Remembrance Day: Serving God and Country in the UK Armed Services
"I spent a lot of time reading the Bible on operations. I had a small pocket Bible and I read it every night that I could."
(United Kingdom)—Christian Today has interviewed Colonel Paul Eaton, a committed Christian and active serviceman in the Army, after he recently helped launch United Christian Broadcasters' new Forces Prayerline for servicemen and women and their families. The following are excerpts from that interview. To read the interview in its entirety, follow the link provided.
Christian Today: You are a committed Christian. What initially inspired you to join the Armed Forces?
Paul Eaton: I had been told when I was quite young that service in the Forces and Christianity are not incompatible. And since I've become a Christian, one of the stories I take great heart from is when Jesus meets Cornelius, the Roman centurion, and praises him for his great faith. It seems to me that it's not incompatible...
CT: Did you ever find yourself in a position where you felt you were being asked to do something at odds with your Christian beliefs?
PE: No. Actually what I found is that it is a tremendous help on operations because it gives you courage and hope and allows you to look at things with a higher perspective.
CT: Servicemen and women are portrayed as having a tough exterior and not particularly sentimental or emotional. Is that just a misconception?
PE: Yes...The truth is that we're all human beings and underneath that hard macho exterior there are fears, there are worries, there are questions. And there are lots of issues that they are struggling with.
CT: What would you like society to be mindful of as we mark Remembrance Day?
PE: It's really important that the nation understands that there are ordinary men and women out there on the frontline. And regardless of the politics of it all, they are there effectively to defend our nation and are undergoing tremendous pressure and stress and some of them are paying with their lives or serious injuries...It's not good when soldiers come home and people jeer at them in the streets or spit on them... I wonder if, for people coming back with war trauma, that sense that the nation is behind them is part of the healing process, that whatever they've been through they feel that it was worth it because people value what they've done?
It would also be good if people could pray for people to have a better understanding of what the Forces do on the ground. It would be really good if people had a better idea of what they were up to and what life was about. We sometimes miss the brilliant work that people are doing on the medical side, the logistics side, and the communications side.
