What did you do in the war, Daddy?

“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 to the States from the “Great War” in Europe–what would come to be called the First World War–he had a problem.  People wanted to hear stories of the war, of battles, of heroism. The problem was he didn’t have any.

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 his efforts for the Y:  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 Boches 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.

Everywhere he went, friends and families expected to hear tales from their veterans, stories of heroism, of close calls, of men sacrificing their lives for the cause of freedom.

“Everyone wanted to hear about the war and what it was like to be in the middle of guns and enemies.  Admittedly, this grew into ‘wild lies’ about the dangers and experiences.  This exaggeration and fabrication became distasteful to Roland.  He had had enough pretense about bravery.  He wished they could talk about something else.”  When he returned home to Oxford, Mississippi, he said, “I know we are in for another siege of talk, talk, talk, but I’ll be glad to see Oxford in spite of everything.”

But here’s the thing.

Andy Rooney, veteran of the Second World War who became a celebrated TV newsman, said to us in a conference in New Orleans, “You know why soldiers don’t want to talk about their experiences when they come home from the war?  They don’t have any!  Only about 10 percent ever fired a gun at the enemy!  The rest were in support–driving trucks, medics, feeding the army, and a thousand other things.”

We’re told that 18 million people died in World War I.  Historians call it one of the most bungled events in history, completely unnecessary, and caused by the tangle of alliances all the countries of the world had entered into in the years prior.  Even so, the country calls and we send our young men (and now young women) into battle.

Someone has to drive the ambulance.  Someone has to run the canteen.  Someone needs to lead the Bible studies and counsel the soldiers.

Someone has to do what young Roland Leavell did.

Someone has to do the grunt work. 

The principle of I Samuel 30:24 became a national principle.  After David ruled that those who stayed behind to guard the baggage would share the same reward as the warriors who rode on and faced the enemy, “he made it a statute and an ordinance for Israel to this day” (30:25).

Once while I was sketching at a wedding reception, my daughter-in-law, the financial secretary at a Mobile church, introduced me to Angie and her husband.  “Angie is on our church staff,” Julie said.  I said, “What do you do there?”  Angie laughed, “I clean toilets!”  She was a custodian.

I said, “ My friend, you one of the most important ministries in church.  Think how awful it would be to come to church and find the bathrooms dirty and smelly.  Scripture tells us that what we do for the church, Jesus takes personally.”

Whether you are mowing the lawn, cleaning the toilets, teaching the children, or feeding the hungry, you are doing it for Jesus.

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance (Colossians 3:23-24).  After all, “It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.”

Winston Churchill had a problem.  He had to put a stop to a strike of the coal miners which was threatening to throw England into a greater crisis while the country was fighting the Nazis.  Churchill summoned all his oratorical powers and went before their union leaders on October 31, 1942.

Toward the end of his short speech, Churchill said, “We shall not fail, and then some day, when children ask: ‘What did you do to win this inheritance for us, and to make our name so respected among men?’ one will say: ‘I was a fighter pilot”; another will say: ‘I was in the Submarine Service’; another: ‘I marched with the Eighth Army’; a fourth will say: ‘None of you could have lived without the convoys and the Merchant Seamen’; and you in your turn will say, with equal pride and with equal right: ‘We cut the coal!’”

My dad cut the coal.  After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when the nation’s young men rushed to enlist to fight, Dad’s brothers Marion, John L. and Edwyn were accepted.  But Carl was turned away.  He had three children and a fourth on the way, and since he was a coal miner, the nation would be needing him to remain right where he was.  “So, go home and do your job.”

Just outside the front door of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, bricks on the sidewalk are dedicated to men and women who served with valor during the Second World War.  I bought one for my dad.  It reads: Carl J. McKeever.  He dug the coal that powered the ships.

Someone has to stay behind and dig the coal, clean the toilets, and run the canteens.

Let us be faithful in whatever role God has given us.  And while we will sit and listen to others with their tales of glory and conquest, let us not think for one minute that our contributions mattered little.  After all, “it is the Lord Christ whom you serve” (Colossians 3:24).

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