It wasn’t an unusual request, so I stepped aside with her. “I need to ask you about my son. I think he may be…I’m afraid he might be…showing some tendencies toward being…Oh, I think something’s wrong with him! Maybe he’s a psychopath or something!”

My eyebrows went up. “What would make you think that?” I replied, wondering if she was going to tell me he was torturing small animals or being a firebug.

“Well, he plays war all the time! And that means he’s pretending to kill people! And sometimes he pretends like he’s been shot and he pretends to die! That’s not normal is it?”

I relaxed. “Let me explain something to you. You are a girl, a mother. When you think of war, you think of orphans and widows, POWs and disabled veterans. You imagine your son coming home bloodied and beaten. It’s scary and brutal, right?”

“Yes, of course! Doesn’t everyone think that way?”

“No! When your son thinks of war, he is thinking of valiant deeds, courage, and bravery. He’s imagining standing up to the evil to protect the weak and innocent. When he pretends to be shot, he’s picturing nobly laying down his life for his brothers in arms. To him, it’s all about testing his strength and showing himself mighty when it counts, it’s about manliness and honor.”

Hope dawned in her eyes. “Really? I never thought about it that way! Is that really why he’s obsessed with war and battle?”

“Yes, certainly. Of course, the explosions don’t hurt the attraction any,” I smiled at her.

Yesterday, on the 67th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Bulge, Life Magazine released some never before seen shots of the Ardennes during the Battle. They are really quite remarkable, some even in full color. Gather your children around and take a look at them. Take time to tell them about the great, glorious fight against one of the most evil leaders the world has seen — and don’t be worried when they are fascinated with war!

For manly, historical and inspiring gifts for boys fascinated with war, from King Arthur swords to rubberband machine guns, click here!

For inspiring stories of the heroes of American History that teach virtue and character, get our Hero Tales from American History dramatized audiobooks by Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge. Order by midnight, Monday, December 20th for Christmas delivery.

The newest disc in our series, Volume 3, brings the collection up to the War Between the States. One track tells the story of the 1862 Battle of Hampton Roads, between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (often called the Merrimac), the first clash of ironclad warships.

This was an interesting story to produce. We’ve used the sounds of waves, seagulls, and ship’s bells before to give the basic nautical flavor to the background. But the Monitor and the Virginia offer unique problems. To start with, what did they sound like when they were underway?

We try to be as authentic as possible with the sound effects in these stories, but sometimes you just have to make your best educated estimate. For instance, we know both these ships were propeller driven, so we can’t use sternwheel riverboat sounds. They were steam powered vessels with engines peculiar to maritime uses. While there’s information online about the different styles of engine they used, I couldn’t find any recordings of that exact machinery. I opted to use the sound of two different narrow gauge steam locomotives, one a little deeper and slower than the other, edited to give the steady beat you would have heard on board.

One of the remarkable features of the battle was the sight of cannonballs bouncing off the ironclad vessels. Did that make a distinctive sound? I think so, and I think it would have been distinct for the two warships. The armor on the two vessels was radically different. The Virginia had four inches of iron on top of 24 inches of solid oak and pine. The Monitor, on the other hand, was all metal – the most exposed thing, the gun turret, had eight 1-inch layers of iron bolted together, with another layer of 1-inch plates bolted inside the turret to dampen the sound of a direct hit (yeah, right). I chose a deep metallic sound for ricochets off the Virginia, sort of a “bong,” and a higher note (“clank”) for hits on the Monitor.

Their guns were different, too. The Monitor had two big 11-inch naval guns, while the Virginia was described as a floating battery – smaller guns, but lots of them. I found a recording of an actual Civil War cannon shot, likely a smaller bore field piece, which I used for the Virginia’s rifled armaments. A deeper “boom” stands in for the Monitor’s big Dahlgrens..

If you listen carefully to the battle sequences, you might be able to track who’s shooting what at whom—and watching it bounce harmlessly off which.

