Episode 34: 80th Anniversary of VE Day: Chris Edmonds Discovery Of His Father’s Heroism

Jacob Paul: Welcome to the Truth in Love podcast with your host, Kimberly Faith. The Truth in Love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.

Kimberly Faith: Welcome back to the Truth in Love podcast. I have a very special guest today with me, pastor Chris Edmunds, who wrote a book. Well, why don’t you tell us about your book?

Chris Edmunds: Well, I wrote a book called No Surrender. It’s really the journey that God has led me on since 2013 to discover my father’s military service. He never talked about it much, and part of what I will share in his story is how I discovered what he did. And what he did was pretty amazing, very heroic, very courageous. I never never planned on writing a book.

You know,  if you asked my English teacher back, my high school English teacher, Ms. Mashburn, what she thought about Chris Edmonds writing this book and what she thought of the book. She would be thrilled after you picked her up off the floor because she could not believe it. So the book really wrote, the story wrote itself, and it just had to be told. And so one day my brother-in-law looked at me and goes, when are you going to write a book? And I said, you know, I guess now because I know a lot of things, and God provided. God has blessed. Let me just say at the very beginning, all that’s been accomplished, the Lord has done, and I’m so grateful for that.

Kimberly Faith: I really truly can see that in the book. I have read the book, and No Surrender is probably one of the best told, or best I don’t know how to even put it in words. It’s a magnificent retelling of the story of your father, but also just weaves, it’s so well researched. I think I told you this in an earlier conversation, but I would stand this up against anything Eric Larson has written just because it’s so well researched, it’s so well told, it does just a great job, or you did a great job and through God’s strength, I understand, of weaving history and the factual information in with your dad’s story and the story of all the people he served with.

You know, I know that this was not just your dad’s story. This was a story of the people whose lives were affected by the war, by history, by so many forces of evil. And what just really impressed me about it aside from the fact that the quality of the book was so good, the way that God was glorified in everyone through your dad and affected everyone he knew, It was multifaceted. He had a very multifaceted effect on people. It wasn’t just like he was preaching the gospel in the barracks. No, his life had an effect and changed the course of history for so many people. So yeah, I would love for you to start wherever you want to on this.

Chris Edmunds: Well, just to add on to the about the book, it’s been a fascinating experience, and I had a lot of help. You know, I prayed for a Jewish co-author, Douglas Sentry. God sent me Douglas Sentry, answered prayer, and I prayed for a great publisher that would let the gospel of dad’s life, which was the core of his life, come through, and also, help me write a book that men would want to read. That was fast paced. You didn’t want to put down, chock full of history and war and everything else, but it doesn’t read like a history. It reads like a novel, and that’s what I wanted and got in that. Had a lot of help, and I would not have known any of this had the men, who were with dad,not shared their stories. You know, they were all in their late 80s and early 90s when they shared their stories, but it’s like they were there. Were back to reliving it.

Kimberly Faith:  Tell us how you discovered your dad’s story and led to the conversations with these men you’re referring to.

Chris Edmunds: Well, let me just start at the very beginning. You know, dad was so ordinary, just like you and me. He enjoyed life, expressed love, and embraced the good Lord above. And in Christ Jesus was his, Jesus was first thing, last thing, everything to dad. That was before the war, during the war, and after the war.

Kimberly Faith: And we’re talking about World War Two.

Chris Edmunds: World War Two. And his men recognized immediately that he was different. But he lived a life of a deep moral conviction, and what the men, actually Lester Tanner, one of the POWs that I’ll talk about you’ll meet in the story, he said Roddie lived by a moral code that we called Roddies code. He said we were labeled that immediately when we started, being trained by your father.

Kimberly Faith: What a legacy.

Chris Edmunds:  Yeah. And these are all Jewish men who recognized dad’s faith immediately, his faith in God,and never forgot him and never forgot his faith. And so he, I said, so explain that a little bit more. He said, well, obviously he chose God. He was one who would stand up to hate, so he opposed hate, and he brought dignity to life. He respected us, even as his subordinates. He dignified life, and he expressed love to everybody. It didn’t matter who he was, who they were, or what they were doing. My father just had a gregarious love for people, and that’s because he loved God and loved people. So his life was well lived. And his life teaches me and all of us that an ordinary life lived well is extraordinary, even heroic.

So I’m going to share this story with everyone who is listening to the podcast, and all of us are ordinary. We’re just ordinary people. But I believe one person can make the difference, can make all the difference, if we just treat people right and serve basically the bottom line, honor God and serve others, and that’s what dad did. 

And so my story begins, with his old diary, a weathered fragile book that dad kept while he was during World War II, and it belonged to him while he was over there serving in the Battle of the Bulge, and the continent was near the edge of collapse. But when dad got back home, he tucked the diary away, with other mementos from his time during World War II. He never talked about his service, but he served with distinction like all of our veterans. We are so blessed to have veterans who serve our country, and, dad was one of millions who have served, and, but they’re all so faithful and they keep our freedom, so I’m so grateful for them.  Dad served, he  was a master sergeant. He started out as a private obviously, but he grew in twenty two months he became a master sergeant. Very quickly his leadership skills were identified, and that’s probably one of the fastest to a master sergeant.

Kimberly Faith: That’s unheard of. 

Chris Edmunds: Yeah, yeah, it’s unheard of today. They were needing, they were neading leaders that you know, he joined the army during peacetime. It was March of 1941, so several months before Pearl Harbor happened. But, he joined because he had served all four years of his high school in the JROTC, and he excelled at it. He loved it. And, I think when the clouds of war were all over the world and particularly in America, he just felt like he needed to go serve, and I’m glad he did. But he was capturing the ballot box to spit 100.

Kimberly Faith: He didn’t have an easy childhood either from what I read in the book. 

Chris Edmunds: No. Well, he grew up in the depression like all of the greatest generation.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Chris Edmunds: And that time period forged them with a steel and an iron in their spirits and their souls to really just about conquer anything. They overcame so much during the depression, and they learned how to survive. And, then they also were grounded with moral values that make life special and bring a blessing to life. And so that’s what they did. That’s how they lived.

