense it was, that I found myself having to watch a segment then wait a while before going on to the next scene.
However, as I lay down to sleep afterward, it was not so much the blood, violence, fear, and terror that gripped my mind. It was the scene of the Lt. Col. addressing his troops just before they boarded the planes here in America to go into combat.
They were in formation, at attention, and these were his final words to them: “I can’t promise you that I’ll bring you all home alive. But this I swear, before you and before Almighty God, that when we go into battle, I will be the first to set foot on the field…and I’ll be the last to step off…and I will leave no one behind, dead or alive. We will all come home together, so help me God.”
Those words you would expect from a great military leader, and Lt. Co. Moore fulfilled his promise, constantly facing barrages of enemy gunfire and artillery to protect his troops and drag or carry the wounded, dead, and dying off the field of battle. The scenes are too many and too graphic to explain here, but when the battle was over and his feet stepped back on the helicopter, there was not one soldier left on the field, they had all been recovered. One scene that did imprint my mind was in the darkness only illuminated by distant enemy artillery, Moore set out to find two unaccounted for soldiers and in the darkness he searched until they were found and carried back to the company.
The thoughts that haunted the recesses of my mind were of those, “spiritual,” battles in which I have been engaged through the years…some of them as the leader, and some as the foot soldier. How often did a soldier fall in battle, and I left him lying there? Was it for my fear of my own safety? Was it my thinking that I had done all I could do for him? Was it my attention to other details of the battle? Or was it my just not wanting to be involved further, as he was a, “fallen,” soldier?
I thought of my own battles, and how I was lying wounded and dying, needing a spiritual “medic” to carry me to safety and care for my wounds. To be sure, a few were there. Thank God for them, they are the only reason I’m alive today. Calvin, Jim, Kelly, Mom, Jon, Garry, wouldn’t leave me there to die. I have a battle scar, large and ominous that I see daily, where the doctor cut out a cancer that was destroying my body. The scars that are the worst are those unseen, because they are deep within my soul and spirit! Some of them from those who were supposed to be my Lt. Col., yet they left me to my bleeding!
I no longer harbor the resentment that plagued me so deeply, but have found peace in forgiveness and grace. I’m not much of a preacher, and certainly not qualified to be the Lt. Col. or even a buck private, but now I consider myself a “medic,” and this I promise, I will never turn a deaf ear to the call of the wounded soldier, whether it be in the heat of battle, or in the quiet of the jungle night! I will not hold back and give in to my own fears while another bleeds and dies!!! There will be no more bleeding and dying soldiers left on the field on my watch!!!! So Help Me God!!!!