Category: war

America, Citizenship, Culture, Ethics, history, Hope, Leadership, mass murder, Race, Story, Theology, war6 Comments

Not Everything is a Deal

Gary Furr

A conviction, my late friend Jim McClendon used to say, is that which, should you cease to believe it would mean you were no longer you. The sacrifice of Ukraine and appeasement of Vladimir Putin is appalling. Who are we? I’ve watched our new Vice President scold Germany and Europe for not holding hands with the far right. In a press conference, the President essentially turned the three year war into a giant misunderstanding that should never have happened at all. There is plenty of blame to go around, going back to failure to oppose the annexation of Crimea enough … Continue reading Not Everything is a Deal

Ash Wednesday, Ethics, Hope, humanity, Justice, Theology, Ukraine, violence, war1 Comment

A Prayer for the Russian People

Gary Furr

Today I pray for the people of Russia, passive victims of a sociopathic leader, taken into war without their voices and opinions being considered, lacking full knowledge or with the benefit of a factual and free press we pray. Lord have mercy. For a nation whose history is replete with czars, dictators and authoritarians, who have crushed dissent, stolen her wealth, compromised her people’s trust and repelled her Christian heritage unless it bow the knee to the idols. Lord have mercy. For mothers and grandmothers, whose young sons have been sent on a mission of bloodshed against kinsmen for no … Continue reading A Prayer for the Russian People

America, D-Day, Death, violence, war

D-Day

Gary Furr

I lived my third-grade year in Clarksville, Tennessee, an army town dominated then by the presence of Fort Campbell, Kentucky and the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles, one of the most storied units in American military history. On Sunday afternoons, especially when company came into town like Uncle Vance and Aunt Hazel, we’d go out after church to the base where paratroopers would jump out of planes and land on a field where visitors could come and watch. It was cheap entertainment.

Then we’d go to the military museum, the Don F. Pratt Memorial Museum.  General Don Forrester Pratt (July 12, 1892—June 6, 1944) was the assistant division commander (ADC) of the 101st and was in the lead glider that flew into France that landed behind the lines for the invasion.  The plane crashed and General Pratt died of a broken neck. He was the highest-ranking officer killed on D-Day.

The museum had jeeps, planes, artifacts, but the most chilling were items confiscated from Hitler’s “Eagles Nest” retreat by soldiers. We were especially terrified by Hitler’s walking cane, and by items belonging to Herman Goering. World War II was still alive in Continue reading “D-Day”