WAR! Good God, Y’all! What Is It Good For?

“Absolutely nothing!” answers the choir resolutely.  

I get Edwin Starr’s sentiment. War. I hate it. I was in a big one. Vietnam. It was sickening to see and hear the dying young men, day in and day out. And for what? Of course, most are going to agree that there is absolutely nothing that war is good for. But according to the Spirit in the prophet Isaiah, God sees it differently.

I have learned that war is history’s twisted tale. And war is like tribute that must be paid for a tribe to move into supposed greener pastures. But the pastures putrefy in the slosh of conflict. And the pride and hubris of the leaders won’t let them pause and think about what they are unleashing on the people.

Wars—A Sign of the End Times

Christ speaks of “wars and rumors of wars.” He is talking about wars that have a connection to ­the Holy Land. As you know, war is raging in Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon. Rumors abound about a regional war between Iran and their proxies and Israel and the U.S. Today’s middle east wars and rumors of a wider war are imminent. Israel at war is one of the major signs that we are living in “the time of the end.”

Christ was teaching His disciples at the temple. They asked Him what we are asking Him today, “What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world” (Matt. 24:3). The first sign was not to be deceived by counterfeit false prophets (vs. 4-5).

The second sign was about war. “And when you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” (Mark 13:7-8).  

Wars in and around the Holy Land must take place, says Christ. Must? To Get to Christ’s return and the end of the world system, there must come wars and more wars. So don’t be troubled, Christ is saying; wars must happen. “These things must come to pass” before the end comes.

But, why? These many wars shall happen because Yahweh has ordained it. Seeds of hatred have been sown. They must come to harvest. God wills these things to be. For the wars all over the world will help prepare for Christ’s return as King of God’s Kingdom. The wars will also bring on the end of the present world system. God gives a clear picture of how He will use war to prepare the way for Christ’s return.

Yahweh Foments the Wars

The Spirit of Christ in Isaiah reveals it in detail in a prophetic picture called “the burden of Egypt” in chapter 19. “Egypt” is universally recognized as a symbol of the world. Isaiah 19 is an extended metaphor of how the whole world will disintegrate at the time of the end through the wars that God allows. We see in 19:1 that Yahweh is directly involved in fomenting wars in the world. Yahweh is a Spirit that “shall come into Egypt.”

Yahweh will enter the minds of the peoples of the world. The result? “The idols of Egypt [the world] shall be moved at His presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it.” God will shake it up. A man’s idol is who or what he is in awe of. But God will shake the people’s confidence in whom or what they have trusted. He will do it through His presence. The people of the world will have their hearts melt in fear.  

God will challenge and shake up their whole belief system. “And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight everyone against his brother, and everyone against his neighbor; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom” (v. 2).

God will do this. And all this turmoil, commotion, and war will cause the world’s spirit to fail and be emptied of its efficacy and strength. The world system and its leaders and followers will be consumed by war and its fears. For God “will destroy the counsel” of the world. Entities that were trusted will fail. “And they shall seek to their idols, and to the charmers” and to all the purveyors of peace. But to no avail. War will have consumed all reason.

Then Yahweh will deliver the world [Egypt] “into the hand of a cruel lord; and a fierce king shall rule over them…” (verses 3-4). This is obviously a reference to the “man of sin,” the counterfeit world savior, the anti-Christ, the head of the one world government as seen in Revelation. How could the anti-Christ take over and rule the earth? Through national exhaustion caused by incessant war! It has always been “divide and conquer.”

However, by Yah’s great mercy, we see at the end of the chapter how the whole world transitions into blessed territories under the rule of Christ the King. It ends in a picture of reconciliation for the world and its nations, under the wings of God. After the establishment of His government throughout the earth, He will say to the nations, “Blessed be Egypt my people and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance” (Isa. 19:25). Assyria is the work of His hands!  

All these wars and the strife they cause is all orchestrated by God himself: “The work of my hands.” Through the fiery crucible of war comes God’s destiny for the nations, a glorious lasting peace throughout the earth, headed by the Prince of peace, the Son of God and the world’s Savior. HalleluYah!

Man has his own noble thoughts about war. But we must remember what He said. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD [Yahweh]”. The good news is that we can make our thoughts His thoughts by “casting down imaginations…and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (II Cor. 10:5).

All this is why wars “must come to pass” before Christ returns to establish His Kingdom.     

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

—

Antidote for Revulsion

I need your help today–help to staunch the flow of bile coursing down into the pit of my gut.

Every child crushed, every mother shredded, every face, taut with terror, injects a torrent of tyranny screaming through the shattered hallways of my nightmare mind.

Any official word from above, a word, perhaps, that will bring solace?

