US soldiers are brave and courageous because of this oft-overlooked element

Just after midnight in the new hours of Dec.9, 1944, New Yorkers saw the British ship Monarch slip silently out of the harbor, carrying members of the US Army’s 125th Evacuation Hospital on their way to deploy to the front lines of Europe in World War II.

Among them, another ordinary New Yorker, but extraordinary to me: my great-great-aunt Lt.Luella Cochran, who — although unaware of this at the time — was beginning a wartime tour of duty that would take her through England, France and Germany for a year and a half.

Her first surgery as an anesthetist nurse was a leg amputation.Faith was integral to enduring the war.Her first letter home let her mother know that she “went to Communion last Sunday, yesterday and will go tomorrow.

So don’t worry.All is well.” Her mother, Rosa, indeed had cause to worry, for she had already buried a child one world war prior.

My great-great-uncle, PFC Joseph Lorenz, of the US Army’s American Expeditionary Force, Rainbow Division, was laid to rest in Suresnes, France, after making the Ultimate Sacrifice on Nov.21, 1918, at the age of 21, after first sacrificing one of his legs.

Aunt Lou visited his grave twice during her deployment, following the footsteps of her Gold Star mother who visited as part of the historic Gold Star Pilgrimage of 1930, and preceding the footsteps of my mother, who visited her great uncle’s final resting place in 2015.History books chronicle the ferocity of war, portraying the details of battles, successes and failures, and describing courageous and honorable actions by soldiers who exceed duty and secure freedom in the thick of combat.But what those black-and-white details don’t reveal is the unseen force at work: the origin of tide-turning courage, the source of the invisible protection, the embrace in which a soldier finds comfort.

In the depths of fear, the throes of pain, the brutality of violence, the moments of jubilation, where do warfighters turn? Faith. In 2006, nearly one hu...