July 6

A Different View of the War

Jim Goodson was taken prisoner when his P-51 was shot down over Germany. On the way to a Luftwaffe interrogation center in Frankfurt he was taken off the train in Berlin to change to another line. He learned from a guard that he was at the Friederichstrasse Bahnhof. He was shocked to realize that he was at the site of a major raid scheduled for that day he had helped plan. He also remembered that the Bahnhof was the main aiming point for one thousand bombers. When the air raid warnings sounded at noon he knew what was coming.

We took refuge in bomb shelters. Because I had taken part in planning the raid, I knew who would be leading the different boxes of bombers and my own fighters would be escorting. It’s a very different view of the war, when you’re up there at 30,000 feet and you see only little flashes and puffs of smoke. You don’t think of people. Sitting in an air raid shelter with Germans all around you, and the crashing, deafening noise above you is something else…It brought home a war pilots very seldom see. Digging women and children out of the rubble we had caused was profoundly affecting.268

Few of us ever have an epiphany of this magnitude. We continue through life without realizing how our actions are affecting others. This can be an especially acute problem for men. We often spend years dedicated to careers and causes before looking closely at the effect on our families. Too often it takes a crisis to wake us up to important things we’re neglecting. It would be far better to hone our listening skills every day with wives, children, and friends, making sure we know as we go along what our bombs are doing at ground level.

Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

—Proverbs 12:18