When the Light Must Be Held: Standing Sentinel Against a Gathering Storm

A call to awaken in the hours before dawn—from a soldier who stood sentinel as danger approached in the dark.

In Australia, the Eastern Koel is known as the storm bird. You may be lying awake in a tent before dawn. If you know the call, you understand its meaning: Weather is coming. The wise do not curse the bird or ignore it. They rouse their mates.

In the 1930s, Winston Churchill was our storm bird: a sentinel who sensed the signs and sounded the warning. Yet many initially dismissed him as an alarmist or extremist.

In the 2020s, the global Jewish diaspora is our storm bird. These communities have felt the pressure change and are sounding the alarm. A perfect storm may be forming across continents: existential threats from without and civilizational self-doubt from within. Across languages and traditions, societies that once knew how to recognize danger now struggle to face it and respond.

It is 3 a.m. Many are in tents, headphones in, doomscrolling. Others sleep. This book is a gentle shake of the foot. Please look down. Our tent is in a riverbed. That bird call means rain. Floodwaters are approaching.
Good people, once awakened to danger, awaken others.

When the Light Must Be Held: Standing Sentinel Against a Gathering Storm is the third book in a nonfiction series by Colonel Michael Scott, CSC (Ret.). It offers the perspective of a non-Jewish, apolitical, secular Australian combat veteran—one rarely encountered in legacy or social media.

Too much has already happened on our watch. Our children should not inherit a danger we irresponsibly chose to ignore.