Alma 56

On the day after New Year’s, Moroni got this letter from Helaman (strap yourself in—it’s a long one):

Dearest brother Moroni, godly militant friend, here’s what I’m seeing:

Two thousand sons of the men Ammon brought from Nephiland, all descendants of Laman, have heavily armed themselves and want me for a commander in a quasi-defensive war. You recall, of course, the vow of their fathers to not shed blood the way we normatively do. You also recall that in year 26 they were so vexed by our sufferings they were ready to throw the vow out on its ear. From gun-shy to trigger-happy.

I wouldn’t allow that, though. God respects covenants more than pragmatics. He’d protect anyone that took a vow against self-interest.

But the good news is that in year 26 I marched the two thousand young men—all like sons to me—to Judea to help the territorial commander Antipus. We joined his troops and mine, we being the reinforcements he’d needed after major tear-filled setbacks. (Okay, I mean that many of our troops were dead, though I insist they are happy to be dead for the right cause.)

The Lamanites had many prisoners, all at the captain rank or greater, since they killed everyone of lesser rank. We think they’re all under guard in Nephiland.

While I’m at it, here’s a list of the locales that Lamanites took by force: Manti (land and city), Zeezrom, Cumei, Antiparah. They had all these under lock and key by the time I got to Judea. Antipus, meanwhile, had men eager to build the new land, though severe battle fatigue held back the construction projects. Depression, post-traumatic stress, the usual psychological woundings, along with regular exhaustion. My boys perked everyone up.

Lamanites saw the expanding troops and Ammoron told them to leave. Too suicidal. So they thought. I personally think this a miracle, because, given their training, temperament, and experience, they could easily have shut us down. So hallelujah that they overestimated us. Ammoron told them to hold the other cities they had.

But by the twenty-seventh year we were ready for them. We were so gung ho. Bring it on. At least attack us, because we weren’t up to attacking first, at least not head on. We kept spies out to watch them. We hoped to attack them from the rear. But it was not to be. They weren’t as stupid as we thought God wanted them to be. They certainly weren’t about to march on Zarahemla or Nephihah. They trained and lay in wait in their own cities.

In the second month the fathers of my young men brought sackfuls of provisions and more young reinforcements. In a census we counted about ten thousand men, along with wives and children, whom we don’t formally count because, you know, they are women and kids.

Seeing how large we were getting and how much food we had, the Lamanite armies tried to cut off the trade routes we used.

We came up with a strategy: Antipus ordered that I and my boy troops march in the open near Antiparah to a neighbor city, pretending we had food for them.

We went first and Antipus soon followed. Now Antiparah, you see, was a huge Lamanite stronghold. They saw us coming and met us head on. We ran off to the north, draining their army that pursued us. Antipus followed them from behind, which made them march faster toward us, so as not to be surrounded. We were the bait.

Antipus, in turn, marched faster still. At nightfall we were all still far enough away from one another that we camped till morning.

First thing, the Lamanites were on our tail. We were no match for them so we headed into the wilderness. Guerilla warfare, maybe. Night fell again.

Morning, the same scene. They were onto us at every move. By the seventh month, day 3, they stopped following us. I wasn’t sure if Antipus had caught up with them or they were trying to lure us into a fight.

I asked our young troops what they wanted to do. I’d never seen such a fist-in-the-air response. After all this time they just wanted to fight. Mostly teenagers, they acted like I was their dad. Which I didn’t mind, especially when they assured me God would protect them in any good fight, which they were sure this was. Very principled, these boys, stuck on ideas of liberty and valiance, bold, though mostly because their mothers had taught them boldness. They were more reckless than their fathers, who knew war’s ugliness from experience. They were floating on idealism the way teenagers do, especially with politically savvy moms giving them the word.

So we dove into the fight, two thousand against how many Lamanites, who were already locked in a battle with Antipus’ men. Tired men. Overmarched men get overmatched. We had no idea we were the thin line between massacre and hope.

When we got there Antipus was already dead, lying on the ground beside his dead colonels. Pockets of his troops had begun to surrender or flee. Lamanites felt the victory beating in their chests—until we met them and plunged our daggers into them. We were hot. Some of Antipus’ men turned around and took a second swing at this.

The Lamanites, cocky as ever, got hoodwinked by a bunch of wounded refugees and crowds of teenaged hotheads swinging swords and pulling bowstrings.

We negotiated a quick surrender. None of my boys got killed. Now that’s a bona fide miracle, though I always feel bad about harnessing God for military boasting. We knew, though, we were bound to go down as legends. This is the stuff that gets retold around campfires for a century.

We sent our prisoners to Zarahemla along with Antipus’s survivors. My boys and I went back to Judea,