A A Season of War:@ LDS Servicemen in World War II Ricks College Forum November 16, 2000 Paul H. Kelly Describing the events of his day, the Book of Mormon Prophet Omni wrote: AAnd it came to pass that. . .we had many seasons of serious war and bloodshed@ (Omni verse 3). He might have been describing our day. The twentieth century was marked with A many seasons of serious war." World Wars One and Two, Korea, Viet Nam, The Gulf War and many A police actions.@ Today, I will talk about World War II, and some of those who participated in it. World War II engulfed the earth in the most deadly struggle in recorded history. Virtually "every nation, tongue and people" were involved. For The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints it was essential that the United States and its allies win this war. Had the Axis PowersBHitler, Mussolini of Italy, and Japan=s Tojo had their way, the spread of the Gospel would have ceased. But in the timetable of the Lord, they had no chance of permanently prevailing. As the Lord rhetorically asks: AHave I not made the earth? Do I not hold the destinies of all the armies of the nations of the earth?@ (Doctrine and Covenants 117:6). Missionary work by the LDS Church continued in Germany until the fall of 1939. Beginning in June 1935, my grandfather, Philemon M. Kelly, presided over the Swiss-German Mission, which encompassed all of Switzerland and the western half of Germany. In a letter to my parents, dated 16 September 1936, he writes: [Note the careful language he uses to get the letter through German censorship] AThursday spent the entire day traveling to Hamburg. Had a real conversation with a college professor in which he gave many current views of religion and political conditions as he now saw them in Germany. The entire distance was a pleasant series of surprises as new landscapes and green verdure was everywhere apparent. These dear people are a wonderfully progressive and industrious folk. They are persistently endeavoring to adjust themselves to a new environment found after the (world) war. This they are accomplishing and one is well able to note their progress in the last year. Many soldiers were seen returning from Nürnberg where they held the Reich=s Party Tag (day). This is a wonderful get-together of the present directing class and their many followers.@ My own recollections of this war are limited. I was four years old when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. I remember the stars in the windows of many homes, indicating that a son, or husband, was serving from that homeBor in many cases, a different colored star, symbolizing a life given in that service. In downtown St. Anthony, Idaho, on May 5, 1945, the day Germany surrendered, people drove up and down Bridge Street honking their horns and shouting out their windows in jubilation. I went home, got in Dad= s car, parked in the street at the side of our home, and honked the horn until the battery went dead. To you young womenBgirls, if you think the ratio of men to women at Ricks College is out of balance now, in the graduating class of 1945 there were no men! As the war progressed, the Church made giant strides as young Latter-day Saint men and women left their communities in "the tops of the mountains" and were thrust into the Allied Armed Forces. As is true of every difficulty the Church and its people have endured, through the trials and hardships of the war the Lord winnowed much grain from the chaff. When these young men were assigned to their units many of their comrades had the opportunity of meeting a Mormon for the first time. I believe that during World War II, with the help of men and women like these, we saw the Church take steps in its process of coming Aout of obscurity." Latter-day Saint men fought in every theater of actionBEurope, Africa, and the Pacific. Some were doctors, some mechanics, pilots, gunners, infantry, officers, or enlisted men. They performed acts of great courage. Some became prisoners of war. Many have told me they felt the Lord= s hand moving them Aout of the way.@ None professes to know why he survived and others did not. Much they had to do was mundane, those things necessary to sustain life. Those sent into battle were required to perform acts unthinkable under any other circumstance; take lives and destroy property. Confronting the temptations found off the battlefield required every bit as much courage as it did to hold steady in the face of the bombs and bullets of combat. I submit that the faith and trials of these men and women is as significant as that of our pioneer forebears. Seated there are men and women, who, when they were the ages of you young people, closed their books, left their classes, their homes, girlfriends, and in many cases, young brides, to go fight a bitter war. Some of their brothers, cousins, or uncles did not come home. It has been a remarkable experience to gather their stories. They are extraordinary people. Only now have some of them been willing to share their experiences. I have laughed, marveled, and wept with them as they told me their stories. In a short time they will all have passed to the other side. The debt we owe these men and women is greater than I had imagined (Parenthetically, Thomas Neibaur, who fought in the first World War, the first Mormon to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, was from Sugar City, Idaho). Professors Robert Freeman and Dennis Wright who direct the ASaints at War@ archival project at Brigham Young University, have written: AIn 1944, at the height of WWII, over 100,000 LDS Servicemen were in the military.