In The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Flemming gets separated from his unit and back behind the lines. An old man helps the young soldier find his unit again, even holding his hand.
Stephen Crane ends with the following haunting words: “‘Well, there’s where your reg’ment is. An’ now, good-by ol’ boy, good luck t’ yeh.’ A warm and strong hand clasped the youth’s languid fingers for an instant, and then he heard a cheerful and audacious whistling as the man strode away. As he who had so befriended him was passing out of his life, it suddenly occurred to the youth that he had not once seen his face.”
In a way, this section defines one aspect of friendship, the fact that those who fight with you will be your friends. Here the friendship is based solely on the fact that they are both Union soldiers in the civil war. They have a friendship without even seeing each others’ face.
Even seeing many of the friendships I broke or let slide in my life, many were because we had diverse values.
Every friendship is based on some sharing of values. Even family relationships are based on the value of kinship bonds – for a Filipino friend this extended to 4th cousins while I don’t even know all my 2nd cousins.
The deeper those values are, affects the depth of friendship: it is one thing to love beer and the same sports team, it is something more to be fighting in a war, something more still when fighting a moral battle like the pro-life cause, but I would venture to say that our friendship when we are working together to save souls is the strongest.
This is the type of friendship we have in the Legion. If either of us would not have committed to this battalion for saving souls, we would probably have never met. Most of the brothers have different traits or preferences that would make us unlikely friends but the Mission of saving souls unites us all.