But he was captured in the Battle of the Bulge, spent one hundred harsh days in two German prisoner war camps, and this was the story that we knew as a family. It was just kind of the broad strokes of World War Two and that we knew he had been captured, and he’d come home. But that was the totality of our knowledge, and it was a service he never talked about. 

So, I was helping my daughter Lauren with a college history project for one of her classes, and I had pulled the diary out, borrowed it from my mom, and I’d read it several times. We read it while dad was alive. You see, he died in 1985, and so now we’re reading this diary in 2010. And so he, you know, passed away years and years ago. Matter of fact, he passed away the year that my twin daughters were born, Kristen and Lauren. And neither one of them and even my oldest daughter, Alicia, had never read the diary, didn’t even know about the diary. I mean, that’s how mysterious, you know, his military experience was. And, of course, I kicked myself, and I regret not letting them know about it. But, while reading Dead Star with Lauren to help with that project, it was like God was saying, Chris, you need to check this out. You need to find out what happened to your father. And so in it, dad wrote a lot of things I’m not going to write because they’re not exactly nice to talk about. And so there’s a lot of it in the diary he left out.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Chris Edmunds: But then he also said, I know God was with us to answer our prayers. And so God was with dad every step of the way, and he gave credit to the Lord for that. But then he wrote this, and it’s very insightful and still true today. I learned men even better than before. Some were good, some were bad, some were better, and some were worse. And he met every kind of individual during World War II. But God’s Spirit inspired me to look further into the service. So late one evening, just past midnight, I searched my father’s name and rank on the computer, and remarkably his name appeared in a New York Times article entitled Richard Nixon’s Search for a New York Home. Well, I’m stunned. I’m like, what is dad’s name doing highlighted on the Google screen in this New York Times article about the former president? I mean, this is crazy.

Kimberly Faith: Right. That’s crazy.

Chris Edmunds: Yeah. So I’ll say, I’ll read the article, and the article recounted how an attorney named Wester Tanner sold his historic townhouse in 1980. And the editor of the New York Times is now in 2009 looking back at that story, and so he goes to interview Lester. And in the article, Mr. Tanner recalled the bravery of his master sergeant, Roddie Edmonds, saving his life. When I read that, I was beyond stunned. I mean, I was speechless. I couldn’t, I mean, that’s my father.

Kimberly Faith: So your dad had never talked about anything that he had done that had amounted to really this great bravery that’s you’re just for the first time reading about?

Chris Edmunds: Yeah. I mean, he never said I saved, you know, one of my buddy’s lives or, you know, I got shot at or he wouldn’t tell me anything. And said, dad, you know, I was an older, college kid, and I said, dad, you’ve got to tell me something. I said, I’ve read this diary several times. I said, some of it’s cryptic, and it doesn’t make sense. Some of its, you know, narrative and it does make sense. I said, and then there’s pages missing. I mean, I’m on December 17 and it ends, You know, that where were the bombs going off? You couldn’t write anymore? Or I mean, did you get captured? He said, so when we got captured. I said, okay. So, but that’s all he told me. I said, dad, what was it like over there? He said, all I will tell you, son, is we were humiliated. The Germans humiliated us.  And of course I discovered later that the whole goal of that was the Germans wanted to turn their prisoners into animals basically and rob them of their dignity, and thankfully that didn’t happen in this camp. And really, for most Americans, it didn’t happen. They held onto their morality, their dignity, which is a credit to our troops. But anyway, all these questions come to my mind. I said, who is Mr. Tanner? You know? 

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Chris Edmunds:  And where is he now? Okay. I mean, this is a year later, and I’m looking at it, and I’m like, where is he? And then also I thought, he’s kind of in his late 80s or early 90s. I’ve got to find him. So I searched for him for several months, and I finally found him in New York City. And, it was an incredible connection, and he invited me to come to New York City. He said, I would love to hear more about your father, and I would love to tell you the story. So we didn’t talk about the story. He just said, your father saved me and many others, and that’s all he said to me. Was like, what do you mean many others? Well, I would like for you to come to New York.

Kimberly Faith: I bet that was really exciting. Yeah.

Chris Edmunds: Oh, yeah. Well, we’d never, I mean we’re hick hillbillies down here in Tennessee. We had no idea ever, no plans ever to visit New York City or dreams or even hopes to go, you know. So, I asked him, I said, Lester, where can I stay? I said, we’re not going to fly because my wife doesn’t like to fly, we’re going to drive and I’ll need some place to park the car. I said, Manhattan is just so big, it’s so huge, it’s crazy. And, he goes, well, might I suggest the Harvard Club? And I said, the Harvard Club? And I’m not a dummy, you know. I said, can I get a room at the Harvard Club? He goes, no, you can’t, but I can. And, he said, it would be my honor for you to stay at the Harvard Club. And I said, well, okay, but how much is that going to cost? Because I mean, I’m like, you know, I’ve got to figure out how we’re going to pay for this thing. And he goes, Chris, for you, the son of the man who saved my life, it will cost you nothing. He said, you come to New York City. I’ll put you up to the Harvard Club, and you and your wife enjoy the week up here.

Kimberly Faith: Wow

Chris Edmunds: So we went, and he was 89 at the time, and he was so busy. He said he’d retired from being an attorney in New York City, but he hadn’t really he was still doing lots of work, case work, and going to court stuff. He came regularly into the city, lived outside the city, but he came regularly to the city every day. And he didn’t meet with me on Sunday, didn’t meet with me on Monday, and Tuesday. I Said, Lester, we’re heading back here this next weekend.

I said, when are we going to meet? He goes, well, I’m working on it. I’m trying to get to you. And how about Wednesday for lunch? I’ll come at lunchtime. We’ll have lunch and then I’ll share it and you can tell me about your dad. 