@ Considering there were then only 860,000 Church members, that is an astonishing number. That is one in nine, or nearly 12% of the total Church. If we assume that only half of these men were living the GospelBand I believe it was much higher than thatBit was a missionary force of 50,000; nearly as many as we now have with a membership of 11,000,000. While my intent is to tell the stories of those who bore the battle, to understand what they accomplished, you need a backdrop of events as they unfolded, which affected the course of the war and the lives of the men and women who were the warriors. The roots of World War II grew out of World War I. The Great War, as it was called, fought largely in France, ended with the signing of the Versailles Treaty on November 11, 1918. There was no real winner; fatigue and despair stopped the fighting. Billed as the war Ato end war and make the world safe for democracy,@ it accomplished neither. Germany, as the primary protagonist, was assessed huge reparations, which she was unable to pay. Spiraling inflation, hopelessness, and the Great Depression gripping the world, led to economic uncertainty and unrest among the German people. By promising to restore order and national pride, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in 1933. Hitler bullied his way around Europe, snatching territory and commandeering world headlines, and setting the people of the world on edge with his startling preachments of hatred. In August 1939, Hitler and the Russian dictator Josef Stalin became allies, and a month later, on September 1, 1939, invaded Poland. This brought England, and at England= s urging, France, into the fight. Neither country was prepared. France shortly fell under the Nazi heel as Hitler= s armies occupied their land and took over their government. Then Hitler=s air force, the Luftwaffe, began to bombard England. Hitler=s Italian ally, Benito Mussolini sent troops to Greece and North Africa, occupying Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia, and attempted to seize the Suez Canal. The United States struggled to remain neutral, but soon became the supplier of materiel under the Lend-Lease program, pumping aid into Great Britain to help it withstand the German onslaught. With this the United States acquired a vital interest in keeping the Atlantic sea lanes open against German submarines. In June 1941 Hitler turned on Russia in a massive surprise attack that American military leaders predicted would flatten Russia in a matter of weeks. Whatever Hitler= s reasons for this change of direction, it allowed England needed time to prepare. In that, I see the hand of the Lord. As early as 1931, Japanese military leaders got control of the government of Japan and launched a large scale military campaign in Manchuria. By 1940 Japan controlled twenty million square miles of land and ocean stretching from Manchuria in the North to Java in the south, and from Burma east to the Marshall Islands. It was a territory five times as large as Nazi Germany ever dominated. Much of the world=s attention was focused on the dramatic events in Europe. Less concern was accorded Japan. Hitler=s assault on the Soviets relieved the Japanese worry of an attack from Siberia, and Japan moved into Indo-China and Thailand. Japan then began looking to the Americas. On December 8th 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an address to Congress stated, AYesterday, December 7, 1941B a date which will live in infamyBthe United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.@ Within four hours Congress voted to declare war on Japan. Three days later Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, and on December 11th , Congress reciprocated, and the United States was at war on two huge fronts. Then began the gargantuan task of inducting men, training, arming and organizing them into the Armies, Navies, and Air Forces necessary to do battle in so many places simultaneously. I don= t think it is possible to overstate the distress felt by our people, indeed the people of all the world, at the onslaught of World War II. It was by no means apparent that we would prevail. Germany and her allies Japan and ItalyBthe Axis powers, were formidable, well trained, ruthless opponentsBand they had a running start on us everywhere. As we look back we can see pivotal events which we now know turned the tide of war in our favor. For example, at the Battle of Midway, we sank four Japanese aircraft carriers which the Japanese could never replace, and which were vital to their war making capacity. We did not then know it but that was the beginning of the end of the Japanese Navy. Tom Brokaw, anchor of NBC Television News and author of the book AThe Greatest Generation,@ writes that the soldiers of World War II came from the communities of our country, out of the depths of the Great Depression, and entered military service. After rescuing the world from ruthless foes they came home to build this nation to unprecedented economic and material