I should like to share with other students of Christian Science the experience of protection and healing that my brother had while overseas in combat duty.
He had been stationed in England for a year prior to the invasion of Normandy in June, 1944, and wrote that he hoped to prove good enough to "make the first team." He did, for he landed with one of the assault infantry divisions on D-Day at Omaha Beach, where the German defense troops happened to be staging maneuvers, and where the landing was consequently particularly difficult. At the time of the landing, and whenever the going was especially hazardous, he clung to the words of Mrs. Eddy's hymn beginning, "O gentle presence" (Poems, p. 4), together with some notes on this hymn which a member of the family had jotted down and sent him about a month before D-Day, because the words seemed to be particularly applicable to that day and to the untried American troops which were to participate.
He had many instances of protection during the five weeks he saw action in France. Upon landing, his outfit was immediately subjected to heavy artillery and mortar fire, and was ordered to dig in on the edge of a mine field, about one hundred yards from the water and in front of a swamp. A number of the shells fell into the swamp, which lessened the danger of flying fragments. On another occasion, not long after the landing, he was alert enough to spot a small square of earth which had been cut out and refitted into position—evidently a booby trap—which he otherwise would have sat down upon. At one point in the fighting his battalion was cut off from the regiment and the enemy appeared to be on all sides. The suggestion came to him, "This is it," but he was prompted to take out the small-sized Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, which, together with the Bible, he carried with him, and to read for a short period. He and the others eventually made contact with the rest of the regiment.
