Combat Faith

 #111: "I wish You Could Be My Neighbor"

April 23, 2022 by Allen Clark       allenbclark@aol.com

Author: Soldiers Blood and Bloodied Money

      Twenty years ago or so it was my privilege to be the Public Affairs Officer at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Dallas. One day a nurse at our Long Term Nursing facility on campus said there was a World War II veteran in their facility that was about to undergo an amputation on one leg at about the ankle. The nurse knew I had been a double leg amputee since the Vietnam War and she asked, if I would come to visit him. Of course I went that day!

     The veteran was a farmer just south of Dallas and had been a combat medic in his war, in which, if one had religious objections to carrying a weapon, would become a conscientious objector, when drafted, and then be assigned as a combat medic.  This fellow veteran became a combat medic and discussed with me his experiences in Okinawa in 1945. The two most poignant stories he shared are related below.

     He recalled holding in his arms a dying soldier and just stroking his hair to comfort him before he expired. The other story was being on a battle field and he tried to reach two American soldiers out in front of him, who were wounded and calling out , "Medic," the wartime cry for help upon being hit, known to all of us, who have come under fire. They were separated to his left and right front. Each time he would move toward either one, a Japanese sniper would stop him by placing a round in the dirt just in front of him. He never was able to reach either one and does not know what happened to the two. But, here approximately fifty five years later, he still felt extraordinary guilt in not being able to help them! That was a true man of faith and commitment to his responsibility all those years later.

     On one of my visits to him before he was discharged, he said, to me one of the warmest words I have ever heard, "I wish you could be my neighbor." When I asked why, he said, "Then I could talk to you every day!" Here we were in perhaps 2000. His war was 1945 and mine was 1967, but between two old soldiers, there was no distance.  

B.H. Liddell: "There are only two classes who, as categories, show courage in war-the front-line soldier and the conscientious objector."

P.S. I was a candidate for a Texas political office in 1982 and my opponent had been a conscientious objector in the Vietnam War. In the Vietnam War, individuals such as that were able to fulfill a two year tour of duty by performing "community service." Liddell's quote is not applicable to them!