Later, in policing up Treptow’s personnel effects, a diary was found in his blood-stained blouse. Written in Treptow’s own hands were the words entitled, My Pledge, words that serve as a memorial to the price he paid. "America shall win the war. Therefore, I will work. I will save. I will sacrifice. I will endure. I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the whole issue of the struggle depended on my alone."

The equivalent of Memorial Day in New Zealand was Anzac Day, named after the Australia & New Zealand Army Corps, which fought together in World War I. It was celebrated on April 25, the day in 1915 when the ANZACS were landed at the Gallipoli peninsula to capture that part of Turkey, so that the Allies could occupy Constantinople, secure the Suez Canal, establish safe routes to Russia, prevent Bulgaria from entering into the war, and relieve the Western front in France and Belgium.

In the classical world of Greece, Rome and Israel, the gods or Fate, played games with people, often with lethal consequences, as the Greeks and the Trojans discovered in Homer’s Iliad, and Odyssey. The prophets of Israel fought against a view of the gods that celebrated fertility cults and demanded child sacrifices.

Thus prayed St. Bernard of Clairvaux in the eleventh century. He is referring to St. Luke's account of the Ascension at the end of his Gospel and in the first chapter of Acts. "He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 'Men of Galilee,' they said, 'why do you stand here looking into the sky?