A tragic military conflict raged when I was in college, a costly war that ended none too soon and took 54,000 American lives, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Korean lives—both military and civilian—lost.
The ink on the truce documents had barely dried when I was drafted into an unreal world of Army medics. Most draftees like me were selected by their low college grades. Mine qualified.
I looked at myself that first morning in the Army. I stood there strangely outfitted in a drab, ill-fitting uniform under undesirable and arbitrary conditions. Within mere months I found myself exactly in the spot where the war had just ended—Korea.
At strange intervals, day or night, sirens would wail. I, along with about 300 other GIs, bolted toward trenches and hunkered down in combat gear and steel helmets in those embattled foxholes. We were mere miles south of the artificial no-man's-land dividing the two Koreas. Russian-made MIG aircraft still roared over nearby valleys, their guns mostly silent.
Early in that tour of unforgiving military duty, I fell into a monologue with myself. I can live like the average GI, with habits and morals repugnant to me, or I can live my faith.
I chose the second alternative, fully hopeful that perhaps someone—just one—would see the light as I lived it and maybe even join the ranks of God’s commandment-keeping people.
Tested and Tried
I made my decision none too soon. The first chance to act on it emerged the first Friday afternoon I spent on the troop ship bound for Korea. I checked the duty roster and against all hope spotted my name. I was set for kitchen patrol the next day—Sabbath. I’d never faced this in basic training, because they knew about conscientious objectors and Adventists. I was both.
I located the duty sergeant and faced him. “I’m an Adventist,” I announced. “I go to church on Saturday. I’ll happily work Sunday instead. It isn’t that I won’t work on Saturday. It’s that I can’t.” There is a difference.
The sergeant could hardly believe his ears. When he heard my incredulous announcement, he exploded with military rage. “You will work tomorrow, soldier,” he growled.
I persisted, and he could tell I was serious. In fact, he now matched my resolute persistence with belligerence. “We’ll settle this, private,” he roared. “You’re going to the chaplain.”
He sped off for the ship’s chaplain with me in tow.
He faced the Roman Catholic chaplain. “Sir, this man refuses to work tomorrow,” he announced.
“I’m doomed,” I muttered to myself as I faced the whims of both of them—a career sergeant with an inflated estimate of himself and a high-ranking officer of a faith foreign to me.
The chaplain faced me and posed one or two questions. Then he turned slowly to retrieve a pen and pad. His note was terse but telling. “This man’s church prohibits him from working on Saturday, his day of worship. Excuse him from all duties.”
The sergeant was incredulous, but that settled it. A week later I arrived at my outpost near the line dividing the two Koreas. Dreary month after month I slogged through the drudgery of endless tent living and some of winter’s worst behaviors. Did anybody notice me? Did anybody notice how I lived? I monitored my language, my diet, my entertainments. I pulled guard duty for ill colleagues, and so on. But who cared?
A Solitary Witness
Well, not many. Occasionally I’d get a question hurled at me as I headed out of the tent for Sabbath services. “Hey, church on Saturday?” But no Bible studies; no converts. None.
A coincidence, perhaps, but I met the arrogant sergeant again when our stints in Korea were over. I spotted him, in fact, on the deck of the ship the first morning out to sea. I sensed he remembered me from the Sabbath encounter we'd had well more than a year earlier.
But something had happened. I was now a sergeant; he was now a private. And in that millisecond when I discovered he had been stripped of his stripes for toxic behavior of some sort, a temptation swept over me that I’d never felt before. Shall I strut a pompous stride past him? I wondered.
I didn’t. So as ships in a dark night we passed with only a nod.
Regrettably, some of my Adventist colleagues in the battalion made some compromising decisions. Some lined up for payroll on Sabbath; some glibly treated the Sabbath as though it were any ordinary Monday; and others hung out at the club late into the night, where cheap spirits flowed freely. One tentmate became so dependent on spirits that he began drinking our aftershave lotion.
None of us held Bible studies or engaged regularly in spiritual discussions, and the Adventist chaplain assigned to our unit was not busy making Adventists out of GIs.
So was my decision dumb, pointless? Had I lived my spiritual life in vain? I’m unsure.
But still, I’m content to pose the question, confident that the final tallies are not yet in.
It’s clearer to me now than then: Living life with high expectations is its own reward, if there must be rewards. For if to oneself and one’s God one is not true, then to whom?
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Loren Dickinson writes from College Place, Washington. This article was published May 24, 2012.
