Survival Through Prayer – Service | Sacrifice
J. D. Lankford, a retired Army sergeant first class was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge, and held prisoner until his unit was liberated by U.S. troops led by General George Patton. Speaking to a military group at Robins Air Force Base in George, he stated, “Prayer is the sole reason for my survival. It’s the power of prayer. Don’t tell me it doesn’t work. I’m here. It’s the strongest power you will ever have.” Lankford survived by eating bugs and worms, coming out of the POW camp weighing 93 pounds. “Freedom doesn’t come free,” he declared. “Ask God’s direction. Our nation is built on trust in God. So trust Him and go vote.”
From Their Souls – Service | Sacrifice
Brigadier General Robinson Risner, a senior ranking officer, was held and tortured for 7 1/2 years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, a North Vietnamese POW prison. Senior officers, as they were moved in and out of solitary confinement or singled out for torture, report that The Lord’s Prayer was spoken from the depths of the soul, to bring courage to the 47 men whose days in captivity totaled 108,116. In those dark and terrifying times, rotting away thousands of miles from home, Colonel Robinson Risner recounted in his book about their decision to conduct unit worship and prayer services in defiance of the communist North Vietnamese. He wrote,
“I could not have existed if I had not been able to pray. To be able to mention in prayer the names of my wife, children, friends or relatives, or one of my fellow POWs who I knew was being tortured or mistreated, brought us together. The thousands of miles, the walls of my cell, the guards, were all transcended by this dimension of communication.”
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An Anchor of Prayer – Service | Sacrifice
“A man does a lot of praying in an enemy prison. Prayer, even more than sheer thought, is the firmest anchor.” – Admiral Jeremiah Denton
In July of 1965, then-Commander Denton, was leading twenty-eight planes on a bombing mission with Lieutenant Junior Grade, Bill Tschudy, his navigator/bombardier. Their jet was shot down over the city of Thanh Hoa in North Vietnam, and they were captured and taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese. Denton was held in the infamous POW camp, Hanoi Hilton as prisoners of war for almost eight years, four of which were spent in solitary confinement. Denton is best known for the 1966 televised press conference that he was forced into as an American POW by his North Vietnamese captors. He ingeniously used the opportunity to communicate successfully and to confirm for the first time to the U.S. Military (naval intelligence) that American POW’s were being tortured in North Vietnam. He repeatedly blinked his eyes in Morse Code during the interview, spelling out the word, “T-O-R-T-U-R-E”. He writes that the original title he chose for his book, When Hell Was In Session, was Under God, Indivisible, because most of the prisoners when faced with desperation, rediscovered God and became indivisible in their resistance to Communist torture and extreme deprivation.
Remember – Service | Sacrifice
As World War II is fast fading from America’s first hand memory, we remember the most somber day in POW/MIA history. The Harrodsburg Tankers of Kentucky joined the Allied Forces in the Philippines, and valiantly held their ground against the Japanese in spite of low rations, malnutrition, and fatigue. On April 9, 1942, they were ordered to surrender Bataan. In the 90 mile “Bataan Death March” that followed, the prisoners were marched at night, and then forced to sit in the sun during the day without their hats. Those who fell behind in the march were executed on the spot.
William Gentry, one of the soldiers from Harrodsburg, Kentucky, said he was given seven canteens of water in the 11 days of marching, along with one ball of rice about the size of a baseball. Many in the 192nd Tank Battalion who survived the infamous March died from starvation and disease in the brutal prisoner of war camps.
Prayer by Dr. Philip S. Bernstein
April 9 – Service | Sacrifice
“It is truly fitting that America observe April 9 in recognition of our former prisoners of war; that date is the 46th anniversary of the day in 1942 when U.S. forces holding out on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines were captured. Later, as prisoners of war, these gallant Americans were subjected to the infamous Bataan Death March and to other inhumane treatment that killed thousands of them before they could be liberated. In every conflict, brutality has invariably been meted out to American prisoners of war; on April 9 and every day, we must remember with solemn pride and gratitude that valor and tenacity have ever been our prisoners’ response… To our former prisoners of war who endured so much, we say that with your example and with God’s help we will seek to meet the standards of devotion you have set; we will never forget your service or your sacrifice.” —Ronald Reagan
*In Picture – Prisoners on the march from Bataan to the prison camp, May 1942. (National Archives).