Unprecedented. This is the word used to describe our status and response to COVID-19.

Easter Sunday 1944 – Bougainville, Solomon Islands

Unprecedented means, never before. If unprecedented, then we are in uncharted waters. Going where no person has gone before. Living a trial unique to mankind. No markers. No historical perspective. No heroes to inspire us, no Easter like the one approaching.

7,000 dead. 36,000 wounded. Easter 1944, during the Battle of Anzio. Under brutal barrages and bombing, American and Allied troops crawled from their foxholes to celebrate Easter.

Easter is a fact, not a place, not a date. It is a celebration of life, Christ’s first, then ours.

Collecting local children, orphans, and displaced children at New Barn, the 9th Air Force celebrated Easter by sharing their tinned rations, taking the children for a ride in one of their trucks, and giving to those less fortunate. Heroes think of others before themselves.

20 million souls perished in the war to end all wars. As WW I concluded, the Spanish Flu claimed 20-50 million more souls. Quarantine became mandatory. Millions served at great, personal risk.

As William Wallace said, “All men die. Not all men live.”

This Easter, choose life.

Our forefathers did. Clearly, our situation is not unprecedented.