(Taken from my book, “Bright Light,” available for order here.)

My move toward adult responsibilities began early. I was allowed to choose and take risks — and had to face the consequences. 1 delivered the local newspaper in all kinds of weather and occasionally had to deal with storms of ice, snow, and rain. The weather mattered not — customers expected their evening paper, and no mercy factored into the equation. Nor was my family’s care a way of escape from foul weather, since we had no automobile.  About this time I began to dream of raising chickens and soon added this to my busy mornings and evenings, along with football practice. The chicken business tied up all my few dollars and led to endless battles with weather, animals, disease, and the need to erect protective shelter. After storms passed through, I often would survey my losses in dead chicks scattered over the pens and had to figure out how to get on with my business.

At age fifteen I bought my first car and began driving. A compressed public school schedule allowed me to graduate from high school at age sixteen, and I took a job running a local food market. I had already put in a couple years of intensive Saturday work in a larger market, and I wanted to tackle this new job, where I had to figure out the meat counter as I went along. (I was the top man in our staff of three.) I’m afraid I was ill-equipped to handle our labor disputes. I once floored an ornery coworker with a single punch, and then, as ordered, he took the broom and swept the floor.

My employer proved to be anything but honest in his dealings with me, so in my very first summer at work there, I resigned. I was immediately able to start my next truly exciting adventure — as reporter on the local newspaper, the Clarksville Chronicle. They needed another writer at once, so they decided to try me, despite my youth and inexperience. They knew Dad, and that made the difference. I had one week to get myself ready for tryout day. First thing, I must learn to type! Somehow I got inside the closed high school building, went into the typing classroom, and copied the typing chart that showed all the correct fingering. Then I started practicing at home. Day and night for the next week, I worked at it, using all my fingers. By week’s end, I could type well enough.

Wisely, the general manager, who hired me, and the editor sensed my shyness and pressed me to be more outgoing and intrusive. Immediately, I was into the swim of gaining admission into all kinds of events, interviewing people and writing up what I learned. Soon, the paper’s top writer left to join our growing Second World War effort, and I became the lead reporter. All timidity had to be shoved aside, for every day was a high-powered adventure interviewing everyone from the jail turnkey to the governor. Daily 1 moved from the police station to the courtroom, to the scene of wrecks, murders, or whatever seemed like the news of that day. There was no way to do the job without getting involved deeply in the action and drama of each notable happening. It was great while it lasted, and it played a role in altering the way 1 looked at myself and life around me. But for all I saw of the world and its ways, that never held any great attraction for me. I still rather pity those who happily wear the “stylish” shackles of a worldly lifestyle.

Little did I realize that these exciting days would soon end. The military draft was drawing ever nearer, so 1 decided not to wait until called. Rather, I volunteered for World War II service in the Navy. I was now eighteen years old, having worked for the Chronicle ever since graduation from high school.

As soon as I resigned, the editor, general manager, and other staff persons stopped by my desk and expressed their congratulations that I had indeed stayed in such a rough-and-tumble “racket” as news reporting without joining in its way of living. “But,” warned the editor, “you can’t possibly live that way in the Navy!” I smiled and assured him that I planned on making no accommodation to what I knew to be wrong. “Maybe I’ll come back a bit tougher –but no rougher!” (Several years later, on my return from duty in the South Pacific, I reminded the editor of this very conversation, making clear that credit belonged to God, who was still at work in my young life.)

Entering the Navy as a teenager and being assigned duty on a destroyer brought a huge, permanent alteration in my life. At once I realized I must either stand up and be counted or be overwhelmed by all my shipmates’ questions and, at times, even ridicule. So I devised my own secret battle plan. Taking a notebook, I entitled the first page, “Carrying the fight to them.” Beneath, I entered a log of the men I talked with about the Lord Jesus. I put down the gist of each encounter, noting the Scripture used and what printed material I gave out.

Sadly, the question I heard most often was, “Burchett, how can you have any fun believing that way?” One day I launched a counterattack. Laughing at my detractor, I said, “OK, I’ll tell you exactly what I did this past weekend, and then you tell me what you did. After church, the beautiful, young organist I met there invited me to go horseback riding on their ranch in the valley, and it was great! And you? You don’t even need to tell me — I know about your fun. I’ve seen you return to the ship dead drunk and sick to your stomach after an evening with the prostitutes. Don’t tell me about your ‘fun’!”

Our tall torpedoman once taunted me, “You can’t live that religious stuff in a war, Burchett. Science is all that counts now.”

“We’ll see,” I responded. “If we get shot up and begin to sink, you call on science, and I’ll call on God. We’ll see then how real God is.”

Dramatically enough, this very crisis came later on to this man.  We got advance warning of things to come during our first mission, which was very nearly a suicide mission. Our ship was ordered to leave the entire invasion force and go close up along the Marshall Islands, then occupied by the Japanese. We exposed ourselves like this in an attempt to draw their fire, which would enable us to radio back to our invasion force, waiting twenty miles out, disclosing the locations of enemy gun emplacements. Miraculously, the Japanese chose not to fire on our ship, and we escaped.

Another chief antagonist of mine was a giant Scandinavian fellow who stood side by side with me in battle stations for this same operation. During the ensuing invasion of the Marshall Islands, we were firing nonstop for maybe thirty-six hours. Amid all the gun smoke and horrific roar and pounding recoil of our big guns, my shipmate was shouting to me his penitent apology for his boastful ridicule. “We respect you! Don’t ever change!” he yelled through cupped hands.

But God was not finished making his point. After I was dramatically removed from our ship in a one-man transfer, our destroyer was shot up terribly, receiving multiple direct hits. I learned of this when I was back in Boston, where I crossed paths with a surviving shipmate. He described a heartbreaking scene. Our dead and wounded were scattered over the deck, and the hardest hit among them, he said, were the torpedo men!

These experiences, coupled with the repeated sight of lives being destroyed in our ceaseless battle engagements, became a driving force in my call to leave my peacetime job as a reporter. After I was discharged from the navy and had returned home, I went back to my old job at the Chronicle. After working there only three days, I turned to the editor and said, “I simply can’t do this anymore. I must go and preach God’s Word.” I left the next day for Bible college and seminary.