And from that point on, on Wednesday, I heard the story that has really changed my life and changed a lot of people’s lives. And this is what he told me. He said, your father was the highest ranking American soldier in Stalag 9A, a POW camp for non commissioned officers in, near Ziegenhein, Germany. He said it was near the end of the war, late January 1945. And he said, Chris, even in the POW camps, the Nazis had strict anti Jew policies, and they would segregate Jewish POWs from non Jews and send them to certain death and murderous concentration camps. And American Jewish soldiers were even told by the army if they fell in enemy hands to destroy their dog tags and never ever mentioned their Jewish identity. And so late on the evening of January 26, the Germans sent orders to my father that only the Jewish American soldiers were to fall out the following morning for the roll call. No one else, just the Jews. Anyone who disobeyed would be shot.

And without hesitation, Lester said, your father turned to us in our barracks and he said, Boys, we’re not doing that. Tomorrow we all fall out. And he sent orders to the other four barracks of barricades to do the same. It was bitterly cold that morning, 01/27/1945, and that is also the same morning and same day that the Auschwitz Camp was being liberated, and the atrocities of the Holocaust were being, first reported, from that terrible situation. But as the Nazi commander approached dad, he couldn’t believe his eyes. All the Americans, nearly 1,300 soldiers, were lined up in sharp formation. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Chris Edmunds:  And what I discovered was that many of those men were in such bad shape that they had to be helped out there. But they all went. And, any one of those men could have said, you know, this is not my fault. I’m not going out there. You know, this is the Jewish guys, they have to figure this out. But they all stood together, and that was the strength of dad’s plan is that they were all together. And so the German major, it’s not the commandant of the camp. This is a German major from high command. His name is Major Siegmund, and he is furious. He’s been in charge of all POW camps. He’s the one who is the eyes and ears of Hitler throughout the POW camps. He issued the orders, and he’s there to take the Jewish men away. No one has ever disobeyed his orders. So Ziegman rushed over to my father. He gets up in his face, and he screams, they can’t all be Jews, to which my father declared, we are all Jews here.

Kimberly Faith: That is amazing.

Chris Edmunds: The men were stunned. Lester said, I couldn’t believe your father’s bravery and courage. He said, here’s this major. And, you know, he said, and then he said, your father continued. He said, your father leaned into the major ensuring eye contact. And he said, major under the Geneva Convention, all that’s required is name, rank, serial number. Don’t quote regulations to me, screamed the major. Well, my order’s clear. I want the Jews, just the Jews. Well standing on dad’s left was Sergeant Lester Tanenbaum, a 19 year old Jewish kid from the Bronx and it’s aka Lester Tanner. He changed his name when he got back from the war. And dad had trained Lester since basic, and Lester was one of dad’s best soldiers. And on dad’s right was another Jewish, soldier, Sergeant Paul Stern. He’s a combat medic for the twenty eighth division, and he’s seen the worst of the worst at the Herkin Forest and the Battle Of The Bulge. I mean he’s had a target on his uniform with the Red Cross, and he survived all of that. He’s another fine kid and fine soldier from the Burrows of New York. And then ensuring eye contact once again, Lester said, your father leaned into the major and said, Major, we’ll give you name, rank, serial number. That’s all. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow. 

Chris Edmunds: Yeah. Bravery swept through the ranks. I mean the men stood a little taller, felt a little braver because of that.

Kimberly Faith: How many Jews were in, Jewish men were in the I guess group that was out there standing at attention?

Chris Edmunds: There were more than 200. I don’t have the exact number. I don’t have all the names listed yet, but we’re working on that. But, according to Lester and the other Jewish men’s testimony, there were over 200. And the Nazi turned blood red. He became enraged. I mean, here was this little American sergeant that’s, you know, defied his orders. So he pulls his pistol out. He pressed it hard into my father’s forehead and he screams, Sergeant, one last chance. You will order the jews to step forward or I will shoot you right now.

Well I mean there’s a lot more that goes on in the back and forth. And we need to understand that by this point, dad and his men faced untold horrors through the Battle of the Bulge where eighty nine thousand Americans were killed, captured, or wounded. I want to read, if I could, a, from chapter 12 of No Surrender. It’s about the battle. The battle started on December 16. And so let me just read a few paragraphs. 

At 05:30 hours on 12/16/1944, the frozen earth erupted. Hell appeared like a ghost in the forest. In an instant, pine trees exploded into deadly wooden spikes. The frigid air turned fiery red, blood and bone mingled with chunks of thawing debris. Roddie clung to the shaking icy ground, desperately trying to crawl into his helmet. Terrain and weather were no longer his greatest enemies. His enemies were the relentless concussions and deadly shrapnel from the murderous eighty eight. The German artillery rained down with pinpoint accuracy from what seemed like every direction. No one was safe.

There was nowhere to run or hide. Just across the valley were thousands of enemy troops with thundering panzers and heavy artillery. Fear was also Roddies enemy. Fear that he would be blown to pieces in an instant. Fear for the lives of its boys, Lester, Frankie, Skip, Sonny.

And what they were experiencing was fear that he might not make it home, might never see his family again. This was a terror he could never have imagined. He knew panic was lethal to an infantryman, but he grappled with him with a sickening embrace, and his body shivered as he shook off thoughts of his own death. The tree top calibration tactic perfected in the Hurtgen Forest was being put to devastating effect now in the Ardennes. Every tree seemed to have been simultaneously blasted from its roots.

And so I’ll go on to describe the battle, and it’s really horrific what our boys went through over there. Most of the four twenty fourth regiment of the one hundred and sixth Infantry that dad was a part of was decimated. Four twenty third well I think about four hundred twenty third was decimated, hundred twenty fourth was probably half, and then most of the four twenty second was captured. But again, during the battle, eighty nine thousand Americans were killed, captured, or wounded, in the bloodiest battle of world war II. Once captured, dad had been, and all the captives were marched on a death march.

Several days in knee deep snow and freezing rain without food, water, or rest. They didn’t stop. Sergeant Skip Freeman told me he said, you could hear shots ring out from the back of the line for stragglers, and so they tried to help one another along. And then they got to Gerolstein, where it was a train yard, and they were herded into boxcars like cattle, standing room only. These were the same types of boxcars that were taking Jewish men, women, and boys, and girls to their death.

