Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.
- Numbers 20:11
“[Sergeant Shepherd] said, ‘Will the brother from Chicago pray?’ One man after another prayed for water, asking God, as it were, to strike the rock again and provide needed water for the people. The impromptu prayer meeting lasted for about an hour, and the men concluded by again singing the doxology. As they dismissed, Shepherd admonished them, ‘Boys, when you awake during the night offer to God a little prayer for water. Do the same many times tomorrow, and let us meet here in the evening to pray again for water.’
“Prayers went up among the prisoners for several days. Then one morning as they awoke, ‘an ominous stillness pervaded nature.’ By mid-morning, black clouds began rolling in, and the camp was deluged by a long-lasting cloudburst. As [John L.] Maile vividly recalled,
“Crashes of thunder broke over our heads and flashes of lightning swished around us as if the air was filled with short circuits. As the mighty deluge swept through the clearing west of the prison, we bowed our heads in preparation of submersion. When it came upon us the sensation was as if a million buckets of water were being poured upon us at once.”
“When the storm finally ended, a prisoner near the north gate began shouting, ‘A spring! A spring!’
“Maile later wrote in his memoirs, Prison Life in Andersonville, he saw ‘the vent of a spring of purest crystal water, which shot up into the air in a column, and, falling in a fanlike spray, went babbling down the grade.’”
- Robert J. Morgan, 100 Bible Verses That Made America
In my recent trip to visit the grandchildren, the oldest of them went with me to Nashville, to sell used books and games. One of the books that I purchased in return was 100 Bible Verses That Made America by Robert J. Morgan. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the birth of the USA, I thought I would do a condensed mini-series on some of these verses, four posts per week for a few weeks – maybe not all 100 verses.
Reprints of the book, Prison Life in Andersonville, are for sale on Amazon, and possibly other outlets.
I was assigned a task while on active duty during my days in the Army reserve, after I left full-time active duty. I had to read the Geneva Conventions thoroughly. The original Geneva Convention was signed in 1864 and it pertained to the protection of sick and wounded soldiers on the battlefield. A maritime supplement was added in the 1899 Geneva Convention. Protection of prisoners of war was not added until 1929.
The modern Geneva Conventions were written and implemented by 1950. There have been updates made in 1977 and in 2005.
When I did my writing based on my research, I had all the Conventions from 1864 through 1977. The 2005 convention was after my time.
Those who say everything is fair in love and war have never read those conventions.
But I write this to say that what happened at Andersonville, GA was in violation of human decency, but not the Geneva Conventions. But as a pragmatic, logically thinking man, POW camp amenities in a war torn location is possibly the hardest rules to follow.
The prophet, especially Jeremiah and Ezekiel (and in John’s Revelation), speak of sword, famine, and plague. I have written before of how this happens in this order. You muster the farm boys to fight as soldiers. The crop does not get planted due to people fighting on that field or no farmer to till the soil. Even if you could grow a crop, rationing of all means to get the crop to market puts a strain on the logistics systems. The soldier needs to eat, and rationing on the home front means that the soup is watery for the wives and children left behind. Now POWs put a strain on everything. Thus, famine easily follows the sword, but then plague comes if there are no people to bury the dead.
I had a special project that I managed in Germany. There were actually two projects equaling about 10 million dollars, money I helped obtain for our community. To cut down on costs, a ten percent discount for all building materials was added to all the supply contracts if I could get the supplier paid within a short time. I needed a clerk devoted to filling out the paperwork.
My first hire was an elderly man from England. He was a retired enameller (painting bathtubs with enamel paint), but he had an interesting past. He was born in Poland. He was conscripted into the Polish Army at the beginning of World War II, before the beginning since France and England declared war on Germany because of the German invasion of Poland. The Polish Army was barely a bump in the road. He had been a signal soldier, running wire between headquarters and listening posts. He was quickly captured by the Nazis. He then was a Polish POW of the Nazi Army.
When the Nazi’s attacked Russia, they conscripted him (against the Geneva Convention) into the Nazi Army. He was again a signal soldier running wire to listening posts on the Russian frontier. Their intelligence was in error. His squad found themselves surrounded by the Russians. For the second time in the war, he found himself to be a POW, this time for the opposite side in the war. He was placed on a ship bound for the USA, away from the conflict entirely. He spent the rest of World War II in eastern Arkansas, picking cotton and food crops to go back on boats similar to the one that brought him to the USA. He was amazed at the fields where he worked. There were green crops growing as far as the eye could see in all directions. Hardly any guards. None of the POWs wanted to leave, at least none that were with him.
Since he was in Arkansas, there was rationing, but they lived under the protection of the Geneva Convention and there was enough food. Not so when he was a POW in Poland.
In Andersonville, there was a shortage of everything. The camp was designed for 10,000 prisoners and over 30,000 were there. The worst shortage was that the water came from a stream going through the camp. The water was already contaminated water coming into the camp and the prisoners drank from it, washed themselves in it, and did their other business in it. There were more sick prisoners from the disease-ridden water than from starvation or mistreatment. Then Sergeant Shepherd, a pastor before the war, emaciated and near death himself, preached his sermon after attracting people by singing the Doxology. Their prayers were answered.
I nearly laughed when reading Maile’s description of the rain. I first experienced “Yankee rain” when I was stationed in Watertown, MA roughly fifty years ago. As I described it to friends back in Mississippi and Texas, it’s like the clouds ooze water. It’s more of a thick fog with drops of water so tiny that they can hang in the air. You had to have plenty of windshield washer fluid. The rain brought more mud than water to the windshield. Southern rain comes down heavy, torrential downpours. You would get soaked in a second of being in a Southern rainstorm. What Maile described is a normal rainfall, but it was probably more rain than he had ever seen in his life.
But then the spring burst forth. They had fresh water at last. God had answered their prayers.
And the author says that if you take the tour today, the Providence Spring is still there.
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
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