Lacy Veach was my friend and roommate in a tiny trailer on skids parked among lots of trailers on the beach of the South China Sea at Tuy Hoa Airbase, South Vietnam, in 1968-69.  He died October 3, 1995, when cancer attacked his brilliant mind.  Lacy did it all in his short life.  He was a USAF Academy graduate, F-100 pilot, Misty FAC (the bravest of the brave), F-105 Wild Weasel pilot (just as brave), solo pilot with the USAF Thunderbirds, astronaut, husband, father and born again child of God.  I flew top cover for his rescue when he was shot down over the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. On October 22, 1992 I watched him blast into space aboard the Columbia (STS 52) on a clear Florida day from my backyard in Tampa.  His voice coming over my TV as he rode that rocket into the wild blue was a couple octaves lower than it was the day he hung from his parachute atop a tall tree in Laos, calling for help. If Lacy knew the Lord back then he kept it a secret from me (he probably thought the same about my faith), but his dying prayer below removes all doubt in my mind.  Every fighter pilot considers himself the world’s greatest fighter pilot, but I’ll confess now, 35 years later, that Lacy was a better “stick” than I.  A few weeks before he succumbed to cancer he wrote the following prayer with the help of Kathleen Golgin, Ph.D.  At his request, his space shuttle commander and good friend, Astronaut Mike Coats, read it at his funeral.  His ashes were dropped from a plane over his home state of Hawaii.

My friend for eternity, Lacy Veach, speaks for me from heaven this Veterans Day, 2004.

May God continue to have mercy on America,

JD Wetterling   

The Warrior’s Prayer

 Lord, I am a warrior...

My education began early in life. I studied the ancient civilizations and learned of modern politics. Mankind’s history, I discovered, swelled and ebbed with the seemingly perpetual tides of war. Military campaigns and strategies, past and present, were made familiar to me, as were expert soldiers who fought for justice and those who did not.

From the passionately fierce and ruthless Attila, who assailed and subdued the Roman Empire, I remembered a shameless declaration which, nevertheless captured his fighting spirit’s uncompromising singularity of purpose:

     “Nothing brings greater joy to my heart,” Attila cried, “than to murder
       my enemies and pillage his flocks and fields.”

 Here for all time was the clear and unromanticized reality of war.

From Scottish warrior Robert Bruce, who freed Scotland from English rule, emerged, for me, one of the justifications for taking up arms. Declared Bruce:

     “We fight not for honor, nor glory, nor for wealth. But only and alone
      we fight for freedom, which no good man surrenders but with his life.”

To fight in the defense of freedom, in the defense of justice, in defense of eternal principals of morality transcendentally ordained. To fight against oppression and wickedness.  To fight what Milton would call, “The Adversary of God and Man.”  For these reasons I am a warrior, Lord.

It was to establish justice and forge freedom that I was once locked in a battle to survive, to survive in a sky thundering with gunfire and clouded by the smoke of exploding rockets. Lord, in those moments, I knew what it was to implore Your protection...to be shielded by Your mercy.

I am an old warrior now, Lord, and, as the saying goes, perhaps “a wiser one.” And, I now know of a war waged between Time and Eternity. A war, which if lost makes empty the victory of all others. A war which, if finally fought and won, would make all other wars unnecessary, indeed, impossible.

 In this siege I need no spears or scimitars, no ballistics or gunners.

      I NEED ONLY THE LIGHT OF YOUR LOVE

I NEED ONLY THE SPLENDOR OF YOUR WISDOM

I NEED ONLY THE GUIDANCE OF YOUR WORD

In this war, the strategy is as simple as it is profound. For this is a Crusade of the Soul. And in this Crusade, the battle cry is clear:

     “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
      soul, and with all Thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And
      the second is like unto it; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Upon
      these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

 Let my warrior’s life begin with this end. Lord, I pray when You crack the sky, that You will find me...find me faithful.

      I AM A WARRIOR, LORD.

NO...I AM YOUR WARRIOR, LORD.

 Lacy Veech