And they stood in those boxcars for days on end. No food, no water, no place to lay down, no place to relieve themselves, and seemingly no hope, and they just rumbled on into deep Germany. And then on Christmas Eve in 1944, the train suddenly stopped in the Lindbergh train yard, and, the German officers and guards fled, and overhead the POWs locked in those boxcars could hear planes flying over, and pretty soon they heard the bombs whistling down through the sky. 

Kimberly Faith: Oh, wow. 

Chris Edmund: The Germans had left the American POWs for dead in that train yard, in unmarked boxcars. They’re supposed to be marked with POW on the top, but they were not marked. So the British didn’t know that the POWs were there because they were bombing armament that was in that train yard. And more than, I think 200 plus American soldiers died in that bombing, including my father’s chaplain. 

Kimberly Faith:Wow.

Chris Edmunds:  And in dad’s diary, he writes, of all the terrible things he experienced, the bombing was the worst because they had nowhere to run. You know, in battle, they figured out how to protect themselves as best they could.

Kimberly Faith: Right. You know, what was remarkable to me in the book, sorry to interrupt you. It was just something that, you know, that was the most terrifying part because they couldn’t run, but how you shared how they sang Christmas carols. You know?

Chris Edmunds: Oh, yeah. Dad started singing Silent Night, and all the boys in his car started singing it with him, and then it spread from one car to the next. And then the Germans came and banged on the cars and told them all to be quiet, you know, this was after the bombing. Obviously, there was such great relief, and so everybody stopped singing for, you know, just a few minutes. And then one of the POW guys in dad’s car, you know, just cursed and basically said, you know, to hell with them, we’re going to sing. And they started singing again, and eventually the Germans started singing in German, Silent Night.

Kimberly Faith: That’s so powerful. That’s so powerful.

Chris Edmunds: There was a moment of peace. You know?

Kimberly Faith: It’s kind of like what you read about in World War One, you know, when Christmas the troops on both sides stopped.

Chris Edmunds: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: You know? And it’s just there are people that deny that there is the existence of God, you know, that is so inexplicable to people who deny the existence of God, you know. Go on. Sorry. Didn’t interrupt you, but I love that.

Chris Edmunds: That’s one of the most incredible stories I’ve discovered during the book, you know, in writing the book and researching. But you know, the Lord is the Prince of Peace, and he was alive and well. Not only dad’s heart, but many hearts, you know, that were spread throughout those troops. And so I’m grateful for what happened there.

But so there they are. You know, they finally got to the first camp, which was bad, and there they did segregate the Jewish men and put them in what Lester called a prison within a prison. And then, several days into that experience, due to the pressure of the Red Cross, and  the camp was over it was too full. It was overrun with prisoners and it wasn’t adequate, and so they transferred all the non commissioned officers to another camp, including the Jewish men who were in that separate, prison camp, within the prison. And so they all end up at Ziegenhein. And, you know, they had suffered at this point by the time they got to Ziegenhein Forty Days of starvation, which was intentional. Most of the men were losing a pound a day on average and many of them would lose 80 to100 pounds during their time.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, wow.

Chris Edmunds: And, army doctors had said that if they stayed another thirty days that most of those men would have died. I know five men died of starvation two days before they were liberated. So that process, so when these men are standing out there with dad, they are very weak, emaciated, and, you know, starving to death. But they all still, were standing together and standing brave. You know, dad had been shot. He’d been beaten. He’d been interrogated, kicked, smashed with rifle butts, bitten by dogs. He and all the men were filthy, infested with lice, tortured by trent’s foot and frostbite and hunger. They were forever hungry and forever cold. And just two days earlier from this moment where dad is standing with all of his men and the guns pressed to his forehead, They were marched into this camp for the first time. So they’d only been there for two days.

Kimberly Faith:  Wow. 

Chris Edmunds: And the commandant had them stand out in the freezing cold and intimidated them with the dogs and with their guards and the guns.  And toward the end of the day, before they released them to go to their barracks, they marched a young Russian soldier out in front of the men and brutally murdered the Russian soldier. I won’t describe it. You just need to read the book if you want to learn about that. But, then the commandant came to dad and said, if you or any of your men disobeyed, this will happen to you. So they really did intimidate the Americans. Yet all of the men were out there standing on behalf of their Jewish brothers, and they were resolute in it. Lester told me, he said, your father, he never wavered.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. 

Chris Edmunds: So I wonder if dad was recalling one of the, one of his most favorite scriptures was, the Lord is my light and salvation. Whom shall I fear? Psalm 27:1. And, you know, I’m sure that scripture was a strength to him, was an encouragement to him. But then suddenly dad spoke. Go ahead. 

Kimberly Faith: No. No. That’s okay. Go ahead. I was just going to ask a quick question. Did he have his Bible with him?

Chris Edmunds: Well, that’s something I discovered that I didn’t know, but he was the only one in the camp who had smuggled a Bible into the camp with him. I don’t know how he got it in there. But Lester told me he goes, Chris, your father read his Bible every day. He would take time to read his Bible every day. Said all of us as the men saw him and said, then we started using your father’s Bible. So the men who had different services, you know, the Presbyterian guys, the Methodist guys would borrow it and use it, even us Jewish guys borrowed it for our services and Catholic guys. And he said he not only read it to himself, he said he read it to us. There were times he would gather us all around and read the Bible to us. And he said he was one of a kind. And the only way was, because I didn’t know that, Lester never told me that, but then we discovered Frankie Cerencia’s diary. Met his daughter, and she had kept it, and she had never read it. And so we met in New York at the Harvard Club with Lester. I said, I want you to meet Lester. And so it was a different trip.

And I sat down with her and started reading through it and I said,  you’ve never read this? She goes, no. I’ve never read I said, this is like a day by day account of everything that happened in the POW camp. 

Kimberly Faith: Oh my gosh. 

Chris Edmunds: And your dads an excellent writer. And I said and then I said and I’ve just read bits and pieces of this, but all the way through this is his love for Lucy. I said, your mom. I said, this is a love story that is beyond measure. And, she said, well, he really did love my mom.

