Are We There Yet?

Tears of joy began to fill our eyes as we saw the approaching American coastline.  The pounding in our chests that had begun as we left Salisbury changed to a comfortable rhythm as the wheels of the 747 touched down at JFK International.

After gathering our bags, we joined the lines of returning American citizens.  Much to my dismay, the person in front of us was another Rhodesian Army member whom I knew from my training intake at RLI.  When I left Training Troop to join the Chaplain Corps, he had gone on to become a medic in 2 Commando.  [He, too, was “officially” on his first year’s 30 day leave, but we both knew that neither of us would be returning to Rhodesia at month’s end.  If I had seen him in Rhodesia, I would have given him the “word” that the Army had advised us to leave.  Apparently, he had already heard.]

He had some difficulty speaking as his jaw was wired shut from an auto accident.  As such, he was relieved that I could be there to “speak for him” although that was the very last thing I wanted--to be associated with another American returning from Rhodesia.  To make things worse, he was carrying his army issue medic’s bag with Rhodesian Army markings and had his camo uniform on a hanger in a dry-cleaning bag!  

I really didn’t want to have a conversation with Customs and Immigration about my time in the Rhodesian Army or the uniforms that Pegi and I both had in our suitcases!  Amazingly, he breezed right through ahead of us without any problems or my help.  I don’t remember exactly what we gave as our reason for being in Rhodesia except that we had been on an extended honeymoon, which was a stretch, but true.  We, too, breezed through without any problems.

So, if the State Department really was on the lookout for Americans serving in the Rhodesian Army, they didn’t seem concerned that we had returned home.  Five years later, we would apply for new passports.  I received a follow-up questionnaire in the mail asking:  “When did you renounce your American citizenship and why?”  I responded that I had never renounced my American citizenship.  I had not been required to do so when enlisting in the Rhodesian Army.  Fortunately, my new passport was granted without further questions.

It is no surprise that the US government had our names.  Robin Moore had published our names and photos in 17 US papers, had introduced us to Newsweek’s Arnaud de Borgrave who had family members who had been victimized by terrorists in Rhodesia and was rumored to be CIA-connected.  And then there was the chapter Robin had devoted to us in his 1977 book, Rhodesia.  Pile on the former Special Forces Colonel who worked for Robin in Salisbury whom I got to know at Robin’s home.  According to Robin’s 1991, The White Tribe, this Colonel was actually working undercover for the CIA at the time and had turned over the names of all the American soldiers in Rhodesia to the State Department.  The White Tribe states that Robin had been unaware of his CIA cover until this same Colonel tried to assassinate him in early 1979.

But we were home!  My size 13 feet were firmly on US soil and I had no intention of letting those feet march anywhere else ever again!  Of course there was a question as to whether Berachah Church in Houston was still our home.  We weren’t even sure if we would be allowed entry there since we had dared to disagree with Col Thieme and his political opinions concerning Rhodesia.  So, if not there, where did we belong--where was home?

I was feeling at a total loss.  Houston and Berachah had been my sacred center as a new Christian.  And, due to the extreme isolationist teaching of Thieme, I really knew nothing of the Christian life outside of Berachah.  Bible doctrine wasn’t working for us, yet we had nowhere else to go.  

My time in Rhodesian Light Infantry training had made it clear that my 28 year old physique was no longer capable of enduring grueling military training.  So, now a military career was totally out of the question.  I had previously considered the possibility of emigration to Israel to avail myself of dual citizenship as a Jew in order to serve in the Israeli Army.  Now I knew that I would not be up to it physically.   

Although I had become a believer in Jesus, I still clung to my Jewish identity.  At the time, I was ignorant of the conflict of interest that my Christianity presented to other Jews.  Consequently, I didn’t realize that my open Christian stance would prohibit successful aliyah and absorption into Israeli life.  Nevertheless, what my religious insensitivity didn’t alert me to, my body did.  I had tried running recently and found that  even though my leg had seemed to heal up nicely, my back would tighten and seize after the first few steps.  There was no hope of a military career for me, not even in Israel.

So, if not the military, what?  Well, my limited life choices as a Thieme-instructed Christian were two:  the military or the ministry.  My service as a chaplain had activated my interest in ministry.  It had also shown me that I had no idea what I was doing in ministry--I needed ministry training and lots of it!  I needed to start with Greek and Hebrew so that I could dig into the original languages and see what the Bible actually had to say for myself.

Catching a New York Airways helicopter from JFK would connect us with our TWA flight to Houston.  Even though we had two hours to connect (in those days that was plenty of time), we had two large suitcases and three large boxes which I could not carry from the American Airlines gate where our SAA flight had landed to New York Airlines gate in another wing of the terminal.  I flagged a porter who told me that he could not help me since it involved transporting baggage to another carrier.  I asked him if he could please do us a favor, promising to tip him well.

He was suddenly more than happy to help us and rushed us and our bags over to the other gate.  Now, I had made a terrible error in overtipping when we first got to Rhodesia.  In this case, I definitely needed to be generous to this American porter who had come to our rescue--or was he just “working” us?  Saying that he couldn’t port between airlines seemed odd.  But because we were rushing to make our flight, I gave him all the US cash I had with me--a five dollar bill.  I had South African Rand that he could exchange at any bank, but he wasn’t interested in Rand.  Anyway,  I thought that a dollar a bag sounded generous compared to the five cents a bag that we tipped in Africa.  The look on his face told me that he expected four more of those five dollar bills!  Explaining that this was all I had, we left him a very unhappy porter.

Our helicopter flight stopped at the top of the World Trade Center to disembark some business travelers and we continued on to La Guardia.  We missed our flight, but found space on one an hour later.  Late that afternoon we arrived at Houston International where our old friends Ken and Jill Duckman met us.

We went back to the Duckman’s house and dug out some of the clothes that we had left behind.  I had never really expected to see those clothes again.  As we were unpacking, I turned to Ken and asked, “What have you heard?  Are we even allowed to come back to Berachah?”  Ken responded that he hadn’t heard anything negative about us from the Colonel and that as far as we knew we were still welcome.  Well, we would see what “welcome” met.

Next:  In Uniform for Church?