Maybe the best thing is the celebration on the southern shore after the Virginia’s initial success. My son John Calvin found a recording (a film, actually) made at a reunion of Civil War veterans in the 1930’s. The three cheers you hear echoing over Chesapeake Bay on our CD are the genuine Rebel yell – performed by actual Confederate soldiers. How authentic is that?

Sometimes you just can’t find what you need. I’ve already mentioned the creepy Deguello bugle call Santa Anna used to announce “No prisoners” to the defenders of the Alamo. Our army never had need of it, and I couldn’t find another recording suitable for use. Roosevelt didn’t mention the bugle, so I just let that historical detail pass. The shots from Jim Travis’ pistol are a period black-powder revolver, though, and the ticking clock on Gouveneur Morris’ wall in revolutionary Paris is an 18^th-century, Scottish antique  – and the angry mob in the street is shouting in French. That’s in volume 2, by the way.

If you have enjoyed our rendition of Hero Tales, we’ll be glad to answer any questions we can. If you haven’t heard them yet, why not download a sample and try one out? We think you’ll like them!

Bibliography Note:  When the book Hero Tales from American History was first published in 1895, Henry Cabot Lodge got top billing over co-author Theodore Roosevelt. Although both men were Harvard graduates with established records of historical and biographical books, at that time Lodge was the more prominent of the two—a Ph.D serving in the U.S. Senate after three terms in the House. Roosevelt had served short terms in the New York General Assembly and the federal Civil Service Commission, but his meteoric rise from the New York governor’s office to the White House (with a brief visit to San Juan Hill, Puerto Rico) were still in his future. So in 1895, Senator Lodge is credited first.

King Alfred’s English: A History of the Language We Speak and Why We Should Be Glad We Do

The capstone of the book is the story of how we got the Bible in English and it’s influence upon our language. What were the driving ideas behind the Reformation? Are the New Testament documents really reliable or are they translations of translations with huge discrepancies between manuscripts? Why was translating the Bible into English punishable by death? Learn the answers to these questions and find out how the Reformation affected the way you and I speak today.

Recommended for grades 7-12 but works for younger students and curious adults as well. Here’s our review of this wonderful book!

For more information go to The Shorter Word

Enter with PunchTab for extra entries or just leave a comment below!

The Alamo, 1854

When the outnumbered defenders of the Alamo refused the Mexicans’ demand to surrender, General Santa Anna ordered his buglers to play “El Deguello” – a call meaning “no quarter”, a signal that no prisoners would be taken, and anyone surviving the assault would be put to the sword. As everyone knows, that’s precisely what happened – the entire garrison was killed in the battle or executed afterward, with the possible exception of a woman and a servant who were spared. A second and even more ruthless massacre followed at Goliad.

Fall of the Alamo

I was working on an audiobook dramatization of the story and searched in vain for a useable recording of “El Deguello.” There are plenty of American bugle calls in the public domain, but I thought it was indicative that the American military has no need of such a command. It’s been said of the U.S. Marines, for instance, that there is no worse enemy—and no greater friend—to those they encounter. That character of fair play and mercy are characteristic of our troops.

It is true that in the heat of conflict, sometimes passions run over. When the British dragoons under Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton bayoneted American prisoners and wounded at the Waxhaws during the Revolution, it came back on their comrades a few months later. As the Carolina backwoodsmen surrounded British Major Patrick Ferguson’s men atop Kings Mountain, the battle climaxed with spontaneous cries of “Tarleton’s Quarter!” – meaning, the American militia didn’t intend to stop, either. To their credit, the patriot commanders rushed to restrain their men and were mostly successful. But the desire to punish brutality of Tarleton’s sort runs deep in righteous men … and that’s a far cry from the cold-blooded orders of a Santa Anna.