Kimberly Faith:  Oh. 

Chris Edmunds: I said, well, you need to read this. I said, not I said, it’s Lester. I said, I’m reading here. Frankie wrote, “Roddies reading his Bible again this morning.” And he talks about dad in his Bible and his faith. And I said

Kimberly Faith: Bet that was a treasure. 

Chris Edmunds: That was unbelievable. I said, Lester, did dad have a Bible in the camp? He goes, well, now that you mentioned it, yes he did. I’ve forgotten about that. He did. So yeah. But I don’t know what happened to that Bible. I’m still looking for it. There’s a couple of potential places of family members, you know, cousins that he lived with, his brother, his older brother when he got back from the war, and that he might have stuffed it up in their attic somewhere. But so we have an action item to go visit and help her she goes, I’ve not been up in that attic in years. I said, well, we’re going up there.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, I  don’t blame you. What an amazing find that would be.

Chris Edmunds: Oh, that’d be great. Yeah. But, so the gun’s to dad’s head and dad suddenly speaks. And once again, Lester said, I couldn’t believe it, but said he ensured eye contact. He turned his body to where he could look the major in the eyes, and he said, major, you can shoot me, but you’ll have to kill all of us because we know who you are, and you’ll be tried as a war criminal when we win this war. And the last thing he told him, he said, and you will pay. And, Lester said that the Major Blanche, he said he turned white as a ghost.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Chris Edmunds: And his arm holding the gun began to tremble. And he said, we just stood there. He said time froze. You know, nobody moved. There were no sounds, and he said all you could see was the frozen breath, our frozen breath rising heavenward. And he said, and I guarantee you there were lots of prayers going on because, your father basically had called him out, and so we didn’t know what was going to happen. And so amazingly, the major pulled his trigger finger off the trigger, snapped the gun into his holster, and stormed away and fled the scene.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. 

Chris Edmunds: Lester said, we were shocked. We were stunned.

Kimberly Faith:  Are you going to make a movie? I mean, this is a great story.

Chris Edmunds: Yeah. We’re headed in that direction. You know, we have two documentaries. The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous called me up.

Kimberly Faith: What is that?

Chris Edmunds: The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous is an organization, in New York, but they collect money,  from primarily from their Jewish friends and family members I mean, from Jews all over the world, to give money to needy righteous, the people who are righteous among the nations who have been designated by Israel as righteous among them who helped save Jews during the Holocaust. And they’ve already been, you know, vetted and identified. But many of these righteous people have financial burdens, and so The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous goes and raises money and sends money to them every month to help them meet their financial needs. I mean, it’s amazing. 

Kimberly Faith: That’s amazing. Even eighty years after the, you know, the war is over.

Chris Edmunds: They’re committed to do it until they, the righteous, are no more. You know, there are no more living righteous. And they also train teachers all across the world to be holocaust educators. They have, yeah, they have, holocaust teachers all throughout The United States in schools who’ve been trained, and their pockets of excellence. I mean these are teachers who are excellent in what they know.

Kimberly Faith: And  that’s so important.

Chris Edmunds: So they honor a righteous person. They have, for the past few years, honored a righteous person by making a documentary of that person’s life. And so 2016, after that story came out, I got a phone call from Stanley Saul who’s the director. She’s the executive director of the foundation, and she’s named Stanley because she’s named after her uncle who died in World War Two, the Battle of the Bulge. His name is Stanley, so she spells it a little bit differently, but she’s named Stanley after him. But she called me and she said, is this Chris Edmunds? I said, yes. Yes, it is. She goes, is this the real Chris Edmunds? I said, well, I don’t I guess. I’m the only one I know. She said, no. Was your father Master Sergeant Roddie Edmunds? Said, yes, ma’am. She said, well, I have a request I want you to consider.

We would like to make a documentary about your father, to honor his life, and we would like for you to go with us because we make them from scratch. We don’t, you know, we’re going to go to Germany. We’re going to go to Belgium. We’re going to go interview people that, you know, know about what happened, but we want you to go with us, and you help tell the story. But you just follow your father’s footsteps, because that’s what we want to do. We want you to follow your father’s footsteps.

 I said, hallelujah. I said, you are an answer to prayer. She goes, what? I said, yeah. I said, I’ve been praying for two years to follow my father’s footsteps, and I didn’t have any way to go, didn’t have the money, and here you’re calling me to take me over there.  I said, and what’s so good about God is he’s sending a film crew with us. She goes, she goes, yes. God is very good, isn’t he? I said, yeah. I said, so for two years, I’ve prayed for you. I said, so I’m grateful for God’s answered prayer. And then she laughs and she says, well I’m grateful to be an answer to prayer. And, so I said, I only have one question for you, Stanley. What took you so long? You know, I’ve been praying for two years. You know? She goes, well, I didn’t know about your father until a few months ago. 

But, those documentaries are, one is fourteen minutes. We show it. It’s public. It’s through Vimeo, and you can go to their website jfr.org and link to

Kimberly Faith: Is that jfr? 

Chris Edmunds: jfr.org

Kimberly Faith: Okay. 

Chris Edmunds: You can download it. There’s a teacher’s guide there for it as well. You can use it for teaching purposes. I show it in schools all across the country when I go speak in the schools. 

Kimberly Faith: Is it on your website as well?

Chris Edmunds: On my website. Yes.

Kimberly Faith: What is it?

Chris Edmunds: roddieedmunds.com

Kimberly Faith: roddieedmunds.com?

Chris Edmunds: Yeah. And, there’s a lot of information on dad’s website as well. So but, yeah, there’s a link to it. Then there’s a thirty nine minute version that you can get by special request, you can show that to your congregations or your, you know, your community, any group, work group that you want to schools, but you have to go contact Stanley for that. And it won an honorable mention in the twenty eighteen Academy Awards.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, wow. Yeah. Well worthwhile. They’re well, I mean, the book, the videos, it’s so well done. And, you know, I kept thinking as I was, I mean, I like to read. So as I was reading the book, this has to be a movie. It is as good as any of the great war movies that I mean, the story is as good, but the telling of it and all the different dynamics of all the people who are involved, all the people you, I assume interviewed Jews and non Jewish people. Just yeah. It’s excellent. So I really hope it gets into the box office, so to speak.

