Dare and Have Courage Be Challenged
November 18, 2025
Hello! How is each and every one? Simply amazing! The truth is what has been
coming to my head while preparing this post were the words of our Lord to Peter
when there
was a storm at sea and the apostles saw Jesus walking on the lake they were
terrified and cried out in fear ‘It is a ghost’. Jesus called out to them and said,
‘Courage! It is I! Do not be afraid.’
Providentially today’s Mass Gospel proper of the Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul is precisely Mt 14: 22-23; the same episode of the turbulent storm at sea.
Last Wednesday, the 12th of November, I received these beautiful photos of Aurora Borealis as seen from Duluth, MN by my friend, Mariluz.
The aurora borealis or Northern Lights, is a natural light display in the Earth’s northern sky caused by charged particles from the sun colliding with atoms of oxygen and nitrogen in the upper atmosphere. These collisions cause the gases to emit light, resulting in colorful, dancing ribbons of light. The phenomenon is visible at high latitudes, such as in Norway, Sweden, and Iceland, and can produce a range of colors, most commonly green and pink, depending on the gas and altitude of the collision.
And from here where I am, while I was walking
on the fourth floor of the building last Sunday, it was slightly drizzling, I
was delighted to see a beautiful rainbow in the sky. Of course nothing like the aurora borealis and
yet the rainbow was another sight to behold as it was perfectly arched with its
distinct colors. Had I my phone with me I
would have taken a shot of it but as always I don’t bring it.
A rainbow is a multicolored arc of light caused by the refraction, dispersion, and reflection of sunlight in water droplets. It is an optical phenomenon that appears in the sky opposite the sun when light passes through airborne water such as rain or mist. You can see one by standing with the sun behind you and looking toward the area with water droplets.
We have a long post today. I find the whole experience historically apropos and well illustrates the superhabit of courage. Following is (From SUPERHABITS, The Universal System for a Successful Life by Andrew V. Abela, PH.D., Dean, Busch School of Business, The Catholic University of America, 2024).
“NEVER GIVE IN, NEVER, never give in.”
Those
words of Winston Churchill’s are often quoted as the shortest graduation speech
in history. In actual fact they were not
– they were just the title of Churchill’s speech to the graduating class of the
Harrow School, in 1941, in the midst of the Second World War. Part of the actual speech went like this:
“Never give in, never give in,
never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never
give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the
apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
Some
months after delivering that speech, Churchill launched a convoy that would
demonstrate the ability to “never, never, never, never… never give in” to an
astounding degree.
It
was August 1942. The Mediterranean
island of Malta, then part of the British Empire, was the last unconquered
Allied outpost in Europe, and on the verge of surrender. It is a tiny island, only seventeen miles by
six. But it was at that time – as it had been throughout history – a place of
great strategic value. It lay right
along the Axis (German and Italian) supply lines between Italy and North
Africa. Like an unsinkable aircraft
carrier, the island was a launching platform for planes that constantly attacked
enemy supply ships, destroying a large proportion of them and dramatically
weakening the Axis armies in Africa.
The
island was unsinkable, but it was not necessarily unconquerable. Because Malta is only sixty miles south of
the island of Sicily, the airfields of the German Luftwaffe and the Italian Regia Aeronautica were literally just
minutes of flying time away from Malta – and so the island itself was bombed
nearly without ceasing. In 1941 alone,
the island suffered over one thousand
air raids, several each day.
The
biggest problem in defending Malta was ensuring the delivery of the food and
fuel the island needed to keep going.
These supplies had to travel by convoy across a thousand miles of enemy
controlled sea, from Alexandria in the East or Gibraltar in the West. That’s about a week of sailing, under
constant threat of attack from enemy planes, ships, and submarines.
In
early 1942, several convoys were attempted, and ship after ship was sunk or had
to turn back. In one case, two supply
ships made it through, but, heartbreakingly, were sunk in the harbor before
they could be unloaded. By early August,
it was calculated that Malta had enough food and fuel to last to the end of
that month – at which point the island would be forced to surrender or starve
to death. Churchill decided to hazard
one last attempt to supply the island.
“Operation
Pedestal,” as it was named, left Gibraltar on the ninth of August for the
seven-day run to Malta. That date was
chosen to coincide with the dark of the moon, so that, at least during the
night, the convoy might evade attack. There were fourteen supply ships,
escorted by two battleships, three aircraft carriers, and about thirty
destroyers and other lighter ships.
One
of the fourteen supply ships in the convoy the SS Ohio, was a large – but also very fast – American oil
tanker. She was new 515 feet long, and
built in Chester, Pennsylvania, for the Texas Oil Company (now Texaco) just two
years earlier. She carried ten thousand tons of oil, the bulk of the fuel
supplies being delivered by the convoy – fuel that was essential for keeping
Malta’s planes flying. She had been
retrofitted with several anti-aircraft guns before departure. At the time she was the largest, fastest, and
strongest oil tanker in the world, and the most important ship in the convoy.
