Sharing Our Stories

Regis Carr
Project manager IT
Atlanta

In 1993 as an Army recruiting battalion commander, I made a presentation to the Arkansas High School counselors’ conference. Since it was also Veteran's Day, I included the story at the conclusion of my prepared remarks.

The Sunrise

Let me close with a story I heard this past August while at an Army Reserve conference in Dallas, Tex. The story is a personal experience of an infantry captain who is now a 4-star general.

As a captain fighting in the Korean War, he commanded an infantry rifle company compliment of 150 American soldiers. Late one afternoon, after a ferocious battle to recapture a hilltop from the communist Chinese, he was inspecting each foxhole as his soldiers prepared for the counterattack that was fully expected that night.

At each fighting position he made sure that each soldier was fed, his weapon was clean, fields of fire were clear, communication lines were in place and ammunition was available. He also checked to see that the troops had a sleep plan, and that security was properly set for the night. At one foxhole, he came across a young soldier who was visibly apprehensive about the pending attack. He sat beside the soldier and carried on a conversation about stateside, family, friends, and his fellow soldiers, seeking all the while to reassure him about the unit’s readiness for the attack. As he stood to leave for the next position, he asked the soldier if there was anything he needed. The soldier looked at him, thought, and then asked in a low voice, “Can you promise me I will live to see the sun rise in the morning?” The captain knowing that the soldiers were well trained, the defensive positions were well placed, supporting artillery was planned, and there was an ample supply of ammunition, confidently responded, “I promise you will see the sun rise tomorrow!”

His inspections continued until the fading light forced him into his own foxhole from which he would command the fight. After several hours of impatient quiet the Chinese attacked. As usual, the attack began with haunting bugles and shrill whistles. Fighting was fierce and at times hand-to-hand. Artillery flares burst occasionally overhead revealing the slow moving enemy slipping between the shadows. Rifles, machineguns, grenades, mortars and artillery rounds split the silence as if to suggest there could be no tomorrow. Yet, hours later at the beginning of morning twilight, the captain realized that the enemy’s long, fierce and frenetic attack was unsuccessful. His company of riflemen had withstood all that had been thrown at them and the hill remained solidly in American hands.

The captain climbed from his foxhole and began the same circuit that he had made the evening before, checking each fighting position and every soldier in them. Casualties, to his immense surprise and satisfaction, had been light. As he rounded the curve of the hillside, he approached a foxhole and called out the soldier’s name in a hushed tone. Without waiting for a reply, he dropped into the foxhole expecting to celebrate the successful defensive action with the soldier. With a heavy heart, he saw that the soldier he promised would see the sun now rising over the mountains to the east lay lifeless against the earthen foxhole wall.

The captain took a seat at the edge of the foxhole as he had only hours before and spoke a prayer for the unhearing soldier, and made a new promise, a promise he knew for certain he had the power to keep. To the unhearing soldier he promised that his sacrifice would not be forgotten; the memory of the soldier would live on as long as he himself remained alive.

In the years since he returned from Korea the officer often gathered soldiers, officers, friends and associates of all walks of life just before sunrise and related the story of the American solider in battle. And so the memory of the soldier remains alive to this day.

The many sunrises I have seen since that day in 1993 have taken on a different meaning. I can promise you today, as the general promised the soldier in death, that as long as I live, the memory of that unnamed American soldier in Korea, and the many others who died in wars since, will not be forgotten. So when you next observe the glorious sun rise on your day, take a moment and remember the American soldier.