Todd Starnes of Fox News reports the commander of F.E. Warren Air Force Base in my hometown of Cheyenne, Wyo., removed the Bible from a POW/MIA memorial. The commander was responding to demands by a one-man, left-wing, anti-religion organization. F.E. Warren has a storied legacy in the American West and has been the way station for generations of military leaders who served their country.
Col. Stacy J. Huser, by removing the Bible and by mouthing the offended group’s politically correct, bumper sticker, psychobabble nonsense, brings dishonor on this country’s uniform, those who served on the base before her, and those venerated by the memorial. President Trump, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, or Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson should remove Huser and restore the Bible to its rightful place.
I was born in Cheyenne; my father, mother, and brother are buried there; and my family has a lifelong connection to Warren. As a brash young man, Uncle Joe Wyrick fled the harsh hill country of Harlan County, Ky., enlisted in the U.S. Army, and ended up at Fort Francis E. Warren. My mother soon followed, met my railroader father who chased Depression Era jobs from the Arkansas Ozarks to Wyoming’s capitol, married, had my brother Barry and me, and, after jobs waitressing, became a nurse at “the base.” In the quiet of the graveyard shift, she watched over newborns and their mothers, most of whom were the wives of young, naive, and far-from-home enlisted men.
First called Fort D.A. Russell, after Civil War Brig. Gen. David A. Russell who was killed at the Third Battle of Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley, it was established by the U.S. Cavalry in 1867 near Crow Creek Crossing, later Cheyenne, on the treeless high plains at the far western edge of the Great Plains to protect those working on the Union Pacific Railroad. It was home to three black regiments, including the 24th Infantry, the famous “Buffalo Soldiers,” and by the turn of the century, it was one of the largest cavalry bases in the United States, with its men fighting the Indian Wars, sent to war in the Philippines, and deployed along the Mexican border. In 1930, its name was changed to honor Wyoming’s first governor Francis E. Warren, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for battlefield gallantry in the Civil War.
In 1949 it became an Air Force base and, in 1958, part of the Strategic Air Command. In 1961, it became headquarters for the 90th Strategic Missile Wing, which controlled more than 200 intercontinental ballistic missiles, with their nuclear warheads buried deep in silos at the end of dusty dirt roads across southeastern Wyoming. With those ICBMs the likely target of incoming Soviet missiles, Paul Harvey labeled Cheyenne “Bull’s Eye, USA.” We were proud to be noticed, but, in the era of the “duck and cover” campaign and films of nuclear testing in the Nevada desert, it generated nightmares of a nuclear blast sweeping through my father’s windbreak outside my window at our home east of Cheyenne.
The base was not just named for heroes; warriors who became heroes once called it home. One of them, World War I fighter ace and Medal of Honor recipient Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, crash-landed his plane on its dirt strip and survived. Other hereos include Gen. Mark W. Clark, who saw action in WWI, WWII, and the Korean War and was the youngest Army four-star general in WWII; Maj. Walter Reed, M.D., the U.S. Army physician who first postulated and confirmed the connection between mosquitoes and yellow fever (Walter Reed Army Medical Center is named after him); Maj. Gen. William L. “Billy” Mitchell, the military aviation visionary and father of the U.S. Air Force; and Gen. Carl A. Spaatz, who successfully commanded the Strategic Air Forces over Europe in 1944 and became chief of staff of the newly formed U.S. Air Force in 1947.
Most significant for me, however, was General of the Armies John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing; after all, we drove Pershing Boulevard from our home to school, town, and the base where he served.
Fast forward to days ago, when Col. Huser acceded to the demands of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which claims to fight “virulent religious oppression” waged by “incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.” According to Starnes, MRFF President Mikey Weinstein says he has “36 unnamed clients” at Warren who were offended by the Bible at a POW/MIA table. To increase “the sense of belonging for all our Airmen,” Col. Huser announced the Bible will be replaced by a “book of faith” with “spiritual writings and prayers from the five [U.S. Department of Defense] Chaplain appointed faith groups and a sixth set of blank pages to represent those who find solace by other means.”
Gen. Pershing removed the Germans from Allied territory and, days ago, Col. Huser removed the Bible from a memorial. It is not your grandfather’s Air Force anymore. What say you, Mr. President, Secretary Mattis, and Secretary Wilson? Is it yours?
