Our Captain Leads the Way

     “War is Hell”. I can’t remember who said that, but it is so true.

     My ancestors left me a legacy of sorts. It is a verbal legacy. They wrote nothing down; which I regret. No visage of meaning remains in their sightless eyes, as they stare back at me in rapidly fading photographs. What were they thinking? What struggles did they know? Those dearly departed relatives, Those I never knew are silent now, and buried almost two centuries hence.

     But oral tradition, and a few government documents recite their deeds for me. Old Isham fought under Colonel Francis Marion, “The Swamp Fox,” during the American Revolution. He fought the British, (and later, bands of Indians.) That old Scotsman, no doubt, gave “lead poisoning” to some of his enemy kinsmen, as Isham had migrated to this country from Great Britain.

    Another of my forebears was determined to elude Confederate service in the Civil War. His mother thought he was too young, and sent him to hide in the barn. This poor 16 year old boy never left the barn alive. He was murdered on the spot, as no traitor could be allowed to “long endure.”

     And then there was my double great uncle, Ellis Ring; a direct descendant of Phoebe Ellis, a Mayflower passenger. A Yankee by birth, he came to Georgia as a result of a doctor’s recommendation. The former Yankee found himself drafted into the Confederate Army! Unfortunately (for him,) he was captured by Union forces within the year, and sent to a Yankee prison in Elmira, New York. I can only imagine how his fellow New Englanders must have greeted and treated him in that prison. He would not have been popular with his guards.

    And I remember being told the story of a near kinswoman who was forced to forage for food; the Civil War raging around her. The Confederate government had been reduced to using wall paper as printing material for their worthless paper money. Rebel wives and children were close to starvation. People were “industrious” to say the least.

    For my ancient kinswoman slipped into a pasture, perhaps at night, and slit the throat of a cow; that by now may have closely resembled the skinny bovine of Pharaoh’s dream.

    Not having any ability to carry the entire carcass away with her, she cut off the most “savory portions” and left the rest to the buzzards. She tacked a poignant note to a nearby tree. “Sorry for your loss. I will pay you at the end of this Godforsaken War.”

    I am blessed to have a few scraps of the lives they lived, left to me. Some of their names are fast being forgotten, but their exploits live on. Beyond just “the interesting,” they leave us with a valuable moral.

     We also fight a WAR.

 

    There are those among us who tremble in fear, and so like the "boy in the barn" hide from the battle. There are those of us who are forced to "scavenge for food," so like my hapless relative. And there are those who fight exceeding hard, not content to be squashed beneath tyrant's feet.

     We Must Not flee in fear. At times we are compelled to embrace the standard… “having done all to stand.” But so much of the time we are COMPELLED to take the offensive.

     We also fight a War. Our victory is certain. Our Captain leads the way.

 

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "Unconventional Devotions" Copyright 2005