My father was drafted in 1943 and served in the Philippines during WWII. Afterwards he returned to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to his occupation as a farm laborer. In 1948 he re-enlisted in the Army Air Corps. In 1950 he was stationed at an air base in West Palm Beach where he met and married my mother. Later that year I was born.
From 1959 to 1963, we traveled with Dad throughout the US, England, and France, returning to central Washington, where Dad retired in 1965 with nine sons. Sadly, my parents divorced in 1966 and four of us were parceled out to an aunt, uncle and my paternal grandfather. Since Mom was a waitress, I quit school to get a job. After a year doing odd jobs, Mom signed for me so that I could enlist in the Army. Enlisting a month after turning seventeen in November 1967, within six months I was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division as a young paratrooper.
Arriving in Vietnam in January 1969, I was soon transported to join Charlie Company, First Battalion of the 173rd Airborne Brigade as a combat infantryman. I was an ammo bearer for a machine gun team; at that point we were on Search and Destroy missions and were often in contact with the enemy. The first time a bullet whizzed past my head I thought, “A guy could get killed out here.” That night I said to God that if He preserved me, I would serve Him. I wrote “God is my point man” on my helmet band and then proceeded to live life according to the fatalistic philosophy of “Let’s eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.”
We were in the field for a month, came back for two or three days and then back out into the mountains and rice paddies of the Central Highlands. Our Company motto was, “Death is our business, and business has been good.” Later I became buck sergeant with ten men in my squad and saw some action.
Towards the end of my term, I agreed to extend for six more months. After a month’s leave I chose to join the Rangers and soon found myself in charge of a five-man, Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol Team (LRRP). We were helicoptered into different areas to spy on the enemy’s positions, numbers, trails, and basecamps. God was preserving us but the intensity wore on me and finally I had what used to be called combat fatigue. No longer desiring to return to the field with the Rangers I requested a transfer.
I almost committed suicide while waiting to be transferred. Sitting on a forty-foot-high rappelling tower, I thought of throwing myself off headfirst, but remembered my mom’s words “that suicide was the coward’s way out.” Later on, being caught by Military Police with marijuana and having disobeyed a lawful order, I was demoted and fined two month’s pay by the Battalion Commander. When he asked why this behavior I replied, “No excuse, Sir.” This is what my father had replied to his commander in WWII when demoted for allowing one of his soldiers to fall asleep while on guard. I came back to Fort Bragg humiliated but still arrogant.
Still using drugs I ingested LSD while off post in a rented trailer in Spring Lake, NC. This drug alters your sensory perceptions. While listening to heavy rock music, I began hallucinating with the walls of my room appearing to dissolve. The thought entered my head, “If all that I had perceived up to this point in my life was not solid then I was in serious danger.” Someone had taken an Aztec Sun Dial from the wall of my room and replaced it with a small statue of Jesus. It did not move as I was hallucinating. So I went and found the small Gideon New Testament and Psalms that I had been given when taking my oath of enlistment.
As a small child my mother had read to me from the Bible. I had memorized passages like the 23rd Psalm, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. During that time as Mom had continued in her conflicted relationship with Dad she became more and more depressed and withdrawn. Yet, she had instilled in me a basic respect for the Bible as God’s Word. In Vietnam, I initially carried it in my fatigue jacket pocket, but to keep it dry it was wrapped in a plastic radio battery bag. But it made me sweat in the heat, so I put it on my helmet under the helmet band. However, when breaking through the thick undergrowth I found it would pull off and so I ended up storing it in my footlocker. I began reading Romans 1 where Paul said that the Gospel was the power of God unto salvation. What struck me was the statement that the wrath of God was revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness in men who hold down and suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom 1:18-32). I was convicted of having dishonored the God who had made me that I might reflect His glory in the body he had given me.
I knew the life that I had lived was wicked and I was doomed. There was no way out, so one day I decided to go to the kitchen and grab a knife to cut my own throat. Why continue living and heaping up more torment? In my desperation I was out of control. My two roommates literally restrained me from harming myself until I regained control. I put down the knife and went back to my room. Then I thought, maybe something else was in the Bible. Opening it to James 4, the counsel there was to humble myself before God and draw near to him (vv.6-10). But how? I went out into the cold November night and looked up at the twinkling stars. I had been trying to be the rough, tough paratrooper and Ranger. I had killed and almost been killed. I hated and was hated. I reached down and grabbed a tuft of grass, pulled it out of the ground, put the roots into my mouth, and said “God, I’m humbling myself!” Nothing happened. No voice from heaven. Nothing.
Going back into my room, I picked up the Testament, opened it for the third time and read 2 Corinthians 1:18-24. It was a revelation to me that God had another way of justifying a man, other than by man’s own works. I had thought, as many do, that God weighed your good works against your bad ones and you were sent to heaven or hell accordingly. However, to be justified as Abraham was by simple faith in the promise of God was something I had never thought of before. Paul uses the example of Abraham to teach the Romans, and us, about God’s accounting system (Gen. 15:5-6; Rom. 4:5; John 5:24; 6:28-29).
There is only one work that God the Father requires of all – to believe in Him whom He has sent. The word of the gospel concerning the words and work of Jesus the Savior, being mixed with faith in Him saves us. Receiving Him the true bread of heaven, feeds our famished spirits. As we drink in the words of life from Him, we find the fountain of life that was there all the time. He is the One in whom we live and move and have our being.
That night I went to sleep having peace with God by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. The effect of the hallucinogen was stopped. I woke up the next morning clothed and in my right mind. That was over fifty-four years ago. Back in the day as a soldier, death was our business, and business was good. Now as a Christian, life is my business, and business is better than good.