An Atheist in a Foxhole
Photos of Ron by Jeff Luzum
There is an old saying, “There is no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.” Sadly, that is a myth. I was an atheist, and I spent plenty of time in foxholes.
I was about thirteen years old when I first began to consider myself an atheist, not because of some tragedy that made me angry at God, or because someone told me what to think, but because that was what made sense to me. I didn’t have a problem with people who believed in God. All of my friends had some kind of religion in their lives. I had friends that were Catholic, Jewish, Lutheran, or Protestant. It didn’t matter to me. God wasn’t anything that was a part of my family growing up. It was not frowned upon, but religion just never seemed to come up. The only time I remember stepping foot in a church was when my big sister got married. My biblical knowledge at a young age came from movies like The Ten Commandments and TV shows like the Little Drummer Boy.
I was a senior in high school when I decided to join the military. My first thought was the US Army, but I was also impressed with the Marine Corps. Back then, the military recruiters were allowed to reach out to high school kids to tell them about all the great opportunities the military offered. They came to the schools and met with anyone who would talk to them. I was an easy mark. I knew from an early age that I was destined for the military. One of my grandfathers fought in WWII, and my father fought in The Korean War. Reruns of Rat Patrol were on TV and the greatest American action hero of all time, John Wayne, had made movies like The Longest Day, The Sands of Iwo Jima, and The Green Berets. The Vietnam War was ending. Yet like God, my dad never really talked a lot about Korea, nor my grandfather about WWII, and when my oldest brother enlisted in the Army, Vietnam was over. My brother just missed the draft when he graduated from high school and frankly I doubt he would have enlisted at all if it hadn’t been at the suggestion of the local judicial system. Yep, back then it was considered by some a favorable alternative to jail. I think some still would agree to that, except anymore the military can afford to amend the old adage, to “beggars can be choosy.” The Air Force called me, and I told them, “Sorry, if you’re not a pilot in the Air Force, what good are you?” Don’t worry, the Air Force got back at me for that one later on. I said, “I’m blind as a bat without my glasses, so I think I’ll pass.” When the Navy called, I said, “I’m 6 foot 2, I hit my head every time I walk into the basement of the house I’ve lived in since before I could walk. If you put me on a ship, I’ll have a head wound in the first twenty-four hours.” Swing and a miss, strike two.
When I took my oath of service, I even left “God” off the “So help me God.”
Okay, it was up to the Jar Heads now to try and steal the show. By now, you can guess I didn’t join the illustrious and honorable ranks of the US Marine Corps. I had one thing in my head. I wanted to jump out of airplanes. I figured that would be more fun than flying them. Everyone always asks, “Why would you want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?” My reply has always been, “You obviously have never flown in an Air Force aircraft. There is nothing perfectly good about them.” I’ve always felt safer jumping out of them then landing in them. Remember the payback I talked about earlier? The Army promised to throw me out of airplanes, so that’s how I ended up in the foxhole. When I took my oath of service, I even left “God” off the “So help me God.” When I went to get my dog tags, they asked me my religion, so I told them atheist. My dog tags said “No Preference.” I thought, that’s not right, I have a preference, it’s atheism. Still, I had no problem with religion. As long as I was left alone about my choices, I was fine with what everyone else’s choices were. Now so far most people would say, “Okay, you’re falling out of planes but it’s not like you’re being shot at.” That was about to change.
Over the course of ten years, I would see combat three times. The first was over the skies of Panama City, Panama, in 1989. I came out the door of a C-141 aircraft at 450 feet above the ground at 2 AM on December 20. Thankfully, training paid off. The first night one of my own soldiers and close friends almost shot me. With a few thousand paratroopers trying to link up with each other in the middle of the night, they had a plan to make it happen without the good guys getting shot by each other. The plan was that every American soldier had the same challenge and password. When a unit in motion comes upon a stationary unit, the stationary unit issued a challenge, and the unit in motion needed to respond with the correct password, or the stationary unit would shoot the unit in motion. For Operation Just Cause, the challenge and password was a number combination. That combination was nine. That means the stationary unit said a number between one and nine. The unit in motion had to respond with a number that was added to it to total nine.
There I was, walking through the night in very tall grass and brush surrounding our drop zone, gun fire all around, and I hear a voice in the dark say, “Five!” I froze, my mind starts to race. The number combination is nine and someone just said “Five.”
Okay, I can do this. Five plus what equals nine? Um, five plus....
I hear again, “Five!!!” Ummm, nine, that’s five plus...
