The Major’s Christmas Prayers
T “May I Tell You a Story?” BY DICK DUERKSEN
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his train is as cold as Mount Everest, Major Victor thought. Colder, maybe. Lord, please keep me warm. It was winter during World War II, and the troop train carrying Major Victor was racing north through the Sinai desert. The weather was wet and freezing, and the train cars had no glass in their windows. That meant the seats were covered with thickening ice, so the men had climbed into the luggage racks, where it was a few degrees warmer. Even there, huddled together, they were freezing. U.S. Army Major Victor and his two companions, Sergeant Eaton and Sergeant Brennon, were traveling to Jerusalem and then on through the desert to Iraq. The major, a Seventh-day Adventist medical officer, was praying
December 2021 AdventistWorld.org
for God to provide enough heat to keep them alive till they got to Jerusalem. *** When the train stopped for water and coal on a desert siding, Sergeant Eaton said, “Grab your gear and come with me.” The two soldiers followed Eaton along the tracks toward the engine, where he stopped, took out his canteen cup, reached behind one of the huge wheels, opened a tap, and filled his cup with hot water. When he had filled his friends’ cups as well, he climbed up the ladder into the cab. The engineer and fireman, busily checking the water and coal, had left their seats empty in the hot engine. Sergeant Eaton smiled, motioned for the others to join him, and sat down in the engineer’s chair. Hot air blasted away the cold as they hit the top rung and stepped inside. “Prayer answered,” Major Victor breathed. “At least until the engineer throws us off his seat!” Sergeant Eaton was playing with the controls, checking the gauges, feeling the brake levers, and testing the throttle. Waiting for the track signal to change. Smiling. Before they could relax, the “real” engineer came up the ladder and began shouting loudly. Sergeant Eaton waved for the engineer to come over to his seat. He came, still shouting and waving wildly. Major Victor was praying, as was his habit whenever things got out of hand. He knew God was going to have to perform a miracle to get them through, so this prayer was fast and simple. Help! was all he could pray. Sergeant Eaton, all six feet six inches of him, stood beside the steel seat and pointed to the name stitched onto his uniform and then to the steel wall behind the seat. “Eaton,” he said, pointing to his name and the wall again. The “real” engineer looked at Eaton’s uniform and then at the wall where a name was scratched into the steel. “Eaton,” it read. The same as the man now sitting in his chair. “How can this be?” he asked in a sign language both men understood. Image: mycola / iStock / Getty Images Plus / Getty Images
