[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Tuesday, August 13, 2013

[Paul]

Hello and good morning, good afternoon or good evening wherever you live in this world of ours.  I hope and pray that, by God's matchless grace and His providential care, that your day is going well or went well.

What I'm about to present to you is what I'll call a military story, but not the kind that people get killed in.  It was written by Tom Kovach, a writer from Minnesota, and is simply entitled "Charlie," rendered as follows:

Whenever things seem to overwhelm me, whenever something in life stresses me out or the big and little problems of life suddenly make me feel like I'm over my head, I think back and remember Charlie.  His memory is always an inspiration to me.

When I was a young man fresh out of high school, the US Army sent me to Korea.  It was January of 1964.  This was only a little more than a decade after the Korean War, and a lot of the Korean people had vivid memories of all the suffering and horrors that war brings.  I was stationed in a small village near the Demilitarized Zone, the line that separates Korea into North and South.  I was with C-Battery, informally called "Cold-Cut Charlie" Battery, maybe because of the cold rations we were sometimes served while on field exercise.

The American soldiers hired what we referred to as houseboys.  This term was not meant to be demeaning, and houseboys were a big part of our everyday life.  They did our laundry, fixed our cots, polished our boots, and did other necessary tasks.  We paid them each a few dollars, but for those times and in that part of the world it was considered good wages.  Back then, as a private, I was making less than $100 a month, so we GI's were not exactly rich.  Actually, it worked out well for both parties.  We had a lot of respect for these young men who worked in our barracks.  But the one houseboy who stood out in my mind was Charlie.  My unit sort of adopted him long before I arrived in Korea.

During the Korean War, Charlie, then a teen, lost his whole family.  Charlie didn't come unscathed either:  an artillery shell exploded where he was living in an abandoned building and as a result, his foot was badly injured.  Despite a bad limp and persistent pain, Charlie never complained.  He always had a smile on his face and was the hardest working houseboy in our unit.  Every soldier clamored to hire Charlie to help take care of their needs.

Shortly after his "adoption" into C-Battery, Charlie became a Christian.  We didn't have a place of prayer on our small outpost, but at the main post--just a few miles down the curving, mountainous road--there was a chapel that staggered its services to accommodate soldiers of all denominations.  No matter how busy he was, and he was a very busy man, Charlie would always walk or get a ride on Sunday to attend all the services.

When I first got to the unit, I was told by the commanding officer that a fund had been set up to help Charlie get an operation on his bad foot.  The captain told me that the monthly contributions on pay day were all voluntary, but to the best of my knowledge, every one of us contributed to Charlie's fund.  By the time I arrived, the fund had built up to the point that Charlie's operation could happen soon.

Before I left Korea one year later, I had the honor of being present when the battery commander called us into formation and presented Charlie with the check that would enable him to fly to Japan to see a foot specialist in an effort to correct the damage the artillery shell had done to his foot.  Tears were streaming down Charlie's face as he turned to thank all of us and all the others who contributed to the fund through the years.  We soldiers broke into cheering and applause as Charlie accepted the money.  Wiping away his tears, he said in a soft but clear voice, "Thank You, God.  My prayers have been answered.  And thank you all so much, my dear friends."

By the time the operation was set up for Charlie, I was already reassigned in Texas.  Through some sources, I later learned that the doctors in Japan repaired Charlie's damaged foot to the extent that the pain and the limp were pretty much eliminated.  His prayers were indeed answered.

It's been almost a half century since I was in Korea, but I hope and pray that everything turned out well for Charlie.  He was--and still is--an inspiration.

And now you all know about Charlie.  This story sounds to me like it could have appeared in an issue of "Guideposts" magazine, although I'm not sure if it did.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul