Some years ago I discovered that my saintly Sunday School Superintendent had been a young soldier on the battlefields of France.It was difficult for me to imagine that a man who lived an otherwise quiet and withdrawn life had seen such horror. Indeed he had seen two such periods of service when he was only in his mid teens.
Today is Remembrance or Armistice Day when we recall that the vain boast that the First World War was the "war to end all wars" was just that...a vain boast.
I noted in my previous entry (here) that American war casualties from contemporary wars are still high.
Here in the bottom right hand corner of the world we rightly are horrified by each war casualty. But our losses are small by comparison.
As I look back at Charlie Moncrief I am glad that he survived and that he gave me the gift of the biblical story so well told, and of the Sunday School song. At what cost to him personally I can only imagine. No 15 year old went to the Somme and came back unchanged.. that he retained his faith is a miracle.
