Modified Repost from 2023
My Dad’s older brother John Bennett Stanford was killed in action at Saint Lo France on the 14th of July of 1944 as US troops were fighting to wrest the area back from German control. My grandmother never talked to me about his loss, and my Dad’s mention of it only told me where he was. The graphic above lists the WWII war dead for Lubbock County Texas, for the Army only. The list contains 171 names, with my uncle listed in the second set of the last column. My uncle was far from alone in his sacrifice. There are similar lists for the other branches of the military in the national archives, but I can’t comment on those since I haven’t investigated them. In 1940, the census count for Lubbock County Texas was just over fifty-one thousand.
The Germans were heavily fortified at St. Lo and the fighting was grueling in the period in July known as the Battle of the Hedgerows. There was a subsequent period called Operation Cobra in which many perished from friendly fire, discussed in the linked article.
There is a well-researched article on the battle for Hill 192 which includes my uncle’s regiment. They had failed to take the hill in mid-June with heavy casualties but succeeded July 10th-12th. The date on the John Bennett Stanford’s tombstone is July 14th. If accurate, that would indicate he may have been killed in the fighting to take Saint Lo itself.
He would have been 42 days past his 23rd birthday. I never had the opportunity to know him, as I would not arrive for nearly ten years. I do certainly know that he and the many others who made that sacrifice – to stop the hellish machinations of Hitler from progressing further than we had the power to end them – are owed more gratitude than we typically can muster.
I used to be completely bewildered how the German people would go along with Hitler in seeking to exterminate an entire ethnicity. But now I have seen it working in our own country amid impassioned chants of “from the river to the sea”. Now I know the ease with which the evil one deceives and leads the unguarded heart and unprotected mind to unspeakable ends.
There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.
Proverbs 14:12
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
Ephesians 6:17
When we see organized hate oozing from collage campuses toward the Jews, it ought to make us all mindful of the unthinkable things they endured and the hardships of those seeking to free the survivors.
It is fitting that we should remember these fallen and that we should resist the current efforts to destroy the liberty they died defending. And so today, I remember an uncle I never got to meet. Well I know, there are families all across the land who are doing the same. I pray many will follow the exhortation of Ephesians six to suit-up and stand fast while resisting the hellish ooze.
Missionary Sojourn 
