Not long after Pearl Harbor, the actor Jimmy Stewart joined the Army and became a pilot. Through two long years of training, he suffered stateside, wanting to join the action but being used, overused, and abused, he felt, by his military superiors who wanted him as a spokesman for the war effort and bond drives and who thought him too valuable a resource to send into harm’s way. Stewart chafed and complained and pulled every string he could, and finally arrived in England, ready to pilot the Liberator bombers in their runs over Germany.

He got what he had been hoping for. And for the first time in his life, he found himself dealing with fear on a massive scale. He was fine flying his plane into battle. What unnerved him was watching friends get shot down and thoughts of what could happen to him.

In “Jimmy Stewart: a Biography,” Marc Eliot tells of the young pilot developing a “fear he could not easily shake.” During the night before an especially risky assignment, “he lapsed into a fit of panic. Unable to sleep, he broke out in cold sweats, believing he would not survive that attack.”

Later, as he reflected on the fear gripping him at that time, he said, “I was really afraid… our group had suffered several casualties even before I knew I was going to have to lead the squadron deep into Germany… I feared the worst. Fear is an insidious and deadly thing. It can warp judgment, freeze reflexes, breed mistakes. And worse, it’s contagious. I felt my own fear and knew that if it wasn’t checked, it could infect my crew members.”

In subsequent flights, Stewart felt increasingly that he was not going to survive the war, that his plane would be shot down and he would be killed. Yet he knew that many a person with such fear does indeed survive and outlive the threat, and that his fear was both normal and deadly unless it was dealt with.

One night before another such flight, he began to ask himself, “What was the worst thing that (can) possibly happen?… a flak-hit in the bomb tray? A fire in one of our wing tanks?…One by one I hauled my worst fears out of the closet, as it were, and tried to face up to them. Was this the best way to conquer them? I wasn’t sure.”

He continued, “I thought of my grandfather, who had fought in the Civil War, and my father, who had served in both the Spanish-American War and in the First World War? ‘Were you afraid?’ I’d asked as a youngster back in Indiana, Pennsylvania, when we talked about Dad’s experience in France. I could remember the faraway look in his eyes as he nodded. ‘Every man is, son,’ he said softly. ‘Every man is.’ But then he would always add something else. ‘Just remember that you can’t handle fear all by yourself, son. Give it to God. He’ll carry it for you.'”

Stewart said, “I had no illusions about the mission that was coming up… I had done all I could. I had faced each fear and handed it over to God. And now, no matter what might happen, I knew that He would be with me. In this world or the next.”

The biographer writes: “He was.”

In late 1942, just before his son Jimmy left for England, Alexander Stewart sent him a letter, one that excelled anything Jimmy had ever received from his father. His tall, strong, quiet-spoken father, the man of little emotion, had written:

” My dear Jim boy,

Soon after you read this, you will be on your way to the worst sort of danger. I have had this in mind for a long time and I am very much concerned… but Jim, I am banking on the enclosed copy of the 91st Psalm. The thing that takes the place of fear and worry is the promise of these words. I feel sure that God will lead you through this mad experience…. I can say no more. I only continue to pray. Good-by, my dear. God bless you and keep you. I love you more than I can tell you.”

Biographer Eliot writes, “It was the first time his father had ever actually told Jimmy that he loved him. When he finished the letter, he cried himself into a deep and fitful sleep.” (Interestingly, in a footnote, Eliot quotes much of the 91st Psalm for readers who do not own a Bible.)

After his final mission, one in which he had lost several of his men, Stewart got out of his plane and collapsed. General Hap Arnold later wrote, “I just told him I didn’t want him to fly any more combat. He didn’t argue about it.”

It was as close to a nervous breakdown as one could get. Stewart spent weeks in a hospital until the doctors decided he was well enough to be released. He never again flew into battle.

Eliot writes, “Back in the States, he refused to talk about the war to reporters, answer any questions about his own experiences, the missions he flew, or his physical and emotional health. He also informed MGM that he would refuse to play soldiers in combat in any future films they might have planned for him…. Privately, he told friends that he would never fly again, not as a pilot or, unless absolutely necessary, a passenger.”

Fears come and go. Conquer one and another arises with its own peculiar set of challenges.

We must learn to deal with them or they will dominate our lives and destroy every relationship.

“I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I will trust.” (Psalm 91:2)