Dozens of banners, each emblazoned with a name and that individual's branch of service in the United States armed forces, line the main avenue in my town. It's the community's patriotic salute to its own. As my son, who is in high school, and I drive the avenue, he reads out the names, astonished at how many of them were in school with him a short time ago. All are now in the military, many in Iraq. The banners remind my son of track meets in which he and they competed.
And his response reminds me how young soldiers are, on both sides of this and every war. I think, How proud the town rightly is of their idealism and sacrifice.
I also recall, gratefully, countless instances of wartime protection forwarded by prayer. An e-mail friend of mine, a lieutenant in the Marine Corps, recently wrote, "Our operations tempo has been pretty high here, as you have probably guessed from the headlines. I was involved in a pretty nasty firefight last week with my platoon. Over an hour of sustained contact with incoming machine-gun and RPG [Rocket Propelled Grenades] fire at distances of 50 yards and less. No injury to my Marines, or, surprisingly in my mind, to our vehicles, which were parked alongside us. As I talked it over with my platoon sergeant later on, we both agreed Something Else had been at work besides incredible luck."
