This is real friendship …

Friends make a profound difference in life.

One of the greatest examples of real friendship I’ve ever heard comes from a popular story of two friends who went to war together. I think the setting was Viet Nam. These young men had gone to school together and, as lifelong buddies, signed up to fight in the war together. They were excited they were assigned to serve together, and off to war they went.

Both of these men demonstrated bravery from the day they arrived in the war zone. If anything, their sergeant had to constrain them from taking too great a risk. But one day, while on patrol, things would change. Suddenly, their unit came under attack. The fire from the enemy was intense and kept them from crossing a broad clearing to reach cover on the other side. Someone needed to cross the clearing and set up cover fire for the unit, so one of the friends broke loose from his company and hit a fast run into the center of the clearing … where he was gunned down.

Immediately upon seeing his friend shot, the other buddy started to jump up and run out to his shot and dying friend. But the sergeant grabbed the soldier and threw him back, yelling at him that if he went out there he would lose his life like his friend was doing. The young man looked out into the field and saw the life draining out of his friend. With a jump he bounded to his feet and into the clearing toward his friend, but was shot down just as he reached his buddy.

The platoon fought valiantly for several more minutes and finally gained the upper hand on the enemy, allowing the soldiers to advance into and across the clearing. The sergeant ran to the young man who had run out to his friend. Seeing the soldier was dying, the sergeant said, “I told you not to go, I warned you! Now don’t you wish you would have listened to me?”

At that, the dying soldier looked up at his sergeant and spoke his last words: “Oh no, Sarge. You see, as soon as I got to my buddy he said to me, ‘I knew you would come’.”

Are you the kind of friend who others, in their most challenging times of life, would say of you, “I knew you would come?”

Scotty