THE U.S. ARMY ISSUE POCKET BIBLE

A SACRED TOKEN

This bible sat in a little porcelain jewelry/trinket holder on moms dresser for years, along with an old brooch and a single cuff link, a few lace coverlets and maybe an assortment of curtain pins.

Stuff like that. 

Or maybe it sat in the top drawer of a dresser at Grandma Renfro’s guestroom, with the same kind of stuff in it, and the smell of cedar.
I don’t quite recall.

When I was a kid I would go open the drawer and look at the stuff, and mom or grandma would tell me how dads army issue pocket bible, with the inscription in the front by President Roosevelt, had been lost when he was in the war, but someone found it in a field in France and sent it to his parents at the address in the book.
I’m assuming that was in November of 1945 when it was found. When they sent it they mightn’t have known if dad was dead or alive. I like that Mr. Bryant, who found dad's bible,  put “Texas” in quotation marks.

I wonder about Mr. Bryant, who was from England, and what he was doing in a field in southern France. I wonder what he looked like, what kind of work he did when he was not in a field in southern France. In my minds eye I see him, as you must be seeing him now, wiping the sweat from his brow after stacking English hay somewhere near Lancashire, or bouncing great-grandchildren on his knee, telling them what he had done, and about the bible he found from "Texas" in the great World War II.

It’s cool to still have this bible of my dads from World War II. I keep in in a drawer with my medicine, and an old Cameo necklace and ear rings dad sent home from Italy; some of dads old cufflinks, moms pearls, and an old bullet that came from somewhere. 

You know, sacred tokens and stuff like that.