Some Personalized Military Events: Present And Past (2025)
Those historically brave and effective British and allied flyers saved England from Germany’s planned Step 2: The panned invasion by ship across the English Channel once the skies were dominated. Fortunately, the skies remained secured by the brave Brit-Allied pilot team, and Hitler turned his aggression elsewhere. Said English Prime Minister Winston Churchill following this aerial victory: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” When the U.S. was forced by Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor (12-7-1941) to enter World War II, those American pilots who had fought with the RAF became a part of our own Army Air Force (1941-1945).
Then, passing away, previously in December last year, and unbelievably also at the age of 105 (!), American Navy sailor, Warren Upton, was noted as the last survivor of the Japanese bombing of numerous naval ships docked at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (12-7-1941). Upton was serving on the docked American battleship, USS Utah, and was getting ready to shave that morning, at the time of the Japanese torpedo attack. According to Wikipedia: “In the first minutes of the Japanese attack, the USS Utah was hit by two torpedoes, which caused serious flooding. ‘Utah’ quickly rolled over and sank. While 58 men onboard were killed, the vast majority of the crew were able to escape.” And the fortunate ones included Warren Upton. As was later reported: “The then-22-year-old swam ashore to Ford Island where he jumped into a trench to avoid Japanese planes strafing the area. After about 28-minutes, a truck came by and took him to safety.” The U.S. lost many highly valued navy surface vessels that day, either sunk (3) or damaged beyond repair (16), with great loss of American Navy lives (2,000+), as a result of that surprise enemy attack. But very fortunately, all of our Pearl-based aircraft carriers were out at sea training during that early morning attack, in hindsight, an absolute miracle for the now temporarily-hobbled American Pacific wartime naval defense.
Back now to the present, this past December, having developed pneumonia, proud U.S. Navy veteran, Warren Upton, passed away in a hospital in Los Gatos, California.
In 1940, at the age of just 14, Joseph (Joe) Johnson ran away from his unhappy home in Memphis and enlisted in the U.S. Army, having apparently managed to convince the recruiter that he was 18! After basic training in California, now as a “teenage soldier,” Joe was shipped off to the Philippines where he became attached to the Army’s 31st Infantry Division. There “he served bravely on Bataan and Corregidor until General Jonathan Wainwright’s surrender of all allied forces in the Philippines on May 6, 1942.” From there, Joe Johnson’s life changed traumatically. He became a prisoner of the Japanese! Beaten repeatedly in various labor camps and nearly starved to death. Not by any means a religious person, one night, in absolute despair, feeling near death, Joe looked up to heaven and prayed: ‘Lord, have mercy.’ That night, “a mysterious wind stirred up a cloud and it began to rain. Joe drank the rainwater that seeped through the (roof) slats above him.” As if in answer to his simple prayer, soon thereafter, Joe was sent to a ‘better’ camp.
At the end of the war, Joe Johnson was shipped home and was off-loaded on a stretcher. After recovering physically, he continued to suffer from PTSD, sadly was twice divorced, and ended up spending time in a hospital’s mental unit. Later, as he reached retirement age, Joe happened to see on his TV the preaching of Atlanta-based pastor, Dr. Charles Stanley. “Smart fella, Joe concluded. Stanley “laid things out plain and simple. He was saying how God can spare you from troubles, but God doesn’t always do that. Sometimes you go through the valley of the shadow, yet God walks with you. Only God keeps you going. Well, I knew lots about that valley.” Joe became a devoted Christian that day and with it, observed his friends, a changed man. Said Joe, toward the end of his life: “Maybe God had been working in my life, even if I didn’t know it was Him at work.” Teenage American soldier and lengthy WW II Japanese POW, Joe Johnson passed away in 2017 at the age of 91. At peace at last.
Now known as the Christmas Truce of 1914, on Christmas eve of that year, amidst a hostile battlefield in France, as German and British troops planned to face each other in yet another of the continuing rounds of painful fighting, regardless of the significance of that special Christian night, suddenly in the unexpected quiet of the evening, the British troops could hear the sounds of “Silent Night” being sung, in German, from the opposing trenches. Understandably surprised, the Brits then soon followed with Christmas carols, as well. Eventually, it’s been reported, troops from both sides began to sing, together, the hymn, “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” Remembered one British rifleman: “I thought, this is a most extraordinary thing. Two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war.” When the caroling stopped, one German soldier was said to have shouted across “no man’s land:’ “Tomorrow you no shoot, we no shoot.”
So, then on Christmas morning, with due caution, soldiers from both trench lines began to move across the field separating the two forces and “began fraternizing.” The opposing soldiers “exchanged items they had, such as cigars, food, and alcohol, offered as gifts to one another.” Eventually, troops from each side are said to have played games of soccer. As witnessed, “there was not an atom of hate on either side.” After a while, as officers from both sides, began to fear that this apparent temporary ‘truce’ might lead to morale issues and an unwillingness to “carry on the fight, each side’s soldiers were ‘forced’ to return to their own trenches.
Wrote Hunter Oswald, the article’s author: “The Christmas truce of 1914 was not just an escape from the horrors of war. It was a miracle that defied a world at war.” One of the German soldiers was said to have remembered witnessing “a single star that stood still in the sky directly above the soldiers, interpreted (back then) by many as a special sign.” That star over no man’s land on Christmas Eve night in 1914 was the very reminder of Jesus Christ’s miraculous birth. So then, a few hours of merciful peace amidst brutal armed conflict early in World War I. Quickly replaced by weapons bombardments, deadly charges, and killing, post-Christmas Day, a momentary ‘truce,’ likely and regrettably never to be experienced again, as so much of today’s warfare rains down from the skies from great altitudes and distances.
(Fact Sources: Last living RAF pilot in the Battle of Britain dies at 105 years of age via breitbart.com, Breitbart London, 3-18-25; Oldest living U.S. Navy survivor of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has died via nypost.com, Associated Press, 12-28-24; God seemed to have answered the life-pleading prayer of a young, near-death, of an American soldier POW via foxnews.com, Marcus Brotherton, 12-3-22; The Christmas Truce of 1914 via spectator.org, Hunter Oswald, 12-24-24).