Yesterday was the 68th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944. Over 160,000 Allied men stormed the shores of France that day, beginning the end of Hitler’s terror in Europe. Of those 160,000, only a few remain now. I can only imagine what that day was like for them. Perhaps the movie Saving Private Ryan has given us a glimpse of the realities they faced that day and the days that followed.
All this has given rise to my thoughts about Army chaplains. I never served in the Armed Forces. I was eligible for the draft in 1973, right at the end of the Vietnam War. My lottery number was 83, but that year the local Selective Service board did not call any guys from my county, so I was spared. I did work for the Army for a month in 1978, in Wiesbaden, Germany, where I was a chaplain’s assistant with Lt. Col. Joseph Graves, the Catholic chaplain, so I have some concept of their ministry during peace times. I have heard many stories of their heroism during war.
I would like to honor them today and offer to each of them my prayerful support. Their’s is a ministry of many challenges and of great need. They often go without acknowledgment. They have no place, really, to lay their heads or call their own. Their churches are jeep hoods and plywood. They were and are the first in ecumenism, sharing resources and opportunities. They need be always prepared.
God bless them all……
