These are days when heroes abound. Doctors and nurses and support staff wage war against an invisible enemy taking the lives of thousands worldwide. Equally heroic are the men and women who run the risks of infection in order to drive the trucks and stock the stores, serve the public, and keep us safe. Each is a hero.
“As his share who goes down to the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage: they shall share alike” (I Samuel 30:24).
When Roland Q. Leavell returned home from the “Great War” in Europe–-i.e., the First World War–he had a problem. People wanted to hear stories of the war, of battles, of heroism. He had none.
Roland Q. Leavell was in his 20s, single, and with a bachelor’s degree from seminary. He had pastored small churches and had been sent to “the front” as a representative of the YMCA. In those days, there was no USO to take care of American troops overseas, and fledgling organizations and ministries were still trying to figure these things out.
According to Dottie L. Hudson’s book “He Still Stands Tall: The Life of Roland Q. Leavell,” based on her father’s diaries, Roland did a hundred small things in that war: He led Bible studies, he counseled soldiers, he ran a canteen, he taught French to a few soldiers, and he drove an ambulance. At one point, he inhaled poisonous gas the Germans sprayed into the air. The one time he shot a gun was as a joke, pointed into the air across no-man’s-land. “I guess I didn’t kill over 50,” he remarked in his diary.
And when he got home, people wanted to hear his stories.