SERMON: "Military Memory"
Rev. Paul Beedle
May 25, 2008
It was five days before Christmas. Six exhausted men were attempting to land a rowboat on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai. As they maneuvered close to shore in heavy surf, the boat heaved and tossed its crew into the waves. Five of the six drowned. Only Coxswain William Halford – the man whose job it had been to steer the craft and motivate those oarsmen – only he made it to land. He and his five companions had been volunteers from the Saginaw, an US Navy side-wheel steamship that had wrecked some 1500 miles southwest of Hawaii, off a small and remote South Pacific island called Ocean Island. They had rowed that boat for the better part of two months in order to get help for their shipmates. Now Halford must complete the mission alone. He did, and was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor.
The Medal of Honor is one way our country remembers the service of men and women in uniform. It is our highest military honor. It is given “for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty.” “Intrepidity” means “fearlessness.” “Gallantry,” of course, is another word for “courage.” The root of the word “courage” is cor, the Latin word for “heart.” So we say “take courage” or “take heart” and mean the same thing. It took courage – it took heart – to volunteer to row a boat miles across the open ocean to get help for the Saginaw's crew. It took courage for Halford to go on when he was the last survivor, two months after he'd set out. How much longer would it take for help to arrive? What had happened on Ocean Island in the meantime? Never mind: he did what he set out to do. His five companions had come so far with him. The crew of the Saginaw were counting on him. He would be faithful.
It's good to remember courage. I believe that courage is necessary to a life of faith. If we are to do what we set out to do – to live the values we profess in all parts of our lives, against pressures and temptations to the contrary and despite obstacles within ourselves and weariness of the effort – it takes courage. Aristotle called courage “the handmaiden of all virtues.” I like what University of Texas professor Paul Woodruff wrote about courage, that it is “a well developed capacity for feeling confidence and fear in the right places, at the right times, and in the right degrees of intensity; that is, courage lies somewhere between fearlessness (which often looks like courage) and timidity (which no one would mistake for courage).” I like it that he describes virtues in terms of how they feel – how it feels to hold together two feelings that are hard to hold together, and take their measure. What can I really feel confident about? What is it appropriate for me to fear? If I'm trying to summon my courage, those questions ground me. So I like that idea that a virtue is a balance of feelings. It's useful. And I like his distinction between courage and fearlessness – or, to use the words in the Medal of Honor criterion, between gallantry and intrepidity. Courage is not fearlessness. Courage is when you feel the fear and do it anyway. And that is what we ask of our men and women in uniform. Their courage is what we honor on Memorial Day.
There is a Medal of Honor Memorial at the National Cemetery in Riverside, California. It's one of four such memorials in the country. The original one is in Charleston, South Carolina, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown. The other three – in Riverside, Indianapolis, and Pueblo, Colorado – have all been built in the last decade. I visited the Riverside memorial not long after it was built, and I have some slides so I can show it to you and tell you about it. [SLIDES]
William Halford found himself alone on the shore of Kauai in 1870. He's one of the Medal of Honor recipients recorded under the heading of the 1866-1870 Interim. I like it that the Medal of Honor is not reserved for combat situations. There are many stories like Halford's among the Medal of Honor citations, where soldiers or sailors helped each other when they were in danger from storms or mishaps, not war. Their training is for more than war. It is for keeping their heads in dangerous situations. It is for striving to live an ideal of courage – to keep a balance of reasonable confidence and reasonable fear, feeling the fear and doing what needs to be done, staying grounded in extreme situations. In recent times, we have been re-awakened to the distinction between supporting a war and supporting the troops. We ask for their courage when they enlist; we owe it to them to support and not discourage them. And as Halford honored his companions in the rowboat by completing their shared mission, so do we honor all those who have served by remembering their courage on Memorial Day.
In his book, Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy wrote: “Each of us can decide for himself the merits of the courses for which these men fought. But is it necessary to decide this question in order to admire their courage? ... Surely in the United States of America, where brother once fought against brother, we did not judge a man's bravery under fire by examining the banner under which he fought. ... For without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men ... have lived. The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality. To be courageous ... requires no exceptional qualifications, no magic formula, no special combination of time, place and circumstance. It is an opportunity that sooner or later is presented to us all. ... The stories of past courage ... can teach ... offer hope ... provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each ... must look into his [or her] own soul.”
May we each look within to find and cultivate the makings of courage in our living, and may we remember and be inspired by those who found and developed their courage in service to our country. So may it be. Amen.
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Notes about the slides: Each group of names on the Medal of Honor Memorial in Riverside has a heading designating the period or theatre of action to which that group of names belongs. Each panel on the memorial has two columns of names. The number of panels for each period or theatre of action (some panels contain several headings) is given below. The Medal of Honor was created by Congress during the Civil War. The designation "Interim" means that the Medal was awarded during a time when the United States was not officially at war; names under an "Interim" heading may represent many different theatres. Many of the Medals awarded during "Interim" times were for actions not combat-related.
14 Civil War
4 Indian Campaigns (1861-1890) (really from colonial times)
1 Interim 1866-1870
1 Korea 1871, Interim 1871-1898
1 Spanish American War
1 Philippine Insurrection
1 Boxer Rebellion
1 Interim 1899-1911
1 Action Against Philippine Outlaws, Mexican Campaign, 1st Haitian Campaign
1 Inteirm 1915-1916, Dominican Republic, World War I
1 2nd Haitian Campaign, Nicaragua
1 Interim 1920-1940
4 World War II
1 Korean War
2 Vietnam War
1 Somalia +
(On web: Afghanistan, Iraq)
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References:
M. Hill Goodspeed, U.S. Navy: A Complete History (Washington DC: Naval Historical Foundation, 2003), p. 249.
G. Jeffrey MacDonald, “Mixed Signals on the Virtue of Courage,” Christian Science Monitor, July 20, 2005 (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0720/p15s01-lire.html).
Paul Woodruff, Reverence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 8.
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (New York: HarperPerennial, 2006 [1956]), pp. 220, 224-225.