By Josi Kilpack

At the age of twenty-seven, Scott Batt, an iron worker from Cedar City, husband and father of two, was called to war. Military service was not something he had planned on, and being almost ten years older than the average soldier, he’d thought he’d avoid the draft. However, when called to serve his country, he stepped up with sixteen million other men and women to defend his country and just maybe save the world.

As a young man Brother Batt had been a sheep herder and spent weeks at a time with his sheep on the mountain. He didn’t have the opportunity to attend church meetings and was not active in the Church for many years.

It wasn’t until going to work in the iron mines and being befriended by a man strong in his faith that Brother Batt began to fully consider the value of the Gospel. He began actively participating in his ward a short time before being drafted.

When he left to begin his training, Brother Batt took his mother’s small New Testament that easily fit in his shirt pocket. Written on the inside cover of this book were the words, “If you love me keep my commandments.”

His mother passed away when he was four, and that book was his only keepsake of hers. That handwritten reminder inspired him to help organize church services for himself and seven or eight other Latter-day Saints also stationed in the Philippines.

Not having a formal meetinghouse, Brother Batt got permission from his unit each Sunday to travel to Manila. He would hitchhike thirty-five miles to the pier at Manila Bay where he would meet with the other men.

This weekly meeting served to remind them that they were part of more than just the military—they were bound together through their faith and by their desire to keep God’s presence in their lives despite the turmoil of their circumstances. In addition to their make-shift meetings there was plenty of prayer. “In tight situations you pray a lot.”

Brother Batt served as a telephone observer at a camp that guarded Japanese prisoners of war for fourteen months. When he returned home, he faced another daunting task—picking up where he’d left off. He had a family to support and his children didn’t know him anymore. He says what helped him transition back into daily life was to “Get back to work and stay involved in the church.”

At that time, the Church offered a special class to returned military personnel. The class was designed to help reactivate the men that had been in war, easing them into regular meetings. The classes were just what he needed to find his place in the ward and formal Church services again. Brother Batt eventually served as the Superintendent of the Sunday School for seven years and since then he’s “done a little bit of everything.”

Of the War in Iraq and other national issues, Brother Batt says, “The gospel gives us our only understanding of why we are facing these times.” To those men and women returning from their military service and, as he did, struggling to reenter a life that seems strangely foreign, his advice is to “Get involved in something and stay active in whatever religion you belong to. Learn to roll with the punches and keep your mind occupied. When you’re not busy with other things is the time when memories of the hardships rise up.”

About his military service in WWII and the impact it’s made on his life he says, “I wouldn’t trade the experience for a million dollars, but you couldn’t pay me a million dollars to do it again.”

All these years later, Brother Batt still has that New Testament that accompanied his military service. “It’s pretty worn through,” he says, “but you can still read it despite the fact that it’s been around for almost a century.”

Today Brother Batt is ninety years old and raises a beautiful garden while caring for his wife of sixty-seven years, Alice. He worked for thirty five years in the Iron Mines of southern Utah. He and his wife have three children, thirteen grandchildren and twenty-four great-grand children. All of his children and grandchildren are active in the Church and seven have served full-time missions—a legacy to one man’s faith and determination to find truth and then live it.