What are we willing to die for?
In the late 1970’s while serving in
the United States Army I was stationed in an outpost in Turkey for one year.
The base was a small camp of a hundred
servicemen. On Sundays I would go with several others on an hour trip into
Isanbul where we would attend Mass at the Italian Consulate. Everything though strange was pleasant those
first five months that I was there.
Then one morning while waiting for
an inspection, we were notified that the inspection had been called off. At
first it was difficult to find out exactly why, after all we had been preparing
for this inspection for almost a month. Then the news came, a group of
terrorist had attacked about ten of our guys awaiting a bus near Istanbul. One
of them had died, another who was a close friend of mine had been hit in the
leg, the rest were okay. That Friday morning we were told that inteligence had
learned that several terrorist
groups in the area were making plans to
attack other groups of American servicemen and that we shouldn’t travel off
base until things had a chance to cool down.
The Chaplain on the base notified
me on Saturday that the Sunday trip to the Italian Consulate was still on and
would leave at the normal time on Sunday morning. I remember standing from a
distance to see if anyone would actually venture out on the trip to go to Mass
when things were so dangerous. I watched as the Colonel and another officer got
into the military vehicle and then after waiting awhile (presumably for me)
they left for Mass.
The next day it was necessary that
a group of us go into Istanbul for supplies. Riding through the streets of the
city it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t thought twice about doing what I
was ordered to do but when given the choice to go to mass I had passed. It
suddenly dawned on me that I was willing
to die for my country (by the mere fact of being in the Armed Forces) but that
I wasn’t ready to die for my faith. The next Sunday I went into town with the
others and went to Mass and obviously it didn’t cost me my life.
