God was in the minds and hearts of many a man who went to war in the skies over Europe and the Pacific in World War Two.

I can prove it. There are many testimonies to this fact.

Many men prayed before, during and after missions. Many men carried their faith with them in the form of sacred symbols, images and relics.

Many men attended chapel services on the airbases and most of them prayed.

Prayer was the most important part of combat flying. I have known men who prayed to their aircraft, to the engines, to the props and to the wings to get them back and their crews back to base.

A high percentage of the airmen carried tiny Bibles with them, secreted in their flight jackets or clothing. These Bibles were given out at most of the airbases both in this country and overseas.

The religious routine learned by these men in war carried over in many cases to civilian life after the war. The values reinforced by their devotion translated into careers as ministers, air workers, and services to humanity.

Here are a few of the true stories of these testimonies of duty to God and religious values.

We had a waist gunner who without the knowledge of the pilot would sneak off into a safe place before takeoff and pray. He told me this many years later but I did not know it at the time. He had to have that final quiet time and place to pray to his God. In later life he was a devoted church-goer and believer. This practice of prayer acquired in the war stayed with him until he died. His name was Sgt. Harold Jack Harmon.

Jack was a true believer. But he was more. He devoted his life to serving.

It was no small thing he did. He was a party-er, a drinker but he also happened to carry his religious belief in God with him even in battle.

There is a tiny wooden church in an alpine village of Adelboden in the Swiss Alps. Early on June 6, 1944, men came from all directions over the mountains and up from the valleys to that little village church. I was there.

They gathered inside that church with its wooden beams and its ancient carvings. We all knew why we were there.

And they prayed and gave a service. Those prayers and that service were for their comrades in arms.

That date was the invasion of Europe, the landing at Normandy, that was to eventually lead to the victory in WWII. I like to think these many years later that the prayers said that day in a tiny Alpine church in the middle of Nazi occupied Europe were heard by God. Did He answer that prayer or all of our prayers that June day. The invasion was successful. Judge for yourself.

I learned to pray at 12,000 feet over the frigid water of the North Sea as we were about to crash with little hope of survival. We had been badly shot up by attacks from approximately twenty enemy fighters over the North Sea coming out of Norway and Denmark.

We were going down fast and I with others threw out all heavy equipment to lighten the load but we continued to fall closer and closer to the freezing water of the North Sea. It was November and a man could only last three minutes in that water.

The ball turret gunner was wounded by a piece of shell as it passed over my shoulder. There was a hole in the wing larger enough for a small jeep. The bailout bell was ringing. I pulled the hatch and looked down at the white caps and waves.

Then I knelt down in the hot shell casings and the blood from the wounded gunner and started to pray. It was the first time I had ever prayed in my life.

Suddenly a bank of low lying clouds formed over the water and we went into it. The German fighters could not find us and broke off their fierce attacks. Did God answer my prayers or was in pure luck.

When we had struggled to home base, the total wreckage of the plane was inspected and a 20 mm shell was found unexploded in one good engine. God was surely with us.

There were times when, despite a desperate silence enforced by the pilot, men would start praying over the intercom. Slowly at first.

I have seen men transfixed by fear standing on airfields repeating prayers, calling on God to bring their brothers home safely.

Do not tell me or them that God was not in their hearts, minds and souls at those times.

Chaplain services, especially before missions, were well attended even by some who did not have faith or too much belief.

As testimonials to all this faith and religious values the countryside of England, France and other countries around the world is sprinkled by many churches, stained glass windows, memorials, monuments, tributes to God marked and enshrined by the fighting men in all parts of the world.

One of the greatest is in St. Paul's Cathedral in London and I have stood before it in reverence. But it is in the small and tiny village churches and chapels were the most touching appeals to God from the fighting men are seen.

These values held that generation together through the horrors of a great war and still holds these same men even today almost 60 years later.

I remember an Easter Sunday in wartime England at the ancient Norwich Cathedral hearing the services in stalls crowded by men and women in uniforms, some fresh from the fronts and other just back from hazardous bombing missions over Europe.

I remember the solace of the sounds of the bells from some distant parish church blowing on the wind across the English fields and the comfort it gave me and my fellow crew-mates.

God was on those winds, in the bell sounds and in our hearts.

The values that many men had and were reinforced by the horrors of war in the air carried over after the war was over and they were discharged.

One combat pilot I know became a pilot for a religious charitable organization that carried aid to underdeveloped countries in Africa and Asia.

Another I knew became a Lutheran pastor and served his chosen faith well for 50 years.

Still others continued flying but in aid groups around the world. Still more became leaders in the fields of charitable institutions and started careers in such groups as the Agency for International Development and the Peace Corps.

I am willing to bet that the majority of the men who flew combat in that war came out wishing to contribute worthwhile efforts to their fellow men and women.

When I and others in a group were escaping from Europe in the closing days of 1944 we met in a safe house for refugees at the Swiss--French border near Annecy, France. Many of those there prayed for their deliverance and survival in the war.

We hid in a French farmhouse on the border and the warmth and light of that haven was to me, a young but exhausted GI in Dec. 1944, was like the light of heaven and a testament that God had looked over all of us in that group.

It was about Christmas 1944 and up north 150 or more miles a deadly battle was going on, the Battle of the Bulge.

I shall never forget that place of haven or the feeling that we were near to survival and freedom during that bitter cold winter of 1944. I do not know where that farmhouse was, and have never been able to find it, but to me it will always be a symbol of hope and freedom and of God's providence in the darkness of war.

Given as a testimony to his faith by an airman of the 8th Air Force in WWII,

Forrest S. Clark, 44th BG, 67th Squadron.

Written and lived by T/Sgt Forrest S. Clark, 44th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force,

Purple Heart, Air Medal. WWII bomber crew member.

Retired after 37 years as a journalist, freelance writer and teacher.