I need your help today. What can you say that will bandage the wounds of this old man? or the injuries now inflicted on souls of the East and the West, now cornered in a box by a bear?

For helpless now I sit at desk, manning a pen that can only fire ink salvos into the night, while tubes of terror shatter cities. Buildings with once proud bricks, now gape with open mouth crying in dusty, rubble tones—Why?

I need your help today. The smoke is clearing. I see you there saying, And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you be not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation…”

But why must wars come to pass?

Seeds of war have been sown decades and centuries ago. And seeds will germinate and furiously grow in  the compost of hate and soulless slaughter. In that same compost, the good seed will grow in compassionate love, their tears watering the ground. Wars must come to pass.

For the time of the end is a harvest. The end of the world as we know it is harvest time, when every nation is in the field of the world and is harvesting and being harvested. The time is fast approaching for the last harvest. Those who work as his servants and loyal subjects of the King will stand with him after the harvest.

I need your help today. I need to see your smile and your eyes of peace.

That can be done, you say in a thought.  Go look in the mirror and believe that I’m looking back at you.  See? I told you that the Spirit of truth shall be in you. That time is now.”

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

18th Surgical Hospital, Lai Khe 1967–Prelude to TET

It had not been thirty days since we moved the hospital down out of the highlands near Pleiku.  Ah, Pleiku. We did not want to leave the land of the cool night air and the Mountainyards whose cherry wood pipes yielded intoxicating aromas. We landed in the pressure cooker called Long Bien–Lai Khe, to be exact. That is where we set up the 18th Surgical Hospital–mobile now–right in the middle of a rubber tree plantation.

It is the home of the Big Red One, and knowing that there are thousands of infantry and armor close by gives us this fuzzy feeling that they are definitely going to protect us medical guys. We are here a month setting up this inflatable, expandable, jet fuel guzzling medical marvel called MUST, when Alan Trinkle comes up with this wacked out story.

A few of us are standing in line at the mess tent at shift change at 7:00, and he says, “Guys, I’ve got to talk to you.” He looks as pale as the oatmeal the cooks are dishing up, and he is fumbling with his fatigues and looking around in all directions. His upper lip is a mushy platform for lazy drops of sweat to roll off of. And then he drops it on us. “I saw two gooks in our tent last night.”

MacDonald and I look at each other, our incredulity concurring. Mack says, “What are you talking about, man? Don’t joke about things like that.”

“I’m not joking.” He grabs our arms and leads us out of the line and around the corner of the tent. “Two gooks were in our tent last night. I saw them with my own two eyes.”

“But, Tinkle, that’s crazy talk,” I say. Tinkle was what everyone called him.

“Groovy, listen to me, please. I couldn’t sleep, and I was laying there, and I, and I heard one of them step on some leaves. So I froze, and I just laid there and eased my eyes open a little to catch them in my peripheral vision. I was facing straight up, but I could see them to my left side near the opening of our tent.”

I looked past Tinkle over toward where our GP Mediums are pitched in between rows of forty foot tall rubber trees. Their leaves are a rumpled carpet of crunchy brown patches that would sometimes move and come alive at night after our evening toke break. “Gooks in our tent, huh?” I say.

“Yeah, and they were armed. They had rifles and held them with both hands in front of their chests, and they moved slowly into the tent. But it was like they weren’t taking normal steps. They were gliding sideways. And then they’d look around, and when they looked at me, I’d  close my eyes. And then I’d take a peak again after a few seconds.”

“Stop it, Tinkle. You are as full of crap as a Christmas duck. Pull yourself together. There was no gooks in our tent last night.” I look at MacDonald, and he is shaking his head, smiling.

“Yes, there was!” Tinkle yells, dropping his head a bit when he sees the two captains walking by.

“No, you listen up. If there’d been gooks in there, they would have killed us. Plain and simple. That’s what they do. They kill dumbasses like us.”

“No, I saw them.”

“So why didn’t you try to kill them?” MacDonald asks. “Your rifle’s right by your bed, loaded and ready to go. Hell, you owe it to us to kill them if you have the chance.”

“I was afraid to,” he says. “Groove, you’ve got to believe me. They were there.”

He’s gone off the deep end; it is getting to him, I am thinking. And I’m suppose to train him to cross match blood so he can take the other twelve hour shift. “Hey, we are all wigging out with all the blood and guts, but you got to hang in there. Tinkle, I know that we are on a steady diet of insanity for breakfast, fear for lunch, and loneliness for supper, but we got to stay in there.”

“You been hitting the bottle too hard, Tinkle,” says MacDonald. “How much you drink last night?”

“I drank some last night, but I  wasn’t that drunk!” Tinkle’s face is glowing red, and he turns and goes back toward our tent.

