Daily Prayer, 12 April

This prayer is little out of order. I decided to put it here as a date-related commemoration rather than when it was prayed during deployment, which was right before we left our home waters after completing our certification to deploy. The crew had proved that they could fight the ship in a variety of warfare domains and in many different circumstances. The crew was justifiably flush with victory, they had done very well on their exercise. But in an era where combatants may not even see each other except on a screen, it is even more important to remember what the dots on those screens actually represent. To their credit most of the crew does, and the recent times our ships have fired their weapons in anger have proven this awareness of our crews, but if we expect them to conduct themselves with honor on the battlefield, then we must constantly teach them what honor looks like before we get there, especially since a notion such as honor has become rather outdated and treated more as a punch line than a trait worthy of admiration. Men and women charged with the use of deadly force don’t have the option of going without it. Neither should we.

On the morning of April 12^th, 1865, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, General Robert E. Lee commanding, marched into the small town of Appomattox Courthouse, VA to surrender their arms. As the 28,000-man column passed in review before the victorious Union Army of the Potomac, General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain called his brigade to attention and ordered a salute of the passing, now defeated, enemies, an honor that was promptly returned.

General Chamberlain was wounded twice by confederate bullets, and was twice awarded the recently created Congressional Medal of Honor for action against this very army. Therefore, he might have been forgiven if he’d ignored or even taunted them as they walked by, rather than salute them. In his memoirs, Chamberlain—a staunch abolitionist, even before the war—explains himself this way:

“The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;–was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured?”

Though they had been enemies on the battlefield, General Chamberlain nevertheless saw their humanity, and knew it to be something we all share.

We just finished a complicated exercise testing our ability to make war, and the power at our ship’s disposal is both awesome and well-handled. But it occurs to me that as warfare becomes more and more remote and more and more automated, we must be careful that we don’t fall into the trap of dehumanizing our enemies. To do that is to risk losing our own humanity.

It is proper and right to strive for and then celebrate victory on the battlefield. Everyone can and should be justifiably proud of your accomplishments, and I am proud to serve with all of you, but let us never forget at what cost comes war, and that even the most vicious enemy is, like us, created in the image of God. Otherwise we may treat war too cavalierly and enter into it too lightly. As General Lee himself said at Fredericksburg, “It is good that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it.”

LET US PRAY

Almighty God, I thank you for the men and women who are the crew of this ship, and for their willingness to make the sacrifices necessary to serve in defense of our nation. I pray You will honor their sacrifices by granting them the strength and skill they need so that, should the need ever arise, this ship will defeat any adversary. Help us to remember, however, the humanity that we share with our enemies so that we won’t become vicious in battle or dishonorable in our conduct. May we never take our roles as warfighters too lightly nor esteem ourselves too greatly, for You are the Lord of the Heavenly Armies and to You we humbly bow and in Your Name we pray.

AMEN