heights. Our Mormon boys were part of this effort. They came from similar backgrounds, performed similar tasks, took their part in building up this great nation, and participated in spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ around the world. Like those about whom Brokaw writes, our LDS men have been modest in speaking of their wartime experiences, feeling that what they did was not of particular note. I have learned that there were units of the Church, called LDS Servicemen=s Groups, established around the globeBon the ships at sea, on the islands of the Pacific, in Russia, India, Italy, France, in Prisoner of War camps, and all across the United States. Lieutenant Harold W Gunn, a POW at Stalag Luft III, the camp on which the movie AThe Great Escape@ was based, told me about a Branch being established in their camp. He said: AI found it interesting that when the Catholics wished to meet, they had to wait until the Germans were willing to bring in a Priest. It was there I gained an appreciation for the wisdom of the Lord in organizing the Priesthood as He has done in our Church. We were not dependent upon the Germans for the privilege of worshiping.@ With that background in mind, let me relate some of their stories: The Japanese strike on American military forces at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 was a cunningly conceived, well coordinated, surprise attack. It was the event which galvanized the American people and plunged us into World War II. Days of great moments become imprinted on our minds along with where we were and what we did on a fateful day. On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Hyrum Kershaw had just returned from Church services at the LDS Institute adjacent to the University of Idaho campus in Moscow, when he heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The reaction of everyone in the dining hall was stunned silence. We were all caught off guard. We had been following events in Europe, but this was an unexpected development. Suddenly we were at war. Paul Ray Boren was born and raised in Pima, Arizona. On December 7, 1941 he was a Seaman 2nd Class, assigned aboard the USS New Orleans, a heavy cruiser, at Pearl Harbor. On that crucial morning the New Orleans was undergoing routine overhaul, she was without power and much of her armament was disassembled. Paul recalls: It was a beautiful morning, with a few clouds over head. Most of the crew had gone ashore that Sunday morning. My Division had the duty and I had the assignment as the Officer of the Deck= s messenger. Standing on the well deck we first heard and then saw planes flying in the clouds high above us. They dived and dropped what we thought were sand bags. Since we had seen our planes make practice runs before, we didn't think much about it until these A sand bags@ started exploding. We stood in dumbfounded amazement as we realized they were using live ammunition. We didn't even think to identify the markings on the planes. Bee Peck: One of the members of my home ward is Tess Peck, a wonderful lady. She shared with me her husband=s story. ABee@ Peck was a tank driver. At Avranches, France, on the Normandy Peninsula, only days following D-day, his unit came under intense German attack. The tank Bee was driving was struck by an armor piercing shell, which went through the tank, cut off both his legs below the knees, and set the tank on fire. In the inferno Bee reached for the open hatch in an attempt to get out before the fire found the ammunition they had on board. Providentially the flames seared the stumps of his legs so that he did not bleed to death, but as he was now a foot shorter than he had been only moments before, he struggled to reach the hatch opening. When he did, the metal scorched his left hand and he fell back into the tank. He heard someone say, ATry again, Peck, you=ll make it next time.@ He did, and managed to pull himself through the open hatch. His clothes on fire, he fell off the blistering tank. Landing on the end of one of his stumps broke one of his legs above the knee. He rolled on the ground in an attempt to smother his burning clothes. When he raised his head to call for help, a bullet creased his skull, and he passed out. When the medics finally picked him up, they did not expect him to live, but he did. Lin H. Johnson B has become one of my very good friends. He was part of Patton=s Third Army and arrived in France shortly after the D-day invasion. During the Battle of the Bulge, Lin=s unit was wheeled up from Southern France. While there is not much to laugh about in war, I got a chuckle out of this account: Our reconnaissance had indicated a Nazi Panzer division was headed down the road toward us. We were pretty jumpy wondering how much the Germans could muster against our immediate front. Our Captain took me and Joe Lowe out about a mile beyond our position in the village, to a road junction. He told us to use nitro starch to blast out foxholes in the frozen ground. We were left with a bazooka, a Browning Automatic Rifle, grenades, and ammo. Our assignment in case the Krauts attacked was to hold them off as long as possible to enable our gun battery to retreat. Makes a guy feel real good knowing he's expendable, like a round of ammunition when you squeeze off the trigger. Joe and I talked in the stillness. I noticed him becoming uncomfortable as he said he wanted to ask me something. A Are you a Mormon?