WOULD YOUR CHILD WRITE THIS?
Bub Roussel was only 17 on Sunday morning in 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed. A few weeks later, he was drafted and ended up in the Army Air Corps, assigned as a radio operator on a B-29 bomber.
The youngest in his crew, Bub and many like him had to grow up fast when he was sent to the Island of Saipan. From Saipan, B-29s were making bomb runs on Japan and the work was dangerous and sometimes deadly.
On the morning of December 13, 1944, eighteen bombers left Saipan to bomb factories in Nagoya, Japan, but four of the bombers never returned, and Bub’s plane was one of them.
The family members of each of the crew received the official telegram, a small white flag, bordered with red and one small star in the middle – the symbol of a son who has fallen in battle. But Bub’s parents received something else, almost a month after his plane went down. They received a letter he had placed on his pillow before the last mission that read: "Dear folks, I have left this with instructions to send it on to you if something happens to me. I send you my love and blessings. My life has been a full one. I have been loved like very few persons I know. I love you with all the best that is in me. It hasn’t been hard for me, knowing you believe in me, trust me, and stand behind me in fair or foul. Knowing this has made me strong. Love always, Bub!"
Would your child be able to write such a letter? They can if they come from a home of blessing!!
(From a sermon by Gene Edwards, "In Search of the Blessing")