Have you ever had an ear worm? This is when a piece of a song gets stuck in your head and keeps repeating. (I’ve had a 1970s song in my head for about three weeks now.) This also happens to me in a different way, when I watch or read something whose message or images just won’t go away. Like now.
I just finished reading The Frozen Hours by Jeff Shaara, a novel about the Korean War. He highlights the disastrous Battle of Chosin (pronounced like “chosen”) Reservoir in the late fall of 1950. About a year ago, I read a story about this campaign in which temperatures consistently stayed in the minus thirties and forties below zero at night, when the Chinese would attack. The U.S. Army and Marines were ordered to push the enemy across the Yalu River bordering North Korea, unaware of the massive number of soldiers Mao Tse-tung had to oppose the Americans.
Despite inferior firepower and no air support, the Chinese had a huge force of 120,000 men against 30,000 Americans, British, and South Koreans, most of them new to combat.
The extreme temperatures dogged our soldiers, their faces so cold the moisture in their eyes froze as soon as it appeared. If they worked up a sweat, it instantly froze. Their feet were in constant danger of frostbite. They had to warm cans of food under their arms in order to eat the contents which were otherwise frozen solid. At Thanksgiving, food trucks delivered a full traditional turkey meal, but the men had to chop their way through the rock-hard meal, which was frozen as soon as it came into contact with the air.
I recalled how my dad spoke about the freezing conditions he faced while fighting in the Ardennes in 1944 in the Battle of the Bulge. No wonder he always enjoyed warm weather more than cold.
As I read about the bravery and suffering of those Americans, I considered how Veterans Day and Thanksgiving occur in the same month. This is entirely appropriate because our veterans, men and women who have defended our country throughout its history, deserve our deepest honor and gratitude.
This year, as we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, as we give thanks to our God with hearts and hands and voices, as the old hymn goes, let’s lift up prayers of gratitude for our veterans. If you have veterans in your family, honor them by name, recalling the parts they played in service to our great nation.
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