Free Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent by Never Surrender

helicopters like the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior and the lethal AH-1 Cobra.
    Lynne and the kids joined me from New Bern. April was almost five years old by then, and our son, Randy, was nearly two. They were, of course, the cutest kids ever born. We rented a little house off-post, and it was great to have the family back together again. Randy was by now old enough that I could take him fishing, the way my father had taken me. I spent most of the time baiting his hook and chuckling as I untangled his line from the bushes. That’s what my dad did with me, and when I was out on the creek with my own little boy, I felt like that was about as good as life could get.
    Our time in Kentucky marked the first real opportunity we had to get involved in a local church. We joined an Assemblies of God congregation pastored by a slender, dark-skinned, and extraordinarily wise man named Bob Jones (no relation to the university). I got really involved in the church’s bus ministry. On Saturdays, I would walk around the neighborhoods on post, asking parents’ permission to invite their kids to Sunday school. Then on Sundays, I’d drive the church bus around and pick up the kids whose families had said yes. A lady from our congregation rode along, teaching the kids the songs they’d be singing at church. I got a kick out of driving through the streets with the joyful voices of twenty-five or thirty children spilling out of the bus windows into the Sunday morning sunshine. Of course, if an officer did that now, he’d likely be the subject of a federal probe. He might even get a call from William Arkin.
    I hadn’t been at the 1/506 long when I also started inviting members of my platoon to church. Some came, some didn’t. But one of them, a young Spec 4 from Alabama named Stephen Collins, surprised me with a challenging question. I had invited him to church a couple of times. He said he’d come, but then never showed up. Then one Monday morning, I was sitting in my office when Steve walked in and sat down.
    “Lieutenant, you don’t know much about me,” he began. “When I was real little, my daddy walked out on us.”
    Sitting across the desk from this young soldier, I flashed to my own father. I wasn’t that much older than Steve. What might my life look like if my dad had been the kind who would abandon his son?
    “We wound up going to live with my granddaddy,” Steve went on. “So he raised me as long as I can remember, and he was a Christian. Went to church every Sunday, read his Bible. But he was a farmer, not a soldier. And I’ve never been able to figure out how you can be in the Army and be a Christian. Lieutenant Boykin, how can you believe it’s okay to be a Christian and yet be in a job where you train to go out and kill people?”
    His question took me completely by surprise, and I realized immediately that I had no good answer.
    “You know, Steve, that’s a good question,” I said. “I’ve always just accepted that there’s no inconsistency there. But to tell you the truth, I really haven’t thought it through. Let me think about it and I’ll let you know.”
    That Wednesday night, Lynne and I went to church. After the service, I caught Pastor Bob in his office and presented my dilemma.
    “Jerry, one of the things people have to understand is that life is all about warfare,” he said. “Life is a battle, a spiritual battle. And, at the root of every war, there is a spiritual battle.”
    He let me think about that for a second. Hitler ordered the murder of six million Jews. The communist regimes in Korea and Vietnam depended on V. I. Lenin’s belief that religion is “opium for the people,” “medieval mildew,” “a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image.” The very acceptance of the existence of God was a stake in the heart of communist ideology. If religion could truly liberate a man not from hardship but in the midst of it, there would be no need for