The Seed of Duty

Without warning, the dusty air of the farmyard vanished, and France’s muddy, fetid trenches engulfed him. He heard the shrill blast of the whistle signaling the start of the over-the-top charge; he smelled the putrid, stagnant water they had lived in day after day. He could hear the desperate cheers of his comrades as they scrambled over the parapet. Even in the cool West Texas air, a light sweat broke out on Jock’s brow as a hammer struck his chest. Grotesque, terrifying memories flooded his mind: the men of his platoon being systematically cut down by the relentless rattle of a German Maxim machine gun. The deafening roar of that gun filled his throbbing ears so clearly that his mind spun, confused as to why the ghosts of France were screaming in an Idalou farmyard.

Jock took a deep breath, fighting to tether himself to the present. Surely this wasn’t happening. Not again. America wouldn’t send another generation of boys to bleed in foreign mud. But there it was. This was the exact terror that had been whispering to his heart at dawn. He had spent decades trying to quiet the nightmares of dashing across no-man’s-land, watching his friends mowed down like wheat. The horrors had grown quieter with each passing year, but they had never left him. They never would.

Jock walked over to console his brother’s wife. His steps felt heavily labored, dragging himself through the exact “two-mile-an-hour” trance-walk he had performed countless times across the battlefields of Europe. Exhaustion beat through his pulse, his limbs felt numb, and his soul felt utterly spent at the mere thought of another war. He closed his eyes tightly, forcing a desperate, begging whisper into a prayer: Please, Lord, no. Please, not my boys.

Hack walked over to his mother and placed his hand on her arm. “I am struggling with it too, Momma.” He rubbed her arm softly as she paused her work on the dough. “How do I stay right with God by volunteering to fight? I worry that I’m going to lose a part of me to this. The most important part of me, my relationship with my Savior.”

She sighed, her shoulders dropping just a fraction. “We are all going to lose a little piece of ourselves to this war, Hack. Your Daddy already did, back in France. The part he lost was his youth and naivety. When he returned from France, I think he was a stronger man because of it and not completely taken by those experiences. Staying ‘right’ isn’t about being perfectly clean; it’s about being perfectly obedient to where you’re called. If the Lord put the ability to fly in your hands, then you use those hands for Him. You don’t apologize for the training, and you don’t apologize for the duty. You just make sure that when you come back, you’re still a man I can recognize.”

Beatrice was at the counter, her knife rhythmically thumping against the wooden block as she cut beef into the small chunks Victoria used for her fried meat pastries. Earlier, Victoria had whispered that she was going to dote on these three boys while she still had the chance, because the “after” was something she refused to entertain, she would not…lose her boys. Not to this evil. She had decided and she had prayed on it. There was a finality in her mind and she was unshakable.

As they pulled apart, Hack reached into his duffel and produced a thick notebook. He pressed it into Jock’s hands. It was a meticulously researched weekly schedule for the new peanut crop, containing every detail he had gleaned from his studies at Tech — planting depths, moisture requirements, and soil chemistry. It was the only armor he could leave behind.

The steam whistle shrieked, signaling the end of his civilian life. Hack hugged Victoria one last time and stepped onto the iron threshold of the train. He stood by the window, waving, more concerned for the family left on the dirt than for his own uncertain future. He watched until the Lubbock depot was a speck on the horizon, then sat down.

Hack pulled his Bible and his Cadet’s Handbook from his bag. The long journey to the Pacific had begun, starting with the overnight run to the induction center in Dallas.