One more time: “Five!!!”
“Geisler?”
“Who is that?”
“Sergeant O.”
“Holy Crap, I almost shot you!”
“Four, right?”
An entire brigade of paratroopers running around in the dark, not to mention all the not- so-nice guys, and I happened to run into one of my own team members, A. P. Geisler. One out seven or eight thousand people with guns and I run into the one guy whose voice I recognized. Guess what—still an atheist.
Same country, two days later, middle of the night again. I was getting ready to lie down after a long, hot day. I had just checked on my soldiers on watch. We were in a building that was, just days before, occupied by the Panamanian Army’s paratroopers. They picked this particular moment to mount a counter attack. I laid down and, all heck breaks loose. I jumped up and ran to my men. I went to the window that one of my guys was manning, firing his Squad Automatic Weapon about 750 rounds a minute. Since I was getting ready to lie down, I was in a t-shirt and a jungle hat while everyone else was wearing flak vest and Kevlar® helmets. I was standing about a foot away from my guy when he ducked his head and said, “Did you hear that explosion?” I didn’t think anything of it and went on directing fire and calling for a forward unit on the radio. The next day, he and his roommate Geisler came up to me and asked if I remembered the explosion comment from the night before. “Yeah, I guess.” They showed me the slug from the bullet buried in the back of his Kevlar® helmet. One foot to the left, and my mom and dad were getting a visit from an Army chaplain. Yep, still an atheist.
Fast forward about a year to the other side of the world in the desert of Iraq. I had jumped into a foxhole—an Iraqi foxhole—but nevertheless, a foxhole. I jumped in to it to clear it. There was an AK-47 and a RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade launcher) leaning up against the side of the foxhole. I pulled the AK out and handed it to one of my guys outside and reached for the RPG. Just as I did, I noticed a small wire coming off the trigger guard of the RPG. I stopped long enough to follow the wire to the pin of the hand grenade shoved into a hole in the back of the foxhole. I cut the wire, remove the grenade and the RPG. Not very sophisticated, but I think the previous occupant left in a hurry. Still, I remained an atheist.
A few years passed and this time I was on the Horn of Africa. Now things get a little hairy. There really isn’t much to joke about that came out of Mogadishu Somalia. Well, there isn’t much to joke about in polite company about Somalia at all, and polite company is anyone who wasn’t there. This was the conflict called The Battle of Mogadishu, but most people refer to it as the Black Hawk Down incident because of the movie by that name. I’ve watched this movie twice in my life. Once was by myself in a dark theater… that was a good decision on my part. The second was with my sons when it came out on DVD. I wanted them to understand a little bit about why I am who I am. That DVD sits on a shelf in my basement to this day and I will likely never watch it again. Partly because of the inaccuracy of the story, partly because of the Hollywood aspect of the story, but mostly because it makes me angry for all of those reasons and many more. The point is that I’ve been in some really not-nice places. I’ve done and seen some really not-nice things, things that would give the average person nightmares. I guess that makes me somewhat average, as after twenty-five years, some of these things still give me nightmares. I left the service in 1995, and yes, I was still an atheist.
I had always seen myself as a lifer in the Army—I never really expected to retire. I planned to spend my entire life in the Army, and I was good with that. Ultimately, I left because I had just gotten divorced and felt I needed to take custody of my two sons, ages two and three at the time. I knew with my chosen profession the chance of my winning custody of two small boys was slim to none. I was no longer in a foxhole, but yes, I was still an atheist.
Jesus is pulling for you, too.
Ron and his wife, Sheri
All the flying bullets, explosions, and parachute jumps at Zero Dark Thirty hadn’t opened my eyes. Ten years of beating up my body and soul didn’t show me what God had in store for me. In the end it was my loving wife, a house fire, and a visit from Pastor Paul Gedden. I’m no longer in a foxhole, and as of four and a half years ago, I’m no longer an atheist, either. All those years ago, God had plenty of opportunities to right me off. One foot to the left, a better-concealed trip wire, or a trigger-happy buddy and no one would have known my story. Most would not have missed it.
We are all broken and God can make the broken beautiful again. For all my veteran brethren who still fight the nightmares and demons, I can’t say that the nightmares have gone away, but even those are brighter today than they were when I was just an atheist in a foxhole. To quote a saying from another of my philosophical heroes, “Keep your stick on the ice. Remember, I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together.” And Jesus is pulling for you, too.
–Written by Ron Oglesbee; edited by Rachel Bebee & Marie Dufour