Be Strong and Quit Yourselves Like Men

This from my husband, Michael Albert Braun, in memory of his father:

Be strong, and quit yourselves like men...
lest ye become slaves ... quit yourselves
like men, and fight! - I Samuel 4:9
I was a war baby. The family joke ran no sooner was I born my than that my dad enlisted in the army and left home. Actually he did just that but you'd have had to known my father to realize it was not an attractive option for him. Born into severe poverty as the only child of a widowed mother in the depression, 'home' to dad for the first 18 years of his life was a one room apartment with a single pull down bed for himself and his mother to sleep on. He really never had a home until he married mom. Still, shortly after that, he gave up his home and family for nearly four years to fight in the jungles of the South Pacific.
His sacrifice was the defining moment of his life and of our relationship. I was three years old when this strange man with big arms and shoulders came into my life. He loved me and I loved him but, frankly, dad always scared me. I don't think he ever recovered from the events of World War 2 that left him with malaria, 3 purple hearts and the bronze star. He wouldn't talk a great deal about it though when he visited Florida for the first time in the 1970's he said the afternoon twilight made him very nervous. It was like the islands. The Japs always attacked at twilight. Nearly 40 years later he still had dreams about it.
It's fashionable today to call Dad's generation "The Greatest Generation". I wonder if our distant cousins, the Campbells of Pennsylvania who lost 10 sons in the Revolutionary war, would agree. Would Uncle Wash (short for George Washington Campbell), a union soldier severely wounded and consequently addicted to morphine to lessen his life long pain, agree with that? Probably not ... definitely not.
My father was a hero. Every American soldier is a hero. We say as much in our national anthem: Thus be it ever when free men shall stand between their loved homes and the war's desolation... Dad did not enjoy the war. He did not enjoy being in fear for his life day after day or seeing his friends die around him. But he did his duty, he fought for his family and country.
I suppose we should remember such sacrifices on this Memorial Day. But the words of President Lincoln counsel us to remember more than just the past. Of the fallen at Gettysburg Mr. Lincoln said though they had paid the last full measure of devotion it remained for us, the living, to consecrate and dedicate the present they bequeathed to us.
So much works against this resolve today. Cable TV regales us with documentaries and historical movies about the horrors of war. Martin Sheen, hardly a patriot, narrated a PBS special on World War II only to claim more than double the actual number of the Americans had died in that war. I heard a US senator announce on MSNBC that 100,000 marines died in Viet Nam. The actual count of the entire conflict was less than 50,000 and most of them were regular army troops. The real count of the casualties is awful enough. I have to ask myself what is going on. We are being bombarded by subtle propaganda from those who believe in peace at any price; that war is the ultimate obscenity. Their objective is a brave new world, a world that rejects war. "What if they gave a war," went the old slogan of the 60's, "and nobody came?" Well, "if" that were to happen ours would become a world that saw the end of freedom and hope. It would become a world run by evil men and populated by slaves.
I have 15 grandchildren, 10 of them fine young men. I have often wondered if any of them will have to follow in their grandfather's footsteps and defend our nation and our family. I have often wondered if any of them would be called upon to offer up that last full measure of devotion. I recoil at the thought and pray to God that it would never be. But we cannot ignore the world that lies before us... a world where Matthew Arnold said ignorant armies clash by night. But we are Christians, we walk in the light. We must always remember that death is not the greatest fear, that there are things worth fighting and even dying for. Many among us today would say that this is not so. I see their constant moaning over the fallen in war to be driven by an ulterior motive, by subtle cowardice and cynical self interest. There are things more noble than these, things for which to fight and perhaps to die. This is the lesson my father taught me.