"...Those Who Went West Have Seen Him": A Memorial Day Story

Memorial Day is nearly 150 years old. During each of those years, families and towns have new reason for remembrance, have new graves to tend on "Decoration Day". American freedom is bought dearly by men and women who gladly stand up and push back against threats to liberty.

In our household, we remember these men of the 3rd LAR,seven Marines and their Navy medic, who served with my son, Sgt Ethan D Arguello, and paid for our freedom with their lives in 2006 in Iraq:
Seaman Chadwick T. Kenyon
Cpl. Phillip E. Baucus
Lance Cpl. Anthony E. Butterfield
Cpl. Adam A. Galvez
Lance Cpl. Jason Hanson
Lance Cpl. Shane P. Harris
Lance Cpl. Randy L. Newman
Sgt. Christian B. Williams

I've written about them before. In many ways, their stories are unique, and each brave member of the US Military has their own story to tell. At the same time, there is a kind of courage that is renewed with each generation of Americans, and these men shared that courage with those of older times and other wars who, like them, gave their all for God and country, for liberty and freedom.

The story below, "The Beloved Captain", is the second of Donald Hankey's stories I've shared here. It was published in 1917, painting the heroism Hankey witnessed during The Great War, as WWI was then known.When I read it, the story didn't seem like something from a hundred years ago, but instead, it sounded like the kinds of things I was hearing people say about Doc Kenyon, Adam Galvez, Tony Butterfield, Jason Hanson, Randy Newman, Phillip Baucus, Chris Williams, and Shane Harris. 

The man who wrote this story, Donald Hankey, is himself numbered with them. He was killed in action in 1916, in the battle of the Somme. May God bless us to meet them all in the joy of the Resurrection at the end of all strife, and the final, victorious coming of the Lord.


The Beloved Captain

"He came In the early days, when we were still at recruit drills under the hot September sun. Tall, erect, smiling: so we first saw him, and so he remained to the end. At the start he knew as little of soldiering as
we did. He used to watch us being drilled by the sergeant; but his manner of watching was peculiarly his own. He never looked bored. He was learning just as much as we were, in fact more. He was learning his job, and from the first he saw that his job was more than to give the correct orders. His job was to lead us. So he watched, and noted many things, and never found the time hang heavy on his hands. He watched our evolutions, so as to learn the correct orders; he watched for the right manner of command, the manner which secured the most prompt response to an order; and he watched every one of us for our individual characteristics.

"We were his men. Already he took an almost paternal interest in us. He noted the men who tried hard, but were naturally slow and awkward. He distinguished them from those who were inattentive and bored. He marked down the keen and efficient amongst us. Most of all he studied those who were subject to moods, who were sulky one day and willing the next. These were the ones who were to turn the scale. If only he could get these on his side, the battle would be won.

"For a few days he just watched. Then he started work. He picked out some of the most awkward ones, and, accompanied by a corporal, marched them away by themselves. Ingenuously he explained that he did not know much himself yet; but he thought that they might get on better If they drilled by themselves a bit, and that if he helped them, and they helped him, ey would son learn. His confidence was Infectious. He looked at them, and they looked at him, and the men pulled themselves together and determined to do their best. Their best surprised themselves. His patience was inexhaustible. His simplicity could not fail to be understood. His keenness and optimism carried all with them. Very soon the awkward squad found themselves awkward no longer; and soon after that they ceased to be a squad, and went back to the platoon.

"Then he started to drill the platoon, with the sergeant standing by to point out his mistakes. Of course he made mistakes, and when that happened he never minded admitting It. He would explain what mistakes he
had made, and try again. The result was that we began to take almost as much interest and pride in his progress as he did in ours. We were his men, and he was our leader. We felt that he was a credit to us, and
we resolved to be a credit to him. There was a bond of mutual confidence and affection between us, which grew stronger and stronger as the months passed. He had a smile for almost everyone; but we thought that he had a different smile for us. We looked for it, and were never disappointed.

"On parade, as long as we were trying, his smile encouraged us. Off parade, if we passed him and saluted, his eyes looked straight into our own, and his smile greeted us. It was a wonderful thing, that smile of his. It was something worth living for, and worth working for. It bucked one up when one was bored or tired. It seemed to make one look at things from a different point of view, a finer point of view, his point of view.
There was nothing feeble or weak about It. It was not monotonous like the smile of " Sunny Jim." It meant something. It meant that we were his men, and that he was proud of us, and sure that we were going to do jolly well” better than any of the other platoons. And it made us determine that we would. When we failed him, when he was disappointed in us, he did not smile. He did not rage or curse. He just looked disappointed, and that made us feel far more savage with ourselves than any amount of swearing would have done. He made us feel that we were not playing the game by him. It was not what he said. He was never very good at talking. It was just how he looked. And his look of displeasure and disappointment was a thing that we would do anything to avoid. The fact was that he had won his way into our affections. We loved him. And there isn't anything stronger than love, when all's said and done.