Checkpoint Charlie

When I briefly lived in Germany during the 1980’s, there were marches and protests against America in West Berlin, Frankfurt, and Bonn, over U.S. plans to deploy certain new weapon systems in Europe. Where I was staying, though, we were just a few miles from the border with Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia. There, even we American college students were wildly popular with older Germans, who welcomed us into their homes and paid our bills in the local inns. See, they were thankful: many of them and their  parents had rushed into the advancing American troops rather than risk the mercies of Stalin’s Red Army approaching from the east. They recognized that occupation, or even capture and imprisonment, under the U.S. Army would be tempered with that quality – mercy.

General George C. Marshall

It does make you think. What other nation has spent billions in dollars and thousands of lives to grind a vicious dictatorship to dust, as we have done several times the past century, and then turned and invested still more to rebuild and restore the survivors of our former enemies? Our “nation building” activities in Iraq and Afghanistan are under criticism right now, and there is certainly room for debate, but who remembers the Marshall Plan? The Berlin Airlift? Who rebuilt post-war Japan? It was Americans, the victors, and our generals led each of those efforts. (True, George Marshall was Secretary of State by that time in 1948, but as Chief of Staff he was General Eisenhower’s superior until August of ’45).

It’s easy to forget sometimes that with the strength of a great nation, or a great army, or a great man, the call is not for revenge but restraint. There is a time to exert great and even overwhelming power to protect the weak and turn back evil – our national anthem says, “Then conquer we must, When our cause it is just” – but it must be conditioned by justice and the desire to reconcile when that becomes possible.

The anthem continues, “And this be our motto: In God Is Our Trust”  That last bit makes the difference.  Jesus said we are to “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36)—and that Father says of Himself, “I am merciful … I will not be angry forever.”(Jeremiah 3:12)

Today, Veteran’s Day, as we express our thanks to our soldiers, sailors and airmen of all ranks and ages, let’s take a minute to point out to our sons than along with their courage, discipline, self-sacrifice, and honor, there is a strong tradition of mercy—proving that it is a sign of strength and not weakness, flying in formation with all these other virtues.

Hal & Melanie

You can hear the complete stories of Kings Mountain and the Alamo in Hal’s dramatic audiobook rendering of
Hero Tales from American History
by Theodore Roosevelt & Henry Cabot Lodge

This post originally published at The M.O.B. Society blog.

Scripture quoted from the English Standard Version.

Martin Luther was a young German law student when he underwent a remarkable religious conversion.  Taking a bolt of lightning as a warning from God, he left the university and entered the Augustinian order as a monk.  From there, his restless search for peace with God led him to the Bible, then a doctorate in theology, then a teaching position with the tiny University of Wittenberg in German Saxony. 

Attempting to address certain abuses in the medieval Catholic Church, the young Dr. Luther posted a challenge to other scholars to debate a number of practices he questioned.  On October 31, 1517, he nailed the notice to the door of the university church, a common practice itself since the broad heavy doors were routinely used as bulletin boards.  He chose the Eve of All Saint’s Day, or All Hallow’s Eve, to post the theses because that was a festival day which would see the church full of the scholars he wanted to discuss these things with. The list of propositions known as “The 95 Theses” lit a firestorm of controversy that quickly spread across Germany and central Europe.  Luther had attracted the attention not only of academics and churchmen like himself, but the wrath of Pope Leo X and the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, as well!

Called before the Imperial Diet at the town of Worms*, Luther was challenged to withdraw his proposals and repudiate his writings.  In the front of everybody’s mind was the memory that the Czech reformer, Jan Hus, had made many of the same propositions decades earlier — and was burned at the stake in consequence. 

Luther’s response, after begging a recess to consider the Emperor’s demand, followed a sleepless night of anxious prayer.  When called for his answer the next dawn, Luther replied:

Since then Your Majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason–I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other–my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.

Here I stand.  I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.

