"Pappy" was born in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho on December 4, 1912 and grew up in Tacoma, Washington. In his early school years he became recognized for his aggressiveness and skill in sports and became intercollegiate wrestling champion while attending college in Washington. His interest in flying and competitive spirit caused him to join the Marine Corps where he became a flight instructor. His desire to fly combat and need to pay off some old debts led him to volunteer for the "Flying Tigers" AVG group in China where the pilots were promised $675 a month plus $500 for every enemy plane they downed. Fighting bugs, scorpions, injuries, P-40 engine problems, bad weather and general Chenault's incompetent staff as well as the Japanese, Boyington claimed to have shot down six Japanese fighters, which would have made him one of the first American aces of the war. From AVG records, which were loosely kept, the most kills that can be confirmed is 3.5. He maintained until his death in 1988 that he did, in fact, have six kills, and the Marine Corps officially credits him with those kills.
Medal of Honor 
Caesar Augustus (63 bc–ad 14), the first emperor of Rome, wanted to be known as a law-and-order ruler. Even though he built his empire on the back of slave labor, military conquest, and financial bribery, he restored a measure of legal due process and gave his citizens Iustitia, a goddess our justice system today refers to as Lady Justice. He also called for a census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem for the birth of a long-awaited ruler whose greatness would reach to the ends of the earth (Micah 5:2–4).
What neither Augustus nor the rest of the world could have anticipated is how a far greater King would live and die to show what real justice looks like. Centuries earlier, in the prophet Micah’s day, the people of God had once again lapsed into a culture of lies, violence, and “ill-gotten treasures” (6:10–12). God’s dearly loved nation had lost sight of Him. He longed for them to show their world what it meant to do right by each other and walk humbly with Him (v. 8).
It took a Servant King to personify the kind of justice that hurting, forgotten, and helpless people long for. It took the fulfillment of Micah’s prophecy in Jesus to see right relationships established between God and people, and person-to-person. This would come not in the outward enforcement of Caesar-like law-and-order, but in the freedom of the mercy, goodness, and spirit of our servant King Jesus.
