War, God and children: Two unusual books
The adage “There are no atheists in foxholes” catches our attention, but is too broad and imprecise for universal application.
As Phil Zuckerman writes in his online essay “Are There Atheists in Foxholes?” combat can and does turn the thoughts of those on a battlefield to God, yet he then calls our attention to the numerous accounts of soldiers who either lost or simply never acquired a religious faith while under enemy fire. “For some people,” Zuckerman writes, “the horrors they witness or the suffering they endure can render belief in an all-powerful, all-loving deity unsustainable.”
Of course, many people do experience a strengthening and renewal of their relationship with God in the chaos and killing of battle. In “Under His Wings: How Faith on the Front Lines Has Protected American Troops” (Harper Influence, 2024, 272 pages), attorney and media personality Emily Compagno has compiled the stories of just a few American military personnel, veterans who served in combat from the Second World War to our recent engagements in the Middle East, who while facing a human enemy found a friend: God.
Combat medic Jessica Harris was serving in Iraq when her unit was called to the assistance of another outfit under attack, with at least one armored vehicle hit with an EFP (explosively formed projectile). She treated the wounded, two of them with horrific injuries, remaining steady and calm during this ordeal.
Captain Charlie Plumb, United States Navy, was shot down over North Vietnam just five days before the end of his tour and spent the next six years as a prisoner of war. For his first years, he and other Americans kept in solitary confinement found ways of communicating through their prison walls by tapping and codes. During their ordeal they devised small ways of resisting the threats and demands of their captors.
In Korea, Robert Burr fought in the back-to-back battles of Bloody Ridge and Heartbreak Ridge. At Bloody Ridge, when his squad leader was killed, Burr was chosen to take his place. Wounded days later when an enemy shell exploded near him, and after a rugged journey through the mountains, he was evacuated to safety and a hospital bed.
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Harris, Plumb, Burr and the others in Compagno’s book all speak of an “unseen force at work: the origin of tide-turning courage, the source of ultimate protection, the embrace in which soldiers found comfort.” They found their faith deepened by what they had witnessed and suffered. In addition, because of that faith, they remained cool and collected in emergencies and hardships, and showed “a Christ-like capacity for putting the needs of others ahead of their own, of brotherhood before self, of service before all else.”
Lots of photographs and Compagno’s anecdotes of her own ties with the military from childhood up to the present add to the pleasures of reading “Under His Wings.”
In “The Children’s Civil War” (The University of North Carolina Press, 2000, 368 pages), historian James Marten investigates the effects of that internecine conflict on children and families in both the North and the South. Since adolescence, I’ve read many histories, biographies and novels about America’s deadliest war, yet Marten’s book was an eye-opener for me. Except in passing, I’d never really given much thought to the impact of the war on the children of that time.
Marten’s excellent book filled in this gap in my education. His exhaustive research and his talent for bringing this story alive on the page makes “The Children’s Civil War” a true treasure for those interested in military history or who simply delight in good writing. Through letters, diaries, newspaper accounts, oral histories and fiction of that era, Marten recreates the home front lives of boys and girls whose fathers and brothers had marched off to fight in previously unremarked places like Shiloh, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Here are accounts of boys playing at pretend battles, of adolescents who hid in basements and survived the sieges of cities like Vicksburg and Atlanta, of the effects of absentee fathers on family dynamics.
About halfway through “The Children’s Civil War,” I paused to refresh my memory by looking up some data online. In 1860, the population of the United States, whites, blacks, and “other,” was over 31 million. In the war that followed, 620,000 soldiers, about 2% of the population, lost their lives to combat or disease.
As I read on about those boys and girls living at the time of that horrendous conflict, in my mind I kept coming back to those statistics and to the irreparable damages done to the families of all those dead soldiers: the mothers who had lost a child or a husband, the children who would never again see their fathers or older brothers. Those reflections added an even greater poignancy to the words I was reading.
If you’re in search of some excellent history this winter, I highly recommend “The Children’s Civil War.” Marten has given us a remarkable account of those who until now have remained hidden in the shadows of the past.
(Jeff Minick reviews books and has written four of his own: two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust On Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning As I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