The
first two days of the convoy were deceptively quiet. On the third day, the eleventh of August, a
German U-boat (submarine) approached the convoy undetected. It fired four torpedoes at one of the
aircraft carriers, the Eagle. All four torpedoes scored direct hits, and
the Eagle sunk in five minutes. Amazingly, most of her
more-than-one-thousand-person crew were rescued. But 131 crew members died in the explosions,
and the loss of the Eagle was a major
disaster.
On
the fourth day, August 12, the ships were attacked by twenty German Junkers 88s
bombers and more than one hundred other aircraft. While they were being bombed, an Italian
submarine slipped by the smaller boats surrounding the Ohio and torpedoed her amid ships.
The explosion set the ship ablaze.
Her crew shut down the engines, fought the fire, and were able to
extinguish it. But the Ohio was left with an enormous hole in
her side, twenty-five feet in diameter, and her main steering mechanism
destroyed. Fortunately, she had an
emergency steering mechanism that her crew was able to activate. They restarted her engines and were just able
to keep up with the rest of the convoy.
Next
came a wave of sixty Junkers 87s – the famous Stuka dive-bombers that make the
frightful shrieking sound you hear in World War II movies. All sixty of them focused directly on the Ohio.
They knew that she carried the bulk of the fuel supplies for Malta.
By
this time, the convoy’s aircraft carriers had turned back. With the Eagle
sunk, the other two were considered too valuable to risk. Their departure meant that the convoy at this
point had no air cover, and everything depended on the ships’ anti-aircraft
guns.
These
guns did their work. Several of the
Stukas were shot down. Gunners from the Ohio itself shot down one Stuka, which
crashed into the sea right behind it, bounced onto the stern of the boat, and
destroyed one of the anti-aircraft guns.
An officer called the captain on the ship’s telephone to tell him what
had happened. The captain’s response:
“That’s
nothing – we’ve had one sitting on our bow this past half an hour” – another
bomber had crash landed right on top of the ship, destroying part of the
bridge.
Two
clusters of bombs then fell on either side of the Ohio. When you watch movies
of naval battles, you see big splashes of water whenever bombs miss their
target. The bombs do not explode when
they hit the bottom of the sea. They
detonate as soon as they hit the surface of the water, and send a blast wave –
and shrapnel – in every direction, so a near miss can be almost as damaging as
a direct hit. In this case, with
multiple explosions on either side of her, the immense Ohio was lifted up out of the water. She came crashing down, her engines
destroyed, appeared to be sinking, and her crew abandoned ship.
But
the Ohio did not sink.
What
would you do at this point? The Ohio, carrying ten thousand tons of fuel
oil and clearly the center of the enemy’s attention, is a floating bomb. If her crew had been unsure of the extent of
the danger, they would have been made aware of it a little earlier, when a
smaller tanker in the convoy exploded.
Most of its crew died in the explosion.
A few managed to escape by jumping into the sea – but many of these were
burnt alive as the blazing oil spread over the water.
What
did the captain of the Ohio do? He
asked for volunteers to reboard the Ohio,
and he got them. Even some sailors whose
own ships had already been sunk beneath them volunteered.
The
Ohio’s engines were wrecked, so they
tried to get her towed by one of the destroyers. But she was too heavy, and they couldn’t make
any forward progress. As they were
trying another air attack came
in. The gunners shot down one of the
dive bombers, but too late: he had already
released his bomb, and the Ohio
received another direct hit. This broke
her keel. The crew abandoned ship a
second time, but waited through the night to see what would happen to her.
At
dawn, they could see that she was still afloat.
The volunteer crew reboarded, again.
With two ships towing her, they were able to crawl forward at five
knots. No sooner were they under way
when another air attack inflicted two more direct hits, one at the bow and one
at the stern. The stern explosion destroyed her auxiliary steering, which made
it even harder to control the ship while she was being towed. But they persevered and were able to keep
making progress. The day ended without
further damage, and they continued onward through the cover of night.
At
10:45 the next morning, the first wave of dive bombers arrived. Three more waves followed. Then suddenly, a
most welcome sight appeared: sixteen
Spitfire fighters flying in formation from Malta. The Ohio
was now within reach of the Allied fighter bases there. The enemy bombers no
longer had the skies to themselves. It
looked like the convoy was saved. The
Spitfires shot down three bombers, and scattered the rest.
All
except one. It flew past the fighters,
came up on the Ohio from behind, and
dropped a one-thousand pound bomb right at her stern. Just missing the boat, it hit water right
behind her. The explosion ripped a huge
hole in the stern of the boat. The Ohio was now broken beyond repair and
clearly sinking, barely forty-five miles from Malta. The crew abandoned ship for the last time.
The
tragedy of losing her when they had come so far could scarcely have been
bearable.
Yet
we should ask this question: How did
they make it so far? Where did those
crew members get the courage to carry on through the ongoing attacks, and twice
re-board the Ohio?