"He was good to look on. He was big and tall, and held himself upright. His eyes looked his own height. He moved with the grace of an athlete. His skin was tanned by a wholesome outdoor life, and his eyes were clear and wide open. Physically he was a prince among men. We used to notice, as we marched along the road and passed other officers, that they always looked pleased to see him. They greeted him with a cordiality which was reserved for him. Even the general seemed to have singled him out, and cast an eye of special approval upon him.

"Somehow, gentle though he was, he was never familiar. He had a kind of innate nobility which marked him out as above us. He was not democratic. He was rather the justification for aristocracy. We all knew
instinctively that he was our superior - a man of finer temper than ourselves, a "toff" in his own right. I suppose that that was why he could be so humble without loss of dignity. For he was humble too, if that is the right word, and I think it is. No trouble of ours was too small for him to attend to. When we started route marches, for instance, and our feet were blistered and sore, as they often were at first, you would have thought that they were his own feet from the trouble he took.

"Of course after the march there was always an inspection of feet. That is the routine. But with him it was no mere routine. He came into our rooms, and if anyone had a sore foot he would kneel down on the floor and
look at it as carefully as if he had been a doctor. Then he would prescribe, and the remedies were ready at hand, being borne by the sergeant. If a blister had to be lanced he would very likely lance it himself there and then, so as to make sure that it was done with a clean needle and that no dirt was allowed to get in. There was no affectation about this, no striving after effect. It was simply that he felt that our feet were pretty important, and that he knew that we were pretty careless. So he thought it best at the start to see to the matter himself. Nevertheless, there was in our eyes something almost religious about this care for our feet. It seemed to have a touch of the Christ about it, and we loved and honored him the more.

"We knew that we should lose him. For one thing, we knew that he would be promoted. It was our great hope that some day he would command the company. Also we knew that he would be killed. He was so amazingly unselfconscious. For that reason we knew that he would be absolutely fearless. He would be so keen on the job in hand, and so anxious for his men, that he would forget about his own danger. So it proved. He was a captain when we went out to the front. Whenever there was a tiresome job
to be done, he was there in charge. If ever there were a moment of danger, he was on the spot. If there were any particular part of the line where the shells were falling faster or the bombs dropping more
thickly than in other parts, he was in it.

"It was not that he was conceited and imagined himself indispensable. It was just that he was so keen that the men should do their best, and act worthily of the regiment. He knew that fellows hated turning out at night for fatigue, when they were in a "rest camp." He knew how tiresome the long march there and back and the digging in the dark for an unknown purpose were. He knew that fellows would be inclined to grouse and shirk, so he thought that it was up to him to go and show them that he thought it was a job worth doing. And the fact that he was there put a new complexion on the matter altogether. No one would shirk if he were there. No one would grumble so much, either. What was good enough for him was good enough for us. If it were not too much trouble for him to turn out, it was not too much trouble for us.

"He knew, too, how trying to the nerves it is to sit in a trench and be shelled. He knew what a temptation there is to move a bit farther down the trench and herd together in a bunch at what seems the safest end. He
knew, too, the folly of it, and that it was not the thing to do - not done in the best regiments. So he went along to see that it did not happen, to see that the men stuck to their posts, and conquered their nerves.

"And as soon as we saw him, we forgot our own anxiety. It was: "Move a bit farther down, sir. We are all right here; but don't you go exposing of yourself." We didn't matter. We knew it then. We were just the rank
and file, bound to take risks. The company would get along all right without us. But the captain, how was the company to get on without him? To see him was to catch his point of view, to forget our personal
anxieties, and only to think of the company, and the regiment, and honor.

"There was not one of us but would gladly have died for him. We longed for the chance to show him that. We weren't heroes. We never dreamed about the Victoria Cross. But to save the captain we would have earned it ten times over, and never have cared a button whether we got it or not. We never got the chance, worse luck. It was all the other way.

"We were holding some trenches which were about as unhealthy as trenches could be. The Bosches were only a few yards away, and were well supplied with trench mortars. We hadn't got any at that time. Bombs and air torpedoes were dropping round us all day. Of course the captain was there. It seemed as if he could not keep away. A torpedo fell into the trench, and buried some of our chaps. The fellows next to them ran to dig them out. Of course he was one of the first. Then came another torpedo in the same place. That was the end.