Chris Edmunds: Well, you know, there’s a great opportunity for that to happen even soon, but, you never know. In the movie business, it’s, you know, it’s luck of the draw sometimes.

Kimberly Faith: Well, especially if it’s not, like, you know, like the Kendrick brothers, for example, make great movies. And, you know, like the movie that came out, The Forge, you know, has discipleship front and center. Well made.

Chris Edmunds: Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: Good storyline. And, obviously, you’d want your dad’s story not just to be a Hollywood makeover of, you know, I guess, a non biblical version of your dad’s life.

Chris Edmunds: No. No. No. No. Well, let’s just say some things. Wheels are in motion, and you know,  I have stood ground as far as, you know, dad’s faith will be front and center, and everybody in the movie business I’ve talked to wants that there anyway. I mean, once they read the book, they you know.

Kimberly Faith:  Yeah. 

Chris Edmunds: I wouldn’t have them do it without his faith. So, but, we’ll see. I mean, I’m praying. God always answers prayers. It’s just in his timing. I’m faithful to follow him, and I don’t know who it’s going to be with. Right now, we’ve got a big, you know, a big movie group that’s very interested in it. So we’ll see. Well,  you never know.

Kimberly Faith: No. I was going to ask you, take us back. So how long after, or I don’t know if there’s more of the story you want to tell people that because obviously the book is a must read if you want to hear the story.  But how soon after him facing down the, the major in defending his Jewish comrades, was your dad then and the rest of them liberated?

Chris Edmunds: Well, that happened on January twenty seventh of forty four, and they were liberated on March  30th of 44. So there were a couple of months before. And those two months were brutal. Was dead of winter. It was freezing cold. They were starving to death. Ultimately, some of the men got so down and out that they didn’t want to live. And so dad got all the guys that wanted to live. I mean it was pretty obvious who wanted, you know, to survive this, try to survive this thing and who didn’t. So he pulled all the ones together, that he called the up guys. They, you know, they were up, wanting to live, and, you know, full of desire in life. They called them all together, and he said gentleman said, it’s your job. All of you want to survive this, but we’ve got fellas here that don’t want to. Said, so it’s your job. You need to pick one of those guys, one of the down guys, and your job is to help them survive.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. 

Chris Edmunds: That’s what they did.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. You know, I have a lot of colleagues, a lot of clients in my law practice that are military and have served in the Gulf War, you know, a lot of even Vietnam and and even not so much more now, but I even had World War Two veterans. And I’ll tell you, it’s just a different breed of person back then. You know? 

Chris Edmunds: Yes.

Kimberly Faith:  What do you think is like what do you think is the key to bringing that back, or is there a way to bring back that quality in people?

Chris Edmunds: Yeah. Well, it’s you know, I don’t just say that because I’m a pastor. I say this because I’ve experienced this as a follower of Christ, but you’ve to bring God into the picture. When I go talk to students, I challenge them to be the next greatest generation.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, I love that. I just love that. Yeah.

Chris Edmunds: And I tell them, you know, you have the capacity to do that and make all the difference in the lives of others simply by honoring God first and helping others second, you know. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

Chris Edmunds: Basically, you serve God by serving others. And so I’ve challenged them to do that and say, you know, when you wake up in the morning, your feet hit the floor, you say others first, me last. Others first, me last. And that’s all for the glory of God.  I also tell them, you’re not here by accident. None of us are on planet earth by accident. You know, God sent us here. You’re here for a purpose and a reason. And since there’s only two things that God sent you here, to honor Him, help others. That’s the only two things you’re here for. Doesn’t matter what you choose to do in life or where you end up going in life, your mission is to honor God by helping others.

Kimberly Faith: I love that.

Chris Edmunds: So I challenged them. I said, you know, the capacity within you to love others greater than yourself because that’s great. That’s a favorite verse out of all the scriptures was greater love has no one but this, than to lay down his life for one’s friends. John 15:13. And obviously that’s Jesus, that’s His words, and that is His life. He laid down his life and served us by giving us freedom from our sin and restoring our relationship back with God. And so, dad not only loved that verse, he tried to live it, you know.

Kimberly Faith: Sounds like it.

Chris Edmunds: And we can too. We only through the power of God can we live that, but we can put ourselves when we serve others beyond ourselves selflessly, and we serve them with what I call God’s greater love. We take them to the place where God resides. Okay?

Kimberly Faith: Oh, man. I love that.

Chris Edmunds:  And we love them the way God loves us. 

Kimberly Faith: Yes. 

Chris Edmunds: And when we do that, we extend not only for that moment God’s goodness and his grace, but we extend that to the next generation. We pass it on to others, and we do it in small ways. We do it in big ways. You know, none of us are hopefully ever going to have to have a gun from an enemy pressed against our head and have to make a decision that will either save or kill thousands of people. Okay, so we don’t have to do that. Dad had a choice. At a pivotal moment in his life, everything that he had loved and learned and had done up to that point met at the crossroads of that decision, and he had to make a choice. Am I going to join in with the evil that I’m being presented right now? And am I going to walk that path of evil, or am I going to stand on the evil side or God’s side. And he chose to stand on God’s side. He chose to do what’s right for others regardless of the risk, regardless of the circumstances. He chose to do what’s right for God first and humanity second. And Lester said, the moment that your dad stood up for all of us men that way, he said, I decided I wanted to live my life the same way as your dad, that I wanted to choose to do what’s right for others regardless of the risk, regardless of the circumstances.

Kimberly Faith:  Wow. Wow.

Chris Edmunds: I said ,Wow, Lester. He said it’s the defining moment of my life was in that pow camp.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Chris Edmunds: And then he grinned at me. He goes, you know, for a New York City Lawyer, he said that’s not always easy.  I said, Lester, it’s not easy for any of us to do whether you’re a lawyer or not. 

