When the Book of Mormon was first published, readers of Mormon’s accounts of the final battles in Mormon 4–6, and Moroni 9 were very skeptical: “This is too fantastic,” they said, “This could never have really happened.” War had not been conducted in that manner in Europe. Soldiers in that era went out on to a field outside of town to fight. Even when the Civil War began, the women and children took picnic baskets and watched the battle. In ancient warfare, however, the whole population was affected more than modern experience would indicate.
In World War II, Hugh Nibley was in Army Intelligence, and was one of the first to arrive at the beach on D-Day. His job was to go ahead of the soldiers, get inland as far as he could, and let people know where the strengths and weaknesses of the German lines were. Nibley had served a mission in Germany, had German ancestry, and had a German appearance. He spoke with a flawless accent, so he interrogated many captives. When he was in the D-Day invasion he had a large coat, and every pocket was very strictly regulated on what had to be kept and what could not be kept in each pocket, so that if he was killed, his fellow intelligence officers could get quickly to his body and get what they needed to take. He was not allowed to have anything else other than the items that were prescribed, but he violated the rules. He smuggled a copy of the Book of Mormon into one pocket, and was reading as he went across the English Channel on the morning of the invasion, 6 June 1944.
He said, “It never really dawned on me how historically real the Book of Mormon was until D-Day.” In interviews included in the film The Faith of an Observer, Nibley recalls that he got his testimony of the Book of Mormon riding across the bumpy waves reading about the destruction of the Jaredites and Mormon’s account of the destruction of the Nephites. It was there that he saw the great catastrophe, the pain, the suffering, and the chaos of war. We see both the allied soldiers’ accounts and Mormon’s account of people running this way and that way, fleeing and going from one city to the next, and being driven from one place to another. It is chaos. Mormon regrouped and then they were driven again. It was impossible for him to be in control of his soldiers; they did not even have walkie-talkies as they did in World War II. Once they were scattered, regrouping was very difficult. The chaos, tension, and horror of the similar military scene at the landing were overwhelming to Brother Nibley.
In the newspapers, it seemed that D-Day went according to plan, but Brother Nibley reported, “Nothing went according to plan.” The ships were blown the wrong way, the weather did not cooperate, and we were not where we were supposed to be. Moreover, the Germans had intercepted all the messages, and thought the invasion was going to be where the troops expected it to be. It was a piece of good fortune that they were off course, otherwise the exercise would have come out a whole lot differently. The chaos was evident.
People used to read the Book of Mormon account and say, “This just sounds too fantastic to be true,” but it is true. We know today that such things happen. Many war participants have verified similar experiences, and with embedded television participation, the public can now observe at a safe distance some of the realities of war.
Hugh Nibley and Alex Nibley, Sergeant Nibley PhD: Memories of an Unlikely Screaming Eagle (Salt Lake City, UT: Shadow Mountain, 2006).