@ he queried. I answered, A Yes.@ A Do Mormons believe in God?@ A Yes.@ A Do you know how to pray?@ A Yes.@ A Will you?@ A Yes.@ I had uttered many silent prayers previously but this was the first time I had done so vocally in front of a member of my unit. Joe squeezed his eyes shut as we knelt side by side in our hole. I groped for words to communicate. As I faltered Joe nudged my ribs, A Be sure to mention we didn't volunteer, we were drafted. Elmo Seeley was a tank mechanic in France and Germany: My Patriarchal Blessing promised that if I would obey the promptings of the Spirit that I would be all right. The subtle work of the Spirit kept me safe more than once. One day a tank began to move up a road when it hit an anti-tank mine. Our crew was called in to extract it. The area on both sides of the road was marshy, and the Germans had sown the road with land mines. Combat engineers came in and cleared away the mines. The sergeant who was my immediate supervisor may have been the most profane man I have ever known. I drove our maintenance tank up and was about to enter the road where the disabled tank sat. I stuck my head through the opening and the sergeant said: A I don't feel good about your going up that road. I think you can reach it with the winch and cable if you come through that field.@ I made the approach he suggested and was about to deploy the cable when an officer and his driver passed by in a jeep, and started up the road I had been about to enter. The jeep hit a mine. Both men were killed. I had not felt a warning, and wondered for many years why it was the Sergeant who "didn't feel good" about my driving up that road. Finally it came to me that had I said I didn't feel good about walking my tank up that road, this sergeant would have ridiculed my feeling and ordered me to go anyway. Thus, it was that the Lord kept his promise to me. Just a word about THE AIR WAR in Europe: Losses incurred by the bomber crews in the fall of 1943 and in early 1944 it nearly overwhelmed the United States capacity to replace these men and their equipment. During this period the German Luftwaffe dominated the skies. An American led raid on the ball bearing plants at Schweinfurt and the aircraft factories at Regensburg resulted in losses of twenty-five percent in one day. Some 600 highly trained crew members were lost on the second Schweinfurt attack. Bomber pilots told of being able to find their way home by watching the burning planes which had crashed. On a low level raid over the Ploesti oil fields in Romania, one Squadron lost seventeen of its thirty-six bombers. Despite those losses the raiders knocked out 70 percent of the production of this oil field, so vital to the Nazis. Given their loss ratios, it is a wonder that the men were willing to make these flights. That they did is remarkable. Etsel Sommer was a crew member on a B-17 shot down over Holland. Captured by the Germans, Etsell spent ten months in Stalag 17-B. He was liberated by US Forces under General Patton, on May 3, 1945. I read from his account: After being liberated we were trucked to Regensburg, where we were deloused and could take a hot shower, given physical exams and issued new and clean clothing. We were then flown to Camp Lucky Strike at LaHarve, France, where on June 1st I boarded the Liberty Ship USS Porpoise, bound for New Jersey, the United States of America. As we steamed past the Statue of Liberty and saw the beautiful American flag, I got a lump in my throat and tears flowed down my cheeks. Not wanting 2800 former POW= s to see me crying, I wiped my eyes with my hanky, then turned around and saw that everyone else was also drying their eyes (Emphasis added). Ralf T. Wilson B In November 1941 Ralf Wilson was sent to the Philippine Island of Mindanao, only days before Japan simultaneously attacked Pearl Harbor and Clark Field, on Luzon in the northern Philippines. A few weeks later his unit was ordered to surrender. He says: I was paralyzed with fear. Our captors had not yet arrived but anxiety stuck in my throat. I needed help beyond myself. Remembering my parents= teachings I determined to go off by myself and pray. In the jungle I came upon an old quarry. It was a beautiful spot. I knelt and opened my heart to the Lord, pleading for His help. After a time I heard a very clear and distinct voice say, A It= s okay Ralf, you= re going to be all right.@ Immediately, a sense of peace washed over me. The sun was shining through the trees, the birds were singing, I could hear the chatter of monkeys, and felt a sense of peace and quiet assurance. The memory of this experience stayed with me from that moment. Through the vicissitudes of the next three and a half years I never doubted that I would go home. Marine Lieutenant Ted Tuttle, later to become Elder A. Theodore Tuttle, one of the Seven Presidents of the Seventy, was a member of the unit which raised the flag on Mt. Suribachi on Iwo JimaBone of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific. His wife, Sister Marne´ Tuttle gave me his story: At 10:30 a.m., on D-day plus five, Lt. Shrier led a 40-man platoon up the hill and we took Mt. Suribachi. This was Japanese territory and when we took it we raised the American flag. While we watched from below I experienced a thrill as I saw that flag go up. Our Colonel led the men in three hip-hip-hoorays; it was a great event, but it was a small flag and could be seen for only a short distance. The Colonel turned to me and said, > Tuttle, go down to the ships along the beach and get a large battle flag. It will raise everybody= s spirits to see our flag.