"But he lives. Somehow he lives. And we who knew him do not forget. We feel his eyes on us. We still work for that wonderful smile of his. There are not many of the old lot left now; but I think that those who went West have seen him. When they got to the other side I think they were met. Someone said: "Well done, good and faithful servant."

"And as they knelt before that gracious pierced Figure, I reckon they saw nearby the captain's smile. Anyway, in that faith let me die, if death should come my way; and so, I think, shall I die content. "

A Homemade King Cake for Mardis Gras!

I've made Kings Cake's a couple of times before, but I always used a shortcut, starting with canned cinnamon roll dough. This year, I decided to make one from scratch, with a traditional brioche dough and cream cheese filling.  I took it to a small group gathering yesterday and it was a big hit!  There's still time if you want to make one for Shrove Tuesday (Fat Tuesday).  Here's how:

Place dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl or bread bowl:
4 cups of flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 scant tablespoons of active dry yeast
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon lemon zest (grated lemon peel)
Optional: 4 teaspoons wheat gluten

Mix together well and set aside.  In a small saucepan, melt
1 stick of butter (1/2 cup), then add
1 cup of milk

and warm until just above body temp - 100 to 105 degrees F. Remove from heat and whisk in:

1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 egg yolks (save the whites - you can freeze egg whites (but not egg yolks) and use them to make merangues later)

Slowly add the warm liquid to the flour mixture, stirring as you go. Mix it together well until all flour is incorporated, and continue to knead until the dough is smooth and no longer sticky.  I used our KitchenAid stand mixer with the dough hooks, and it makes short work of it on medium high for 4 minutes. If you are doing it by hand, this will take about 6 to 8 minutes of kneading.

Cover with a damp cloth and set in a warm place to rise until doubled. It will take about 2 hours. A good trick is to turn your oven on for one minute, then turn it off and turn the oven light on. Then the oven will hold enough heat to help the bread rise without being too hot or drafty. This will work as long as the light bulb is an incandescent one. A flourescent bulb does not generate heat, so it wouldn't help.

While the dough is rising, make the filling:

1 1/2 packages of cream cheese (about 12 ounces total)
1/2 cup marmalade or preserves
1/4 cup to 1/2 cup sugar (to taste, depending on how sweet your preserves are)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix together well and set aside.


When dough has risen, lay it out on a lightly floured board and roll it into a rectangle that is about 30 inches long and only 5 or 6 inches wide.  Spread the filling down the middle along the entire length of it, then fold one long edge over to meet the other and pinch together well.   Roll along it with your hands until it is a cylinder shape with the sealed edge on the bottom, and bring together into a circle, pinching the open edge together.

Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or waxed paper and quickly lift the dough from the board onto the baking sheet with the sealed edge down.

Now's the time to tuck the baby, the feve, or the bean into the cake - put it underneath the cake and push it up well into the dough so that it is surrounded by dough and hidden from Herod's soldiers. I used a pecan half for this cake, as I didn't have a plastic feve and was nervous about someone maybe breaking a tooth on a porcelain one (besides, I didn't want to part with any antique feves from my collection!).

Use a sharp, greased knife and make shallow cuts across the top of the wreath about 5 inches apart (at right angles to the cake so that the cut goes from the inside edge of the circle to the outside edge). These will give the cake its "crown" appearance.  I forgot this step when making the cake pictured, so it is not essential.

If you want to give it a Mexican twist, the New Orleans King Cake can become a Rosca de reyes by adding dried fruits to the top: figs, candied orange peel, dried cherries or citron.  Or, do a little research to see which variations were most popular in the countries of your ancestors - this tradition is truly ancient, and was formerly celebrated by Christians all around the world.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees while the cake rests. Then put the cake in the oven and bake for 30 to 35 minutes. Remove from oven and cool on the baking sheet.

Mix icing and make colored sugar while the cake is cooling:

Colored sugar:
6 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided into 3 separate cups (2 tablespoons for each color).
Food coloring

Work in a place that can be easily cleaned and will not stain, wear and old apron and use vinyl gloves to keep the food color off your hands as it will stain. Use 2 or 3 drops of food color for each cup. Make one cup of golden yellow, one of green and one of purple.  To make green: 1 drop of blue and one or 2 drops of yellow, right into the cup with the sugar. As you mix it together with with sugar, they will blend and make green. To make purple: 1 or 2 drops of blue and one or two drops of red - depending on whether you like a bluer shade of purple or a redder shade.  As you mix it together with the sugar, it will become purple.

