Letter: Reflections on Veterans Day 2012

My son, Captain Eric Jabs, U.S. Navy, and I, have been privileged to serve this blessed nation for almost thirty years as active service people, which has taken us to Europe, Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of this changing world.  We are thankful for the opportunities to have served. Also, we are thankful for the 200,000 American troops who are stationed in over l50 nations throughout the world. We are thankful that the majority of these men and women are disciplined, honorable, and qualified in coping with battle stress which most of us cannot imagine. Nevertheless, when military laws are violated, processes of adjudication are administered. But the Christian conscience is very valuable, and as former General Jack Vessey said, as he pointed to the Bible in the Pentagon, with his gesture, prayer is vital for any solder. 

When I was privileged to lead a bayonet charge (showing the other soldiers in training), in the basic training course with the llth Airborne Division at Ft. Campbell, I also put them to a mental test when in a Chaplain's session after the bayonet course...I stood up to say that the Bible insists that we are not supposed to kill?  Well, this issue has never left me, and I assume, my son, for it is at the heart and soul of all military training.  This is the reason that Martin Luther stated: "Repentance is necessary for each and all of us." 

In living the majority of our years here in South Carolina, and again being blessed to have traveled this globe as service men, researchers, and as Christ mission men, we are convinced that Dr. Martin Luther was right when he wrote that powerful work concerning "Soldiers too can be saved." The great German Reformer understood better than the majority of historical movers that the mystery of evil has to be restrained. But Luther, went further, and insisted that the leader, whether military or civilian, must be governed by the teachings of the Centurion, who as a Roman Regimental Officer, insisted that the suffering and dying of Jesus Christ was for him and even the enemy. 

Having lived in the American South, for much of my life, I have to come to appreciate its immersion into the sorrow of the War Between the States (Civil War), where 622,000 deaths occurred.  This was a tragedy that in sheer numbers has not been duplicated.  But the primary lesson was when President Lincoln, in that Memorial Address, in the Spring of l865, stated clearly that the entire nation must bind up the wounds on both sides, to take care of widows on both sides, and to bring healing to the wounded to both North and South.  This is the most far reaching ethical and moral statement ever given after any war, and therefore, he has to ranked as the greatest American President ever. 

In the North and South, there were people in Mr. Lincoln's own family that differed with the President. Being privileged to have been a veteran, and again being privileged to have studied military and civilian history intensely with WW II and after, the model of Lincoln's conciliation means that the Versailles Treaty after WW I, and the Yalta and Potsdam WW II negotiations with defeated Germany were acts of injustice. As a historian, and on the basis of research, like in the classic work R.M. Douglas, in "Orderly and Humane," and in the seminal work of others like Dr. Alfred de Zayis, and Dr. Bregitte Neary, that an act of "ethnic cleansing" or even genocide was done to German civilians after l945...or the end of the war.  Of course, the demonism of Hitler is very well known, and he had to be defeated, but war against civilians by anyone has to be repudiated. 

My Uncle Walter and other relatives had to fight against their own families, like in the American South, but war against civilians is contrary to enlightened US Military law and the Geneva Convention.  I studied the tragedy of My Lai in l968, and in speaking with a genuine American Officer at the time, Colonel Tom Fincher, in his own words...would have court martialed the junior officer who committed the crimes against Vietnam Civilians. 

Finally, in the living and serving this blessed nation, the United States, I will remember both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and Dr. Martin Luther and General Max Taylor...all of whom saw even the enemy as someone to be converted.  We give thanks for the sacrifices that have been given and remembering those first brave souls who came to our Jamestown, Virginia settlement, in about l607, that indeed this nation was called forth to do justice and mercy to all. Therefore, for those who lay wounded today—and they are in the thousands—and for those who died in service to their country, I will still go with my beloved son, Captain Eric, and meet the bodies as they arrive at Dover, Delaware, and know that a merciful God is truly merciful with those who live and with those who die.

Dr. Albert Jabs

Lexington, S.C.