Courage
is the superhabit for dealing with fear.
It is not the absence of
fear. Fear will come, and there’s
nothing you can do to prevent that.
Courage is the habit of accepting the feelings of fear, reframing them
as a challenge, and then continuing to do what you need to do, despite the
fear. It is the habit that we see in
firefighters, police, members of the armed forces, mothers about to give birth
– and the crew of the Ohio. It is not something you are born with. It is developed, like every other habit,
through repeated practice.
In
previous chapters we saw how desire is a source of energy. Fear can be a source of energy too. Emotion fuels motion. By reframing a fearful situation as a
challenge, we can use fear as fuel for our actions and achievements.
The
story of the volunteer crew members of the Ohio,
who kept reboarding the Ohio to keep
her moving, is a case study of Courage at its finest. These volunteer crew members were in them
merchant marine, not the navy, which meant that they had not enlisted with any
idea of being shot at or bombed. Indeed,
for many, this convoy was their first time facing enemy attack. Where did they
find that Courage? The life experiences
of one of the crew members give us a clue.
Fred
Larsen was junior third officer on the SS
Saint Elisa, one of the fourteen supply ships in the Malta convoy. When he
was three years and nine months old, in one week Fred lost his father, mother,
grandmother, and one of his sisters, all succumbing to the influenza pandemic
of 1918. For a year after that, he lived with his Norwegian grandmother in
Brooklyn, with his two remaining siblings.
At
age five, he was sent to live in Norway with an uncle and aunt, on a remote,
cold, and rocky coast. His uncle John
often took him to sea, and the two of them became inseparable – until John died
of a heart attack when the boy was fourteen.
At
seventeen, Fred went to sea by himself, signing on as a deck hand on a tanker sailing
to California and China. Eventually he
returned to Norway and enrolled in a maritime college, fell in love, and got
married. Soon after, when his wife was
pregnant with their first child, he went back to sea to earn money to support
his new family, with the plan of bringing them to the United States after the
baby was born.
This
was in the spring of 1939. War broke out
a few months later, and on the very day of the Larsens’ first wedding
anniversary, Germany invaded Norway.
Fred
faced numerous bureaucratic obstacles in attempting to get papers for his wife
and newborn son to emigrate to the United States. Desperate, he even sailed to
England to volunteer with the Norwegian resistance, to try to re-enter the
country to rescue his family. But they wouldn’t
take him because, even though he had lived much of his young life in Norway, he
wasn’t a native-born Norwegian and they were worried about spies.
Larsen
returned to the United States, and in 1941, was assigned to the Santa Elisa, delivering cargo to and
from South America. With the bombing of
Pearl harbor later that year, and America’s entry into the war, he received a
crushing letter from the State Department informing him that his chances of
bringing his wife back from Norway were at this point negligible.
In
late July 1942, the Santa Elisa was
assigned to the Malta convoy. At this
point, Larsen hadn’t seen his wife in three years – and he had a three-year old
son whom he had never met.
A
few hours before the Ohio received
her last, terminal hit, Larsen and the Santa
Elisa were engaged in a nighttime gunfight with enemy E-boats (high speed
motor torpedo boats). The Santa Elisa was hit and set aflame by a
torpedo, and Fred joined the surviving crew members in following the order to
abandon ship. They spent the remainder
of the night in life rafts, and were rescued by one of the convoy’s destroyers
the next morning.
That
destroyer, the USS Penn, made
rendezvous with the Ohio, which was
lying broken and sinking after the thousand-pound bomb explosion had blown in
her stern.
Larsen
joined them stepping across from the Penn
to the Ohio. His own ship had sunk under him, and he was
under no obligation to do this. No one
asked him to do it. He just went aboard
and manned one of the Ohio’s guns.
Courage,
like Self-Discipline, is one of the four cardinal superhabits. The remaining two are Practical Wisdom and
Justice, which we’ll discuss in the next two chapters. We saw previously how each one of these
cardinal superhabits has a host of subordinate superhabits: Self-Discipline has fifteen. Courage has four (as you’ll note on the Anatomy
of Virtue diagram).
Courage
is all about dealing with challenges, and specifically the fear that can arise
when we face a challenge. There are two
kinds of challenges in life, those that can be overcome, and those that can’t,
at least in the short term, and simply have to be endured. Accordingly, the superhabits related to
Courage are divided into these two groups, with two superhabits for dealing
with challenges that can be overcome, and two for those that must be endured.
The
two superhabits for challenges that can be overcome are, very practically,
related to those that can be solved by spending a lot of money, and those that
require lots of human effort.
It
is my ever present hope that whatever we are sharing together may bring each
one of us to our personal perfection and happiness as willed by the Creator and
our Redeemer. That being said let each
one of us remember to talk with Him about the ideas, thoughts and feelings that
occupy our minds and hearts during those quiet moments of our conversation with
Him and I would dare say even at every moment of the day when He wills.
See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
Comments
Post a Comment