Icing:

2 cups powdered sugar
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon of milk

Stir together sugar and lemon juice until powdered sugar is thoroughly mixed. If it needs more liquid, add milk a teaspoonful at a time until it is the consistency you like.  Drizzle the icing over the cake, let sit for a few moments to stabilize, and then sprinkle the colored sugars alternately all the way around it.

Pick the cake up carefully, move it to a serving platter, and present to your guests!

First Turkey Days! Thanksgiving Feasts in America 1540 - 1640 (or "The Real History of Thanksgiving")

A couple of years ago, I called Thanksgiving "The Immigrants Holiday" because nearly every shipload of Europeans who came to our shores continued their long-standing tradition of taking a time to rejoice and praise God for a safe journey.  They all did, whether Catholic or Church of England explorers trying to colonize the New World for their King, or Separatist Protestant refugees seeking freedom to worship Christ according to their own consciences. These weren't "harvest festivals", nor were they unusual or "uniquely American". They were simply the custom of Christian peoples everywhere.

 The picture-book Thanksgiving was a part of this culture, just like going to church on Sundays and saying grace before meals. In October 1621, the Mayflower Pilgrims and Pawtuxet Indians celebrated such an event, much like all these others. It captured popular imagination 250 years later in the 1850s when Sarah Hale, editor of Godey’s Ladys Book &  primary lobbyist for a national Thanksgiving Day, used it as a symbol of those early times.*  Oddly enough, there’s less documentation for this event than most of the other Thanksgivings on this list! Sarah Hale simply picked it out as a great “narrative” to sell her idea, just as marketers do today.

But by the time the Pilgrims arrived, nearly a century of regular Thanksgivings in North, South & Central America had gone before. Shiploads of passengers led by explorers from Spain, France, England, The Netherlands, Italy, and Portugal, planned their thanksgiving feasts as a matter of course and held them as soon as possible after they finally reached safety again.


Here's a list of a few of them. Texas gets to claim two of the very earliest!

May 23, 1541, near Canyon, Texas. A Thanksgiving feast was celebrated by explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and the "Tejas" Native Americans. The reason? Of all his finds, the discovery of good sources of wild foods, grapes and pecans, was cause for a day of rejoicing.

June 30, 1564 “Fort Caroline”, near Jacksonville, Florida: one of the earliest groups of French Huguenots to seek religious liberty in America, led by Jean Ribault, held a day of Thanksgiving. This settlement was destroyed soon thereafter by Spanish soldiers (led by Pedro Menendez de Aviles)  in the ongoing battle between Spain and France for supremacy in the New World as well as the old.

September 8, 1565  St Augustine, Florida: the 400 settlers from Spain travelling with Pedro Menendez de Aviles celebrated a feast of Thanksgiving when their ship landed safely. The Timucua Indians joined them, bringing local foods to the table.

August or September 1578 Frobisher Bay area of Baffin Island, Nunavut Territory, Canada: Martin Frobisher's expedition celebrated the first Thanksgiving recorded in Canada. Today, Canada celebrates  Thanksgiving much like the USA does, except it is held in October.

April 30, 1598 San Elizario, Texas (near El Paso): the 500 members of the de Onate expedition held a feast of Thanksgiving, with the native Manso Indian tribe as guests, to celebrate their safe arrival 10 days earlier at the Rio Grande after months of trekking up from Mexico. This was the first group to travel the newly blazed El Camino Real.

1604 Port Royal, Acadia, Canada: French settlers with explorer Samuel de Champlain held their first Thanksgiving feast in 1604 and thereafter. This is the group that founded 'The Order of Good Cheer', sharing their food with their Native American neighbors.

August 9, 1607 Fort St. George, Kennebec River, Maine: the newly arrived colonists of this short-lived New England settlement held its first Thanksgiving soon after making landfall, led by English Captain George Popham and joined by the Abnaki Indians.

1610 Jamestown, Virginia: Settlers of the famous English colony held a Thanksgiving to celebrate the arrival of ships bringing them new supplies of food after a harsh winter during which many starved to death.

December 4, 1619 The Berkeley Hundred, near Jamestown, Virigina: this group of settlers had planned before leaving England to hold a feast of Thanksgiving immediately on arrival, and annually thereafter. Many were killed in the massacre of 1622 and the site abandoned.

October, 1621, Plymouth, Massachusetts: this was the feast that came to symbolize the history of our Christian heritage, held by the Mayflower Pilgrims and Native Americans in the vicinity. It was probably not their first such celebration held by the Mayflower group, but is the only one for which any documentation survives.

1623, Plymouth, Massachusetts: The governor of the Plymouth colony called for a special day of Thanksgiving for the end of a drought that plagued the colony.

July 8, 1630, Massachusetts: Puritan settlers observed the first Thanksgiving of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England. This colony began having Thanksgiving days every year from 1660 onward.

