God on the Battlefield: Emily Compagno Tells American Soldiers’ Stories of Salvation

By Emma Foley

In her debut book, Under His Wings, Fox News personality Emily Compagno assumes a special role as messenger, profiling American warriors and servants who span several generations. Compagno cuts through the superficial to reveal raw and real themes that every American citizen, free because of our heroes, should understand. Of course, a book describing the torturous moments that follow an IED attack would be poignant. Readers get more than that. Compagno successfully translates a language etched onto the scarred heart of each American hero in Under His Wings. 

Compagno provides glimpses into her own, roundabout journey in the book. It turns out, she did not always realize her destiny as a co-host on Fox News’ Outnumbered and guest on Gutfeld! She details her forever dream of being a fighter pilot. However, standing one inch short of the sixty-four-inch height regulation, Compagno accepts that God’s plan for her does not involve “slicing through the heavens” the way she originally hoped.

Emily Compagno on the Outnumbered couch with her co-hosts, Kayleigh McEnany and Harris Faulkner.

Her path takes her instead to the National Football League, where she works as cheer captain for the Oakland Raiderettes. In 2009, a tour with the USO takes her to Iraq and Kuwait to visit with American troops, serving them as an “ambassador from home.” It is one night at the dangerous Sadr City operating base where her presence with the soldiers makes such an impact that, years later, convinces the painfully humble Colonel Tim Karcher to agree to a profile in Under His Wings. His story, otherwise, may never have been told.

To the deployed or those they meet back home, Karcher along with other witnesses in Under His Wings serve as messengers — messengers of the faith. 

Three days after meeting Compagno in Iraq, Colonel Karcher lost both his legs. His recollection of the moments between enduring an IED attack to fighting for his life in the weeks after, are haunting. More moving is Tim’s commitment to the Lord.

“I was promised eternal life, not eternal legs,” Col. Karcher said in response to a chaplain, who assumed the wounded veteran’s faith was much more, well, human. Compagno fills Under His Wings with stories that will wake up the complacent American Christian.

National dialogue or an encounter with a seasoned veteran will tell you that a common understanding exists within the United States military. While each member enters for his own reason, be it a steady livelihood, a desire for discipline, or ambition beyond his hometown, he gains more in the brotherhood and mission of the military than he set out for.

Compagno shines light on a parallel story for each profiled American hero: his or her faith journey. Every fighter enlists with a preconception of the Christian faith — from steadfast surrender to pure curiosity to intense animosity. Throughout the collection, while every conversion or reversion is deeply unique, Compagno draws readers see that it is the same God revealing Himself on the battlefield each time, in the pain and atrocities of war.

And it is the same God who works through American soldiers, like Sergeant Jeff Struecker, as they testify to His truth. Like Karcher, Struecker’s theology is elementary, but his faith is unwavering. After the shared experience of Black Hawk Down, many in Struecker’s company desperately needed something to hold on to. They turned toward to him for counsel. He instructed the men to “believe on Jesus.” He made a distinction between the usual instructions of pastors and prelates to “believe in Jesus.”

You get on an airplane, you strap a parachute on your back. The plane flies around with the doors open, the green light goes on, and you can swear to me until you’re blue in the face that you believe in this parachute. But you haven’t really believed on the parachute, you really haven’t exercised your faith, until you actually step out of the door of the airplane and see if that parachute is going to open.

Someone with a doctorate in theology might point out that the prepositions “in” versus “on” don’t alter the salvific power conversion. That supposed expert could argue that the unrefined explanation could never measure up to a Thomistic proof or the ontology of Anselm.

But Struecker simplified Christianity into an analogy easily grasped by American paratroopers. They know parachutes; they intimately understand the complete reliance on a piece of equipment to keep them alive. Is that not what Jesus Himself does in His many parables — teach the grandeur of the Father through mustard seeds and sheep?

A parachute metaphor gets a foot in the door. And every one of Struecker’s fellow operators converted to Christianity.

Soldiers come face-to-face with metaphysical subjects that most will contemplate only in the confines of a class or a book. They are the problem of pain and the guarantee of death.

Compagno highlights how patriots learn to grapple with these phenomena as they suffer through the harrowing clean-up of bodily remains or as they run into enemy fire, knowing the end could be imminent. Ranger-turned-chaplain Anthony Randall helps soldiers grapple with the problem of pain that plagues the faith of Christians in distress.

…You can wear yourself out if you keep asking why evil exists. That’s just one of those metaphysical questions that we will never answer satisfactorily. But I do know this for sure: evil exists.

The soldier deployed to state-sponsored terrorist lands knows the privation of good better than most academics. He who delivers the message that “Daddy isn’t coming home” to a young child has seen evil’s manifestation on our soil.

Satan can’t destroy God, so who does he try to destroy? He tries to destroy the Imago Dei. He tries to destroy what He created in His own image.

Randall’s advice to the Americans coming toe-to-toe with destruction on the battlefield is not to wear oneself out then and there by contemplating evil’s origins, but to know, and know quickly, that it has been defeated in Christ.

When it comes to death’s guarantee, Green Beret Jeremiah Wilber repeats to himself the words echoed often by his Apache mother: Today is a good day to die. At first reception, the phrase might seem morbid, but to the Christian with eyes on the eternal, it’s quite uplifting. Jeremiah is reminded to maintain a disposition ready for divine judgment.

Compagno also tracks down the Greatest Generation: Sergeant Andy Negra’s recollection of the Battle of the Bulge and Lieutenant Luella Lorenz Cochran’s letters from working in the Army Nurse Corps. Almost a century later, the fragility of these memories are felt. The generation that won World War II is now few in number, and documents from the period aren’t easily preserved. Compagno’s attention assured their stories would be.

Throughout the Bible and in stories of the saints are tales from the battlefield, when the Lord manifests Himself to King David or Emperor Constantine or Joan of Arc. Compagno tells of the same God Who spoke to Israelite armies and Crusaders speaking to soldiers in the twenty-first century. God can draw souls to Him in moments of agony, even the most tormenting moments of war. Compagno illustrates this in Under His Wings, the beautiful testimonies of war-torn souls who found Christ in their darkest hour.

Emma Foley is a content manager and video co-producer at National Review and former digital managing editor for the Howie Carr Radio Network. She grew up in Pennsylvania, but after graduating from Boston College, she decided to make Massachusetts her new home.