@ When Lt. Tuttle returned with the flag, it was taken to the top of Suribachi by Colonel Johnson= s runner, PFC Rene Gagnon. As the six men raised the flag, photographer and newsman Joe Rosenthal turned and snapped pictures. He captured the dramatic action in that photograph which is now world famous, and won for Mr. Rosenthal the Pulitzer Prize. The Marine Corp statue in Washington D.C. is modeled from it. Geraldine Kluge Gunn was a young bride when her husband, 2nd Lieutenant Hal Gunn was sent to England as a co-pilot on a B-17. The B-17 carried a crew of ten men. After his plane was hit, Hal was one of three to escape the burning plane as it plummeted downward. Jerry says: AI knew when Hal was shot down. I didn=t tell my mother that I knew, but I knew. About a week later, while I was at work, mother called. She said she wanted to fix something I really liked for supper, and wanted to be sure that I would be there. I asked, AMother, did I get a telegram?@ She was evasive. I told her she might as well tell me now, as for me to wait until supper time. Mother read the terse telegram from the Adjutant General. "I regret to inform you that the Commanding General European Area reports your husband, 2nd Lt. Harold W Gunn, missing in action since 22 June. If further details or other information of his status are received, you will be promptly notified." For the first time in my life, I fainted.@ Jerry keeps this telegram in her scrapbook. When I asked her to read it aloud into my tape recorder, she broke into tears, and could not. There were also LDS Servicemen in Allied and Enemy Countries. . . . . Missionary work in Europe had been going on almost since the Restoration of the Gospel took place. By 1939, Germany was third highest in Church membership, behind the United States and Canada. In our twelfth Article of Faith, Joseph Smith wrote: AWe believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.@ In conformity to this pronouncement, men in countries allied, or enemy to the United States of America responded to the call of their government. Horst Peter Prison B Germany As I listened to Horst Prison tell his story I was struck by how matter-of-factly he spoke. There was no anger or rancor as he told of the atrocities he witnessed or the injustices he experienced. I was awe struck, nearly in tears. Horst was drafted into Hitler=s army and among those invading France in May 1940. After the German Blitzkrieg swept the French and English armies to the beaches of Dunkirk, Hitler ordered a halt. With the men of his unit, Horst watched the British arrive in every conceivable kind of water craft to rescue those 250,000 men. It startled me when Horst told me AIf Hitler would have let us destroy the English and French troops huddled on Dunkirk we (meaning Germany) would have won the war.@ In 1941 he was included in the invasion force which attacked Russia. The Lord is mindful of His saints in whatever uniform they wear. Horst relates: AOn December 17, 1941 we were fighting near the town of Istra, about five miles before Moscow. That=s where I froze my feet and had to go to a field hospital. Others I saw had their noses or their hands frozen, some froze up their feet completely. From there I was transferred to Poland where I stayed in the hospital for seven months. My feet were almost black. The doctor wanted to amputate. I told him to wait a day or two. I prayed to my Heavenly Father. The doctor came in the next morning and saw that my feet were getting just a little color. So my feet didn't get amputated.@ Horst and Elfriede were married in January 1944, and six weeks later he returned to the Russian front. In August that same year Horst was captured by the Russians. When the war ended in May 1945 they continued to detain him at slave labor until December 1949B four years after the end of the war. The last two years of his enslavement he worked on a huge dam, all built by hand, in the Caucasus Mountains. I quote now from the interview: In Elfriede=s words, When he came home, that= s something else! His mom, his father, and one of his cousins went with me to the railway station. There were two guys came out of the train, one left right away. The other one stood there. We passed him. I said, A Wait a minute. That was him!@ I went back, and sure enough, it was Horst. But, you wouldn't have recognized himBno hair, broken teeth, dirty, unshaven. He was so swollen up, (from malnutrition) you couldn't believe it. He talked and talked >till we came home, and then he didn't open his mouth anymore. I asked: AWere you happy to see him?