September 18, 1639 Connecticut: the governor proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving, and by 1649, the colony celebrated a Thanksgiving day each year.

And thereafter it snowballed. By the time our 13 colonies had joined themselves together as a loose fraternity of independent & sovereign nation-states, each proclaimed a Thanksgiving at various times, as needed or as events warranted. This continued for another hundred years, until President Lincoln made it a permanent feature on the calendar for the whole nation.

The true history of Thanksgiving is a testament to our Christian heritage, upholding freedom to worship God in accordance with our own consciences.

A part of that freedom includes the freedom to "not worship", giving a bit of space to unbelievers, but the bulk of this freedom is the privilege to be religious: the freedom to worship God without being arrested, liberty not to be punished by the government if we believe some things are sinful.

The freedom to shout "Jesus" from the rooftops in every neighborhood, to "Preach the Gospel to all nations", using an uncensored bible in our own language, that we can read & interpret for ourselves.

How relevant is this today?

This very week,  former President George W. Bush was honored to be entrusted with a handwritten Bible, made and secretly used in a Chinese labor camp by Chinese Christians who were imprisoned for attending "an illegal religious gathering".

China claims to be the largest publisher of Bibles in the world - for export. Yet the repressive communist government does not allow any freedom of religion - people are required to worship only where, when and how the Chinese government tells them they can. They can only have the version of the Bible that the government allows.

Afghanistan was visited by the apostles during Biblical times - Christianity is as old in Afghanistan as anywhere in the world. Yet the Bible is illegal there, and to be a Christian is to risk prison, or worse.

And in the United States of America itself,  intolerant unbelievers have begun denying Christians freedom to practice our faith. Christians have been arrested and tried for the crime of preaching the Gospel to Moslems in Michigan. For "preaching too loudly" in North Carolina. For reading the Bible to people on the sidewalk in California.

This Thanksgiving, let us give thanks to our Father God for sending His Son Jesus Christ to save the world, for giving us the earthly blessings that are the fruit of Christianity: liberty, justice, equality, a good and moral society; and let us ask Him for laborers for the harvest, that America may continue to know our Father's favor. Godly leadership is needed more now than ever.



*Aug 22, 2017: edited to correct broken link & add new ones about Sarah Hale. Thank you to reader Ellen for alerting me and sharing a great link about yet another highly successful and influential working woman in the early 1800s.

"...but the blessing of earth is toil."

"Born within a lowly stable, where the cattle 'round Me stood,
Trained a carpenter in Nazareth, I have toiled, and found it good.

"They who tread the path of labor follow where My feet have trod;
They who work without complaining do the holy will of God.

"Where the many toil together, there am I among My own;
Where the tired workman sleepeth, there am I with him alone."



More from Henry Van Dyke's "The Friendly Year". These verses are a small excerpt from "The Toiling of Felix, and Other Poems",  first published in 1900, a lyrical meditation on the spiritual value of work and labor in a happy life.

...and another Henry Ossawa Tanner painting: the oft-marketed "Young Sabot Maker", in which Tanner, in Paris, depicted a young apprentice learning to make wooden shoes, using the same kinds of woodworking tools that carpenters have used for thousands of years. Compare with the one above, which Georges DelaTour painted in the mid 17th century, of St Joseph in his cabinet shop, with the young Jesus at hand. As Tanner moved deeper and deeper into his calling to paint the biblical reality, it is easy to imagine his meditation on Jesus' childhood in a carpenter's home.

Tanner said of his work "My effort has been to not only put the Biblical incident in the original setting ... but at the same time give the human touch "which makes the whole world kin" and which ever remains the same. "

In the poet's words:
"This is the gospel of labour, ring it, ye bells of the kirk!
The Lord of Love came down from above, to live with the men who work.
This is the rose that He planted, here in the thorn-curst soil:
Heaven is blest with perfect rest, but the blessing of Earth is toil."

If You Love Paris

Erin Elizabeth, of the blog My Heart Belongs To Me (link from the sidebar as well), recently traveled to France with her sister Neile. Her posts overflow with memorable photos of Paris - can you smell the rain on the avenue, the clementines in the market, the flowers on the vendor's corner, the sugar from the treat shop window?

The "love locks" along the Seine made my heart melt. What a romantic little memento to leave along the way in a love story!

From mossy tombs to modern museums, from french fashion to fresh design, from morning of the day to the lively night, Erin's posts make for a lovely armchair afternoon in the city of light.

we’ll always have paris

paris. day 1.

paris. day 2.

paris. day 3.

paris. day 4.

paris. day 5.

paris. day 6.