And I’m thinking there’s no way they could have been in our tent. How did they get there? There are guards posted everywhere. And the perimeter, though only a click away has got hundreds of troops on the alert there. Did they float in from above the trees in parachutes? Did they just materialize out of another dimension? Yeah, the dimension of Tinkle’s alcohol soaked brain.

Later I see him in the tent and he says to me, “We gotta do something. They could have killed us all last night.”

So I start playing along and say, “Why didn’t you wait till they left the tent, then open fire on them?”

“There could have been others around, and all they would have had to do is throw grenades into all the tents, and we’d all have been wiped out.”

“So where did they go after they left our tent?” I ask.

“I don’t know exactly. I was afraid to move my head to the side. They just slipped out and vanished.”

“I don’t know, Tinkle. I think you’re just imagining things. You’re tripping out.”

“No, I saw them. We are in danger. All of us. What if they come back tonight?”

“Listen,” I tell him. “Come on. Let’s walk behind the latrine.” We slide out of the tent, and I am already feeling like a joint, so I make sure I got one so I can blow it when we get behind the bunker near the latrine and shower. I look and nobody’s around. Either they’re sleeping or eating, but the coast is clear. So I lean on the sandbags facing the endless rows of rubber trees and light up.

Tinkle don’t smoke weed. He’s a dyed in the wool alkie. Jack Daniels. That’s the way it is around here. There’s about 100 guys in our unit and it seems like 80% are grassheads, and 20% are alcoholics.

So I’m taking a hit, savoring those fun-giving fumes, and I’m looking at Tinkle. His round face looks at me intensely, his eyes all watery and red and bulging out like they are about to pop out of their sockets. His mouth is just a slit, his lips closed up tight like a kid’s mouth when you’re trying to shovel some cough syrup down him. I say to him, “So what are you saying?”

“I’ve got to tell the C.O.”

“Wait. Wait now. You don’t want to do that.”

“Why not? I’ve got to.”

“Think it through, Tinkle.” I’m trying to reason with him. He’s got this one imagination that he’s holding on to. “You don’t think that if the gooks were walking around inside our compound last night that the grunts and tank dudes out there wouldn’t know about it?” I point out to where the rubber trees end. “You can see our tanks firing at night eight or ten football fields from where the trees stop.”

“Maybe the grunts haven’t seen the gooks yet.”

“You mean that you are the very first G.I.–a medic at that–who has been privileged enough to see Charlie in our midst–when no one else has?” I take another hit. I need more smoke because Tinkle’s such a hard head.

“I know what I saw.” He looks me in the eye. “Groove, if I don’t tell the old man about it, they may come back and kill us all tonight.”

“You go tell the Colonel and your ass will be out of here on the next chopper. They’ll send you to some psych ward in Saigon. The Colonel’s no dummy. We talk when I cut his hair. He may look like a dummy, but he’s not stupid. He’s a doctor, and he’s gonna know your brains are boiled in bourbon. Hell, he may put some heat on all of us.”

Tinkle doesn’t say another word. He turns around and stumbles on down toward headquarters.

I take another hit, and I’m feeling no pain now and laugh a little at what the colonel’s going to say to Tinkle. Son, everything’s going to be all right. We’ll get you fixed up in no time. First Sergeant, see that his straight jacket doesn’t fit too tight because he’s a damn good soldier and he needs to be treated right.

So I go on to the lab to relieve my night man, and I don’t see Tinkle the rest of the day. After my shift, I go back to our tent, and he is sitting on his cot, head in hands, and he’s moaning, “Oh, no. Oh, no.”

“You just get off?” I ask. He just rocks a little, back and forth.

“They didn’t believe me. They said it was delirium tremens. Gave me two days off to dry out and take it easy.” He reaches under his cot and grabs the fifth of Jack Daniels. He’s past pouring it into a glass and turns it up and takes a couple of swallows. “To hell with it,” he says, screwing the cap back on and tossing it onto his cot. “If they don’t give a damn, then why should I?”

I’m perfectly fine with his resignation and say, “Just get some rest. I’ll train you in a couple of days.”

Two days later we were overrun by the Vietcong. The TET Offensive had started all over Vietnam, as we found out later. The officer quarters were blown up with many dead at the 1st Infantry Division headquarters right near where we saw Bob Hope and Raquel Welch joking and dancing not two weeks prior. We immediately packed the hospital up and loaded it into C-130’s and, just like that, we roared off into the steaming black night to God knows where.

If the levels of hell are measured in the depth of the rivers of blood that oozes out of young men’s bodies, then we had arrived at one of the inferno’s lower pits. Our destination that dark night was Quang Tri, fifteen miles from the DMZ, where we set up shop on a sandbar.