Knowing what had happened to others who raised the issues he had, Luther stared death in the face and stood on the word of God – never mind Pope or Emperor.  In fact, he was declared outlaw by the Emporor and faced:

Confiscation and loss of body and belongings and all goods, fixed and movable, half of which will go to the Lord, and the other half to the accusers and denouncers. With other punishments as given more fully in the present edict and mandate.

Jan Hus Burned at the Stake

Notice loss of body — that’s called martyrdom — that’s what he faced. Among other things. What an incredible, gutsy thing to do.  It’s one of our favorite events in history.

What was Luther’s philosophy that put him in such conflict with the Church of the day? One way to summarize it is called the Five Solas:

Sola Scriptura – Scripture Alone
Solus Christus – Christ Alone
Sola Gratia – Grace Alone
Sola Fide – Faith Alone
Soli Deo Gloria – The Glory of God Alone

All of that flowed out of Luther’s realization of the meaning of “the just shall live by faith.”

Here at the Youngs’, we make a big deal out of Reformation Day (October 31).  It’s a great time to teach our children the heroism of the fathers of our faith as well as our sure foundation: salvation by grace through faith in the substitionary death of the God-man Jesus Christ. That means that as God made flesh, He was infinite in nature and had no sins of his own to die for, so could die for the sins of all his people, taking the death they deserved on Himself. What a rich truth!

On Reformation Day, we eat German, usually bratwurst, sauerkraut and hot German potato salad, then troop into the den to watch Martin Luther, a terrific B&W documentary made in 1954 and starring Niall MacGinnis as the reformer.  The movie was filmed at the actual location of some events, and they did a good job finding actors who actually looked like Luther, Charles, and Pope Leo.  And the scene at Worms is classic!

(The DVD is available from several places, but and is now available streaming from Netflix.)

During breaks we love to sing hymns of the Reformation like A Mighty Fortress is Our God, written by Martin Luther, Now Thank We All Our God, written by a Lutheran pastor during the Thirty Years War (one of the Reformation Wars) after a dreadful seige that saw him officiating at 50 funerals a day, and We Gather Together, written after a victory in the battle between the Reformed population of the Netherlands and the might of Spain, whose General Alva slew men women and children alike as heretics, unworthy of keeping his word towards.

And we do have a concession to the candy-intensive holiday … we play “Pin the Theses on the Wittenberg Door.”  We draw big fancy wooden doors on brown paper with a different treat written on each panel. We use Post-it(TM) notes for the Theses.  Everybody wins, which the boys don’t mind as long as they get lots of candy!

Our friends are getting in to the spirit of things, too. One year friends of ours came in the middle of the night and stuck a copy of the Theses on our door with a bag of candy and a sign, “You’ve been nailed!”

Instead of justifying Christians participating in a holiday that is in no wise holy, why not celebrate a real Christian holiday this year? 

*I’ve always loved thinking about “The Diet of Worms,” but to be fair, it’s pronounced “Vorms” in German.

Read Part One of our thoughts on the holiday here.

Read Part Two here.

King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, John Gilbert (1817-1897)

 King Henry V of England was hopelessly outnumbered by the approaching French Army, but he stood firm and roused his troops, commending them to the hands of God and each other, and led them to a decisive victory that was the beginning of the end of the dominance of the nobility in warfare. For centuries, the heavily armored knights on horseback fielded by the nobility of each land were the overwhelming force of warfare. Henry, instead, placed his English longbowmen in the forefront of battle — and defeated the French horse! Some say the “V for victory” sign descended from the victory salute of the two stringfingers of the longbowmen in response to a French before-battle threat to cut off the string fingers of all the longbowmen after they won.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Henry V, William Shakespeare

I especially liked a small inscription on one side of the monument — which was designed by Captain Driver himself — that reads: “‘Trust in the Lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed’ — Ps 37:3. I have never wanted since.” What a pity that modern grave markers leave so little room for personal testimony!

