WW II and Beyond — A Story of Commitment

September 30, 2009 By Claire
Posted in Spouse and Family

Have you ever read a story that captures your mind, your heart and your imagination? I visit a blog regularly that is dedicated to strengthening military marriages. The blog is called Excellent or Praiseworthy, and they offer a deployment love challenge as well as devotions meant to encourage and inspire marital strength and fidelity. It is an outreach of campus crusade for Christ. The story below was so beautiful that I wanted to share it here. I was truly blessed reading of this young couple — both serving in the Army during WWII, and how they were only married for 2 days before they faced a separation for more than 3-years! Letters were their only way to communicate their love for one another, but their commitment to their marriage only grew stronger through the time they were separated. Read on!

WW II and Beyond — A Story of Commitment -

Written by Linda

Feb 14

EXCERPT

It’s Valentine’s Day, 2008. I wanted to wait for this special day to share with you a tender (yet powerful) story of a young Christian couple who kept their marriage strong and vibrant during World War II. Married for two days, they were separated by active duty for three and a half years (he on the front lines in Germany and she serving in the Pacific, in Papua New Guinea). When I met them in 1990, they had been married for almost fifty years. They went on, from that point, to live and love together another 10 years before he passed away. Recently I sat down with Louise, now living with her daughter and son-in-law, and recorded her story.

Louise and Eugene met while attending classes at Gardner-Webb College in North Carolina in 1940. . . . and Louise is quick to say that what attracted her to Eugenewas that he was a good Christian and he always treated her like a lady.

But after two years of dating he was drafted, and it wasn’t long before he found out that he was going to be assigned overseas. Unbeknownst to Eugene, Louise had also decided to join the Army through the prompting of her brother. When Eugene found out that Louise had enlisted, he said that he thought it was a good idea. “I’ll know where you are and you’ll know where I am,” he said. Then over the phone fromDelaware he asked if he could come down to where she was training at Ft. Stewartand “get married before I leave.” She said yes, as did her father and her commanding officer. They were married, both in uniform, in Savannah, Georgia, in January of 1942. Two days later he left for training to prepare for Germany. They did not see one another until the war ended in 1945.

Intrigued by her courageous story, I had to ask several key questions that evening:

Knowing that your husband was in combat every day, how would you pray for him?
Louise answered, “I would just turn him over to the Lord. I told Him that I couldn’t do anything but He could do it all.”

She added a story of witnessing to her bunkmate, “Well, I had my Bible with me, and my bunkmate from New York. . . she asked me one night ‘Louise, what are you reading?’ And I said, ‘My Bible.’ Then she said, ‘Why are you reading?’ And I said, ‘Because I like to and I get my strength from the Lord’. .. I had to explain everything from beginning to end how I became a Christian. She said, ‘Louise can I see your Bible? I want to read it.’” Louise told her that the next time they would go to the PX she would see if they had a small pocket Bible. “So I bought her one. And when I would read, she would read.”

How would you and Eugene communicate with each other?
“He would write when he could, and I would write every night.” Louise told me that during one spell, she didn’t hear from Eugene for two months — and she had to go to her commanding officer to begin an investigation to try and find out what had happened. Turns out he, and others, were being hidden by a Belgium family after they were separated from their unit during the fighting in Bastogne. Louise heard from him again when he returned to his unit. Eugene and she stayed in touch with that brave family even after the war.

Did he ever talk about the war after he got home?
“A little bit, but not too much. He wouldn’t. . . He was mum on a lot of stuff. Whether he wanted to forget. . . .I don’t know. . . .So I just let him talk when he wanted to. . . . In the summer time, if it came a thunder cloud, I would have to put him in a car and go to ride. He thought it was guns shooting. It took him a good while to get over that, but he did.”  CONTINUE READING

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