Kimberly Faith: Right. Well, what a legacy though.  What a legacy for your dad, you know, to have committed to living for God’s glory as opposed to his own glory or his own selfish reasons, and creating pivotal life changing moments for other people as part of his eternal legacy. I mean, that inspires me.

Chris Edmunds: Oh, well, it’s again  if we can just make a difference in one person’s life, okay, that’s really what the Talmud teaches. He who saves one life saves the entire. Okay? And so the Jewish Talmud teaches that, and it is the truth.

And so we have opportunities every day to help save a life. I mean, we don’t  realize, and are just being nice and doing things and for others that we don’t even realize is a big deal, you know, like helping somebody with their groceries to the car or opening a door for them or, you know, I had to climb up. I was at a grocery store the other day. You know, I’m not very tall, but, you know, this little old lady was trying to, a sweet little lady was trying to get something off the top shelf. So I had to step up on a shelf to get it for her and hand it to her. Well, you know, that’s not like having a gun to your head, but that is stopping whatever you’re doing, noticing the situation 

Kimberly Faith: Yep. 

Chris Edmunds: Saying, how can I help? You know?

Kimberly Faith: Well, and it’s that glass of water that Jesus talked about, You know? 

Chris Edmunds: Yep. 

Kimberly Faith: It’s you know, if you give people the truth of the gospel without any love, well, that’s just cruel.

Chris Edmunds: It’s very cruel.

Kimberly Faith: And conversely, if you give whatever your definition of love would be to people without the gospel truth. Well, that’s cruel as well, you know.

Chris Edmunds: It is. And I share, you know, I speak about that. You know, dad loved them with the truth, and you’ve got to have love and truth together. That’s even doctor Martin Luther King Jr said, you know, love and truth wins the day. Okay? So you’ve got to have love and truth together.

Kimberly Faith: I didn’t know that when I named this podcast Truth in Love.

Chris Edmunds: Yeah. Well, you did good. See, love without truth is evil. It’s cruel. It’s wicked.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

Chris Edmunds: You got to tell the truth. It’s got to be based on truth. And so when dad loved that Major by telling him the truth. He’s, Major, you don’t want to do this. You’re going to regret this the rest of your life, and you’re going to pay for it. I mean, it’s basically what he’s telling him. Okay? This is wrong, and you don’t need to, you don’t need to do this. So, and that Major made a decision of love 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

Chris Edmunds: Based on the truth. He didn’t pull the trigger he could have.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Chris Edmunds: I mean, he’s one person removed from Hitler. He reports to general Yodel. So he’s been in the environment. He came back to Germany from America after World War One. He served in World War One in Germany, and then he went to America because he was fed up with the German leadership just like Hitler was. He came to America. He got a job for General Motors with General Motors, became a mid manager in General Motors. He married a German American girl, and had an American son from their relationship. And then when Hitler took over in Germany, he took his family, and he moved back to Germany so he could serve Hitler. 

Kimberly Faith: What?

Chris Edmunds: So this guy was a bad dude. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Edmunds:  But yet truth and love hammered him in his heart at that moment, and he made the right decision. Because he heard the truth, he made a loving decision toward dad and the men, and he walked away, which was very hard for him to do. He could have been court martialed or even put in front of a firing squad for what he did.

Kimberly Faith:  Right. 

Chris Edmunds: And so he never came back to ask for the Jewish men again. So I mean, it was that he made a decision that lasted. So I want to someday, if I can, meet his family members to thank them. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Chris Edmunds: For his act of love and kindness toward my father.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. That would be such a powerful meeting, and an opportunity for you to also have a potential ministry to them. You know, kind of like, when Corrie ten Boom forgave, you know, her Nazi prison guard.This is just such a great I’m just enjoying myself so much because I love history. I love, you know, the study of World War II, and this is a real story by somebody.

But I don’t want to let you leave today without leaving us with maybe some final thought or a thought of like what would be the one thing if your dad were sitting here today, what would be the one thing he would want people to know, about his life and what’s important? What was important to him? What would you say that is?

Chris Edmunds: Well, yeah. Jesus Christ was important to him, and trying to, I don’t know, help others because of what Christ did for him. I told a Jewish, newspaper, and they were, I won’t say which one, but they were from Jerusalem, and they were asking me about dad and his faith. And no one had really interviewed me up until that point about dad’s faith. And I said, well, so y’all you have Jewish readers. Right? Yeah. And we have a few Christian readers, but we want to know about your father’s faith because it’s fascinating. So I told him about his faith, and then I said, well, I’ll just summarize his faith this way. I said, if dad were here, he would probably tell you. I mean, he’s not, but I’m just thinking like he would think, boys, I saved Jewish men because a Jewish man named Jesus saved me. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Chris Edmunds:  And they were stunned by that answer. And, I said, so a Jewish man named Jesus Christ gave his life in place of my father’s life, and dad truly believed he did that. He surrendered his life to Christ when he was 14 years of age at Vessel United Methodist Church in South Knoxville. I said and dad wrote in his Bible, that that was, he received believer’s peace when he received Christ.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, love that.

Chris Edmunds: Yeah. And one of his other favorite scriptures was this, and he would tell me, he said, let me just share the scripture. It’s, I am crucified with Christ. It’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In this life that I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and died for me. So he would say, son, you can’t know Jesus until you surrender it all. You’ve got to surrender to him or surrender your all and I mean, he told me that over the years, and that is the truth. It’s a 100 % surrender. Okay?

Kimberly Faith: For me to live is Christ. 

Chris Edmunds:  To die is gain. Yeah. So my life is Christ. Okay? So I’ve died to myself.

So I also told that newspaper, I said, you know, that old German major, he had no idea who he’s dealing with. I said, you can’t kill a dead man. He was already dead. He died to himself and came alive to Christ, and he knew what his future was, you know, and you can’t kill a dead man.

Kimberly Faith: I love that. I love that.