We stopped for a short time in Nashville to visit not Captain Driver but Captain Godshall, Melanie’s great-great-great-grandfather. Samuel C. Godshall was born in Philadelphia and at the age of 18, moved to Nashville to seek his fortune in business. He had an interesting life, establishing a great reputation as a young businessman, joining the Army as one of the original “Tennessee Volunteers” who served in the Mexican American War, and commanding a company of soldiers from the Nashville area during the War Between the States (his brother back in Philadelphia served in the Pennsylvania militia during the conflict;  this was one of the divided families you read about). Capt. Godshall returned to Nashville after the war and died in a local epidemic a few years later, well respected by the community. Interesting enough, though, Capt. Godshall only received a gravestone a few years ago, through a descendant’s intervention—for over a century, his unmarked grave was only known by its location between his wife and children!

For those who like numbers, here are some initial figures that surprised even me:

We travelled 8034 miles.  That includes 97 miles on a tow truck from Gilroy to Modesto, California.  On days when we drove, we averaged 401 miles. If you include the seven days we were at conferences, we still averaged 309 miles a day for the total journey.

We spent 25 nights on the road.  Seven nights were in hotels provided by conferences, six nights were hospitality from other families, ten nights we camped out, and only two nights were in hotels by our own choice.

We visited 16 states — North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky — and spent the night in 11 of them.

We spoke 28 times in 26 days, in 7 different locations — conferences in North Carolina, Arizona, and California, and one-night visits in Oklahoma, California, Nebraska and Missouri.  We only went three days in a row without speaking somewhere!

And got to experience a tremendous amount of American history and geography — from the Painted Desert and Grand Canyon, to the Golden Gate and Chinatown, to Yosemite and Lake Tahoe, to the Mojave and the Great Plains, and the Mississippi, Missouri, and Platte Rivers, the Oregon Trail and Route 66, the Sierras, Rockies, and Great Smoky Mountains, the Bonneville Salt Flats and Great Salt Lake, and so much more.

Can we say thank you to all of you who supported us on this journey, in person, in hospitality, financially, and in prayer?  This was an adventure as great as we had imagined, and an opportunity to minister to hundreds of people across the entire Southwest with encouragement and practical ideas about raising sons and living a biblical family life.

More later … like, when we get our camera back …

Catherine Jaime has a gift for story-telling. From the very beginning of the book, you identify with Leonardo and want to keep turning the pages to find out what happens next. I love using accurate historical fiction with our children. Like “a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down,” learning history through reading the gripping stories of those who lived it, doesn’t just make history palatable, it makes it unforgetable. More than that, reading biographies gives our children something to aim for. They begin to be able to imagine what the heroes of history would do in different situations – and that is character-building! Jaime’s Leonardo does a great job of showing one of these heroes in a tough situation, as an unknown apprentice with little liberty and less money. Also, Jaime’s description of the Florence of the Medicis is so interesting that it’s likely to provoke a desire to find out more about this influential family and the Florence of the Renaissance. You can definitely tell that the author has been researching and studying the life of da Vinci for years.

I believe you and your children will find this novel a great introduction to one of the most fascinating characters of history. It’s full of intrigue and adventure, and gives tantalizing glimpses of the polymath Leonardo da Vinci would become.  Highly Recommended.

Leonardo the Florentine: A Novel by Catherine McGrew Jaime. Creative Learning Connection, 2010. Paperback, 158 pages. $10.50. Available from  Creative Learning Connection , Amazon, and in eBooks at Currclick and Smashwords.

Would you like to win a copy?

 Just leave a comment on this post to enter. I’d love to hear your most burning question or interesting fact about Leonardo da Vinci. For additional entries, fan us on Facebook, fan Creative Learning Connections on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our newsletter or share about this contest and link to us from your blog, Facebook, Twitter, or newsletter. But, you need to leave a separate email on this post for each extra entry telling us you did it! A winner will randomly be chosen on Tuesday, March 15 at noon EST.

Stay tuned for a review of Catherine’s newest (and delightful!) book next week…

A tough example, but one that brings great honor to Christ.