Lance Corporal Faunce returns to PHC

During the 2024 spring and fall semesters at PHC, an empty chair sat in the second row on the right side of chapel. Without fail, three days a week, junior Joel Thurston brought a piece of paper and placed it on the seat.   

As the weeks progressed from January to December, the words on the paper changed: “In loving memory of Recruit Faunce.” Then, “In loving memory of Private Faunce.” And later, “In loving memory of Lance Corporal Faunce.”   

Thurston no longer brings the piece of paper to chapel; Faunce sits there himself.   

Sophomore Nathaniel Faunce returned to PHC last semester after a year of Marine Corps Reserve training. Faunce underwent three training phases: boot camp on Parris Island in South Carolina, combat training, and the final phase of job school. Though Faunce encountered both mental and physical tests, his friends said that the experience did not change him much. He remained the smiling, cheerful Faunce that everyone knew.  

Senior Josiah Hemp, who has known Faunce since 2018, kept in contact with him through letter writing during his time in bootcamp. Hemp said that Faunce was “very optimistic, while also describing really hard stuff.” Faunce would highlight the joy of attending a worship service and ask for prayers that he would remain strong in his faith.   

“Even when Faunce was away, he made an effort to keep in touch with me and to even encourage me and give me advice, even as he was going through all the hardships,” said junior Alex Rubstein, Faunce’s RA. “He definitely poured out of himself. 
He does that all the time. It’s who he is.”  

The hardest part of reserve training was not the active training itself, but getting injured. During a pugil stick battle, a type of martial arts using heavily padded pole-like training weapons, Faunce was thrown to the ground and tore his shoulder. In addition to having surgery on his shoulder, Faunce had to remain in a medical platoon for five months.  

He had to watch 5,000 other recruits walk by the platoon to the three-day Crucible hike, the final step to graduating as a Marine. “It felt like God just threw this wrench into my plan,” Faunce said. He debated leaving, but after prayer, he decided to stay and finish out his training. Life in the medical platoon allowed him the opportunity to minister to and share the Gospel with the other recruits who felt hopeless after injury.  

Right after returning from the medical platoon, Faunce remained in the barracks to wait for a friend while the other recruits went to the Exchange (the camp store). While he was in the barracks, an instructor walked in and announced that he had a few openings for his job school. If Faunce had gotten out of the medical platoon a day later, he would not have finished job school until February and would not have returned to PHC until next semester.  

Faunce is glad to be back in the classroom, hiking with Thurston, and fellowshipping in the dining hall. “Being away made me realize how special this place is,” he said. “
I’ve just been telling everyone, ‘We are so blessed here to have everything that we do, and you should not take this place for granted.’” Deep conversations about the Lord weren’t common in reserve training. “It was hard to have communion with God when I was just always around so much debauchery.” 

But Faunce is grateful for his time in bootcamp, although he is still processing his experience. “I essentially just spent a year of my life in this, and I can’t see all the benefits,” he said. “I can’t really see how I’ve changed that much, but I know that I will in the future. I’ve learned so much about evil and people of different backgrounds and communities, and learned about myself.”  

Faunce exhorts his fellow students to get off campus and share the gospel with their lost neighbors.   

“Go out and go to new churches or go out into the community and just meet people,” he said. “Because what we’re here to do as Christians ultimately is to reach the world.” 

This article was originally published in PHC's student-run publication, The Herald.

Patrick Henry College exists to glorify God by challenging the status quo in higher education, lifting high both faith and reason within a rigorous academic environment; thereby preserving for posterity the ideals behind the "noble experiment in ordered liberty" that is the foundation of America.