@ She replied: Well, I=ll tell you honestly. It was a strange manCreally. It was awfully hard in the beginning. We met when he was a young man. He was nice and gentle, but here he comes back; at first he didn't speak, and then every little thing, he was upset and screams. Just a different manBa stranger. Horst: The army changed me. All that fighting and all those dead, you see. Guys got killed to my right, to my left, behind me, to the front of me. In April, 1952 Horst, Elfriede, and their daughter came to the United States, finally settling in Montana. Earlier I told you about ABee@ Peck, the American soldier who lost his legs when a German shell went through the tank he was driving. In 1978, Bee became Bishop of the Lewistown Ward, in central Montana. In a wonderful irony, Horst Peter Prison, former German soldier, [93] served for a time as Bishop Peck= s Executive Secretary. They became good friends. Cyril O. Burt B Letter home, written May 2, 1945, the day the Germans in Italy capitulated: Dear Dad, Mom, and allB I wish I could describe the way these Italian people have been acting as we have been advancing, pushing the Krauts back. They go hog wild. They stand along the roads on both sides and wave, shake hands, shout, sing, ring church bells, throw flowers, paper, bread, food, etc., to us. They treat us like kings. Yesterday we were on the march and it was raining to beat heck, and by george, those people stood in the rain and cheered and shouted, shook hands with us and really showed us that they are glad to see us. Naturally it makes us feel swell... I'm so happy about this > war news= that I can't hardly sit still long enough to write this letter. . . Your loving sonBCyril. The influence of our LDS Servicemen on their associates was wide ranging. During my mission, a decade following the war, I met many who told me that during the War they had a buddy who was a Mormon. Who can tell the extent which the combined efforts of all who served in that war have had during their lives in building the Kingdom. They have served in every position in the Church, as Home Teachers, Scout Masters, Bishops, Stake, Temple, and Mission Presidents and General Authorities. Their example and strength has helped move the Church toward its prophesied destiny. None of this could have happened had not the Axis Powers been halted by the sacrifice offered up by the soldiers, sailors, and airmen of World War II. The soldiers of World War II kept intact for us the supernal gift of freedom, so that we can continue to exercise our agencyBthe gift with which even our Eternal Father will not interfere, and which the Gospel of Jesus Christ is designed to protect and preserve. Personally I have not known the terrible terror of war, or the panic of combat, nor have I experienced the horror of seeing a comrade blown to pieces. I have seen the suffering of the wounded and helped carry the caskets of soldiers and airmen. War is an enormous waste of lives, of our nation= s resources and our coin. This is not to say that war is never necessary. Alma records the viciousness of the warring Lamanites, who Adid smite [the Nephites] in their fierce anger.@ About the defenders he records: ANevertheless, [they] were inspired by a better cause, for they were not fighting for monarchy nor power but they were fighting for their homes and their liberties, their wives and their children, and their all, yea, for their rites of worship and their church. . . .the Lord has said that: ye shall defend your families even unto bloodshed.@ It is our right and responsibility to protect. . .our Afamilies, [our] lands, [our] country, [our] rights, and [our] religion@ (Alma 43: 45-47, emphasis added). I believe it proper to reverently remember those who have borne the brunt of battle. Some years ago I took part in a project to honor the alumni of Ricks College who died in the wars occurring since its establishment in 1888. On November 11, 1988, Elder Lionel Kendrick, of the Seventy, dedicated the memorial which hangs on a wall in the Manwaring Center. In his opening remarks he told us he felt impressed to say that the Lord was allowing those noble men honored that day to be in attendance with us. After the demands of the day slowed, I went to the wall where the plaques are mounted. Alone, I approached the memorial. As I did I felt the presence of those men. I sensed their thanks for our recognizing their sacrifice, for remembering that what they did for us matters to us. Today, we say thank you to these wonderful men and women who are here with us. What you did has mattered profoundly to us. Unfortunately we have not finished having Awars and rumors of war.@ As told in scripture, dreadful battles will yet occur. "So, amid the conflict whether great or small, do not be discouraged, God is over all@ (Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, #241). AFor the day of the Lord of hosts soon cometh upon all nations. . .And upon every people. . .And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down. . .And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day@ (Isaiah 2: 12, 14, 16). That day He will invite Aall to come unto Him and partake of His goodness@ (2 Nephi 26: 33). Peace will envelop the earth as the waters cover the seas, and the righteous will find rest in Him. Then will He avenge the blood of the saints and will not suffer their cries any longer (Mormon 8:41). Christ will reign in our midst, and Ahe shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooksBnations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more@ (2 Nephi 12: 4). . . . they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint (Isaiah 40:31).