Chris Edmunds: But dad lived like I said earlier, you know, Jesus was first thing, last thing, everything. And, you know, he wasn’t perfect. Nobody is. And that’s why Christ had to die for dad. But he did try to live his life, for Jesus, he was full of life. 

I mean, he came back from World War Two, and you wouldn’t have even known he was in a battle because he was high on life. He loved people. He loved the next day that was coming. Couldn’t wait for it. He was the light in every room. He was cutting jokes and quips and keeping people laughing, and just when he left the room, people wished he were back. He was that kind of person. Okay?

Kimberly faith:  Wow. 

Chris Edmunds: But he also could read people like, almost instantly. He knew the heart or the struggles or I mean he just had this knack. I think it was God given. So you know that helped him even during the war, particularly too probably with the major and the encounter he had with the major. But, the other thing that dad did while he was in world war II, was actually in the POW camp. He felt like God was calling him to come back and sing gospel songs. He’d never sang in front of anybody before. And so he said, you know, Lord, I know you don’t make deals, but if you could see us out of this mess, you know, I’m going to go back and sing for you. And so he came back through the Lord’s grace and goodness, he came back and he never stopped singing. He had a deep baritone voice, and he sang great, old gospel songs for the Lord, and one of his favorite best ones that was always requested was How Great Thou Art.

Kimberly Faith: Nothing like having a baritone sing How Great Thou Art.

Chris Edmunds: Oh, I know. I know. I don’t know if you ever heard of George Beverly Shea. That type voice is kind of the voice he had. 

Kimberly Faith: That was what was in my head.

Chris Edmunds: Yeah. So he never stopped singing, and he would always testify before he sang. He’d always say something about the Lord, you know, what was going on. And, he even sang, some local channels down here for a couple of gospel shows and that kind of thing. And, he would sing at revival. I mean, preachers would call and say, can you come sing at my revival? It was that kind of, you know, ministry. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow. 

Chris Edmunds: Never asked for any money, never made any money for it, you know. He might get a piece of chicken every now and then, but it was just what he was called to do, you know. And I would go with him, you know, he’d take us as our family, we’d go with him sometimes, and he sang at some POW events and military events and stuff like that too along the way.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Chris Edmunds:  So it’s crazy. As I started this journey, discovered this story about him and everything, and then, I found out that that’s where he accepted the call to sing. I asked my mom. I said, well, you know, do we have any recordings of dad singing? She goes, no, we don’t. We don’t have any. I said, that’s a shame. And then about three weeks later, she calls me. She says, Chris, I found, I was thinking about what you said, and I went through some stuff. She was a pack rat. She kept everything for years, even cards, you know, Christmas cards that were given to her and, you know, birthday cards, everything. But she said, I found this reel to reel tape. I don’t even know what’s on it. Well, I found 10 songs that dad had recorded on this old reel tape. And I mean, it’s like gold. And of course, it’s grand. So it sounds like an old tape player, you know. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

Chris Edmunds: So I’m hoping to get that remastered and cleaned up and be able to have his songs. And there’s one song on there that I’ve never heard before and I can’t find it anywhere. I think he wrote it, and he never sang; he always sang with a piano or an organ, but this one he’s singing with a guitar.

Kimberly Faith: Oh.

Chris Edmunds: It’s about the war. 

Kimberly Faith: Oh.

Chris Edmunds:  It’s really a powerful song. So I think he wrote it.

Kimberly Faith: I hope that you can get that digitized. You know, people do that, and that would be precious to share with your grandkids. 

Chris Edmunds: Yeah. I want to,  that’s another project. I have so many projects. 

Kimberly Faith: I understand. Believe me. I think my practice

Chris Edmunds: You’re the same I hear you’re the same way.

Kimberly Faith: The practice of law is it supports all my endeavors that I do the things I want to  do, like having this interview with you. Well, I appreciate it so much. I know you’re very busy with all your projects and I thank you so much for making the time to visit with our listeners and visit with me. I consider it one of the great privileges I’ve had in my short time in doing podcasts, especially, to have you on the show.

Chris Edmunds: Well, thanks for having me. It’s been an honor.  I love the devotion you wrote about dad too. It’s a devotion. I encourage people to read that as well.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

Chris Edmunds: But thank you for what you’re doing for the kingdom.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Well, thank you. It’s so and I will, and when I say this, I don’t just say it. I have a prayer list, and I will definitely pray that this movie gets made. I think it would be an amazing ministry tool for the kingdom and just have such a broad based appeal. Kind of like, I don’t know if you watched the movie The Forge, which was an amazing movie on discipleship.

Chris Edmunds: Yeah. Well, those guys are heaven sent for sure.

Kimberly Faith: They really are.

Chris Edmunds: Yeah. And you pray that there might be an opportunity for me to meet them soon.

Kimberly Faith:  Actually, they were the ones who came to my mind when you were talking to me earlier, in the earlier conversation about the movie.

Chris Edmunds: Well, there are rumblings that there might be an opportunity to meet them soon, so we’ll just see. 

Kimberly Faith:  Yeah. Well, they would be wise to pick the story because I think it’s incredible. And again, Chris, thank you so much for being our guest and, really appreciate your ministry and what you’re doing and, through the legacy of your father. I  know that you’re also, not just participating in his legacy, but you’re leaving your own unique legacy of one in 9 billion people on the earth that God made you to do. I really appreciate that. It’s just such a privilege to meet another believer in this context. Thanks for all your great work.

Chris Edmunds: You’re welcome. Thank you. And to again, all that’s been accomplished, the Lord has done.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. All for the glory of God. Well, you’ve been listening to the Truth in Love podcast with my special guest, pastor Chris Edmunds, and we just pray that this this story inspires you to create the very special legacy that God has for you, the plan that he has for you to bring glory to him, and to leave an eternal legacy in affecting the lives of those around you so that people look at you and they see Jesus. Have a great week, everyone.

Jacob Paul: You’ve been listening to the Truth in  Love podcast with your host, Kimberly Faith. To discover more answers to the big questions in life, visit us at gofaithstrong.com.