I did train Tinkle to take the other shift, and we never talked about the gooks in the tent again.

Eight months later I’m a single-digit-midget with a week to go before I derosed to go back to the world. Tinkle was in Hawaii on R and R, no doubt sipping a drink with his wife on Waikiki. That’s when we got word that they had found tunnels honey-combed all through the rubber tree plantation.  I remember saying, “Ain’t that a bitch,” and then that was that because I was going home, and that was all that really mattered to me at the time.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

[I tell my Vietnam stories, for the Vietnam experience helped prepare my heart to be touched later by God. Everything that happens to us–good and bad–is a prerequisite for that which is ahead. Some details of this story I remember; some I don’t. I lost a few brain cells there, I am sure.  I’ve used some poetic license to fill in the gaps. I have the upmost respect for all those I served with and for all the patients we helped patch up. If any of you read this, please share your recollections with me. For more stories go here:   https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/?s=18th+surgical+hospital ]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

18th Surgical Hospital Quang Tri 1968–Remembering a Tragedy

I didn’t find his name at the Wall last Sunday.  Although I was with him his last seconds on earth, I never knew his name.

We ran him in on a litter into the receiving ward at 18th Surgical Hospital at Quang Tri that summer of 1968.  He was pale from heavy loss of blood.  He looked to be about twenty, thin with sandy hair.  They all seemed to be thin and about twenty.

We got him on a table.  The nurses started cutting his clothes off of him.  And there it was–a blue little mouth of a bullet entry hole in his abdomen.

“How did it happen?” someone shouted.

“They said he was packing to go home tomorrow.  He was putting the pistol in the bag when it went off.”

The surgeon appeared at the table.  He examined him for an instant, then he cursed and yelled, “Gimme some adrenalin in a big syringe.”  The nurse handed it to him and, he cursed again and stabbed the young man in the middle of his chest pushing the clear fluid into his heart.

He worked like a whirling, sweating madman for another minute or two.  He pushed on his chest and issued a dry crying curse under his breath with every movement.  I should have been drawing some blood in order to cross match some for him, but I just stood there staring into the doctor’s eyes the whole time.  All of us just stared at him and not the patient, for we all knew that we could do nothing until hope sprang forth from the face of the doctor.   And it didn’t.

The doctor said nothing.  He turned around and went to the next table where a young thin man was writhing in pain.  I looked down at the young man with sandy hair.  His face was a powdery greyish white color, his skin cold.  I turned around and went to the next table to draw some blood.  And that was the last time I ever saw him.

I thought upon this tragedy as I slowly and reverently walked by the Wall.  I read many names who died hoping to somehow get back to “the World.”  Maybe I read his name today.

Kenneth Wayne Hancock, Spec. 4/ Medical Lab Tech/ 18th Surgical Hospital / Pleiku, An Khe, Quang Tri, Vietnam, Sept. 1967-Sept. 1968

Re: “No Atheists in a Foxhole”

     Lurking way down in every human being’s heart is a knowledge that God exists.   Anyone who has tasted battle, who has belched up that bile of fear as the shells explode and lead whizzes past their head, knows.  Anyone who has stared Death in its grotesque face, who has come a whisper away from their own demise through car wrecks, muggings, beatings, fires, drownings–these know there is a God.

     How do I know?  Because without exception, these all cry aloud, “Oh, Lord!  If you would just help me out of this jam and let me live, I’ll serve you.” 

     It’s built into us.  This knowledge that we are to serve and love and depend on our Creator is in our genes.  When faced with our own annililation, we immediately go to God as a child to their own father without thinking or rationalizing about it.  We don’t say, “Well, let me see.  I wish I could believe in God at this present dangerous juncture in my life.”  No.  We cry out to Him from the very core of our being, our heart in utter desperation, pleading to the only One that we know deep down can save us.  And then we offer a last ditch deal, saying we’ll serve Him if we make it out of this mess.

     And He so many times “for His name’s sake”* delivers us from the specter of death, knowing that most humans will not keep their end of the bargain immediately.  For when Death is escaped for the moment, we humans go back into our sweet intoxicating delusion that we are immortal and we are okay, and, hey, that was no big deal, had it covered all the time.

     Humankind is its own greatest witness that there is a God that they should be serving.  No, it is a fact: There are no atheists in a foxhole.    Kenneth Wayne Hancock

*{God’s name in the original Hebrew means “The Self-existent One is the Savior.”  Because of what His very name means, He will save us–“for His name’s sake.  Transliterated into English, Christ’s name in Hebrew is “YAHSHUA.”  This was the Hebrew name of our Savior, which was the same name of the Patriarch Joshua, which is His name anglicized.  The name “Jesus” and “Joshua” are used interchangeably in the New Testament.}
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