This is a totally fictional account....first posted last Memorial Day....but on the other hand totally true many times over....we just have no way of knowing about it.
Somewhere in Vietnam....on a bloody battlefield....there was a young man....black or white it doesn't matter.....a PFC maybe but that doesn't matter either. His company was ambushed and the first hour or so was pure havoc as the company commander tried to rally his platoons into a defensive posture until help could arrive....but some of the men were separated....two men in particular. One was badly wounded. The second could hear the orders screamed out from somewhere on his right to form a perimeter. He could have hurried and joined his company but heard from his left the cries of his fellow soldier....and instead ran towards him....lifted him up on his shoulder....and carried him towards the shouted commands....but both of them were cut down by rifle fire.
No one knew what happened....no one will ever know of this heroic deed. His body and that of the man he tried to save were never found. His family had no body to mourn over and bury. There was no medal awarded.
There are thousands of stories something like this over the centuries of America's wars....and hundreds of thousands of lives lost in every way imaginable in war....and therefore hundreds of thousands of grieving families and widowed wives and fatherless children.
We long ago set aside one day to think about these men....and women. What we could have....and should have done....at the very least.....was to keep intact the country for which they sacrificed their lives....but we are all human....capable within the herd of both extreme acts of heroism....and of....figuratively speaking....sleeping on guard duty as the country is overrun.
There is a time for war....unfortunately....for there is pure evil in the world. Although we cannot totally prevent war.....we can do our very best to make them fewer....so that there are far less stories like this to cry over. If we would but keep in our minds the horror and sorrow of what war brings....we might be able to make what would otherwise be four wars....only one.....and what would otherwise be eight wars.....only two.
It's sad to put it this way....but until the King of Kings comes back it is all that we can do....but when He returns....O when He returns....in the midst of what will be the worst of wars....He Himself will command His army of angels....and then....and only then....will there be war no more. Should we not then....as somewhere in this world....on any given day....as we hear of "wars...and rumors of war"....and know very well what may be just ahead of us....should we not pray for Him to hasten in His return...if it be His will....even as difficult as those days will be?
