Colonel
Mitchell PaigeU.S.M.C. (Retired)
My parents and teachers instilled in me a devout love of God, family and country. To those who ask why I was willing to put my life on the line, I answer that "My undying love of country and my strong loyalty to the marines fighting by my side gave me no choice but to fight on unswervingly throughout my battles, utilizing my God-given ability to make use of what I had been taught and what I had learned."
Mitch Paige, MOH
Colonel
Mitchell Paige
A wise man once said, "If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything." Perhaps this defines well why it is so important for all of us and especially our young, to have something to believe in, something greater than ourselves, in which to entrust our life and future.
I was only seventeen years old when I finished high school and eager to join the United States Marines. In 1936 however, the Marines turned away recruits under the age of eighteen. I had to wait until fall and my birthday on August 31.
The nearest recruiting office was two hundred miles away at Baltimore and I had to walk the entire distance to again volunteer for military service. My mother, who had always taught us to be patriotic and to fulfill our responsibility to our country, packed me a sack lunch for the long trip. She handed this to me as I left the house, along with some important parting words. "Trust in the Lord, son," she told me, "and He will guide you always."
I never forgot those words, and many were the times that they came back to inspire and comfort me. At no time did they ever become more real however, than on the morning of October 26, 1942 after the battle that earned me the Medal of Honor.
That morning while sitting in a foxhole on Guadalcanal, surrounded by dead bodies and exhausted from the battle only hours before, I suddenly felt very much alone. I emptied out my pack to try and find something to stop the bleeding from a bayonet wound when my small Bible fell out of the pack.
Gingerly I picked up that Bible in my dirty, bloody hands and opened it. I could scarcely believe the words that met my eyes. Providentially it had opened to Proverbs 3:5 which says:
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths."
Immediately I recalled my mother's words to me before I had left our home six years earlier. I realized in that moment the full truth of those words. In the horrible hours of the battle at Guadalcanal I had never been alone, nor was I in that moment afterwards when I was surrounded by dead bodies, one of which probably should have been my own. I had done what was right, and trusted God. He kept his promise to direct me and bring me safely through that ordeal.
More than half a decade has passed since that moment, but still I recall those words as if it were yesterday, for though time passes and things change in our life, God's promise is consistent.
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