Providing a place of sanctuary and solace for the faithful on the frontline

[Pastor Dale Morgan]

*
Perilous Times

Providing a place of sanctuary and solace for the faithful on the frontline*

Services are just a small part of the help provided by chaplains in a
war zone

Peter Beaumont in Camp Warhorse, Baquba
Wednesday February 21, 2007
The Guardian

It is said there are no atheists in foxholes. In conflict, soldiers face
deep personal questions: about anger and isolation; about separation
from family and home; about faith and the meaning of life and death.

Charlie Fenton has learned much about those questions in his time as
chief military chaplain at a US army base on the outskirts of the city
of Baquba in Iraq. "One of my congregation asked me whether God created
evil,' he says. "It was a bad time when we were pulling a lot of Iraqi
bodies out of the canals."

Fenton, a former military lawyer and former chaplain at Arlington
Military Cemetery who was educated at Cambridge, came to Iraq with firm
ideas of how to preach to a Cavalry unit from the 1st Division that had
fought in some of the toughest areas of Iraq since 2003. Instead he has
found that Iraq itself and his military congregation have insisted on
imposing their own, sometimes painful, agenda.

"Nothing is normal here," he says. "You try to get used to church in a
war zone where people bring weapons into God's sanctuary. Once we had to
leave to help with a mass casualty coming into our main aid station.
Today we have no musicians because they are all out on a mission."

The congregation stows its weapons beneath the pews against a soundtrack
supplied by helicopters, unmanned drones and low-flying jets.

While talking to Fenton, the blast from an outgoing round - fired in
response to an attack half an hour earlier on the base's main gate -
rattles his temporary home, a metal container with two windows and a door.

Like the office in his small chapel, which is protected by tall blast
walls painted with murals, Fenton's room is decorated with surfing
equipment. It is, he explains, designed to create an alternative world
to the dusty and dangerous one just outside his door.

Integral

Fenton is a Presbyterian on a base where the team of chaplains ministers
to Pentecostalists and Roman Catholics, Baptists and Jews, Orthodox and
Muslim. Some live on the base, while others fly in once a week or once a
fortnight to perform their ministry. One of the team is a Messianic Jew
from Puerto Rico.

With soldiers coming from a nation where regular religious observance is
much more common than in Europe, the role of the chaplain is integral to
the US military.

Soldiers receive DVDs of church services from home, attend prayer
meetings and bible class. So popular is the gospel service on Fenton's
base that it takes place in its large theatre.

But it is not the formal act of worship that preoccupies the chaplains,
but the personal role they fulfil.

Most evenings Fenton is at home or in his office for soldiers seeking
solace or advice until late into the night.

"When I first got here, I was getting very little sleep. People used to
wake me at all hours of the night," he says. "So I extended my 'office
hours' until 2am. It is what I call the 'Nicodemus effect' [after the
figure in the Bible who came to visit Jesus after dark]. There are
people who want to see me but don't want their colleagues to know about it."

It is not only issues of faith that the chaplains minister to. Fenton
watches for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, referring
soldiers for counselling.

There are other issues too. "We get the stereotypical war problems. The
break-up of relationships. Dear John letters. Wives cheating. Some of
these guys marry very young. And for some of the guys in this unit, they
have been here on two or three tours. For almost all of their marriages
they have been gone." He pauses. "Such brokenness in our soldiers' lives.

"What I'm also seeing is an increase in the soldiers' anger and
frustration - over the time they have been here, over the deaths of
their friends, over rules of engagement."

No one, including Fenton by his own admission, is immune from the
effects of the conflict. "There was a period when I had been hit very
hard by death. I had been doing hero flights [the repatriation of the
remains of soldiers killed in action] and I was feeling weak. But I keep
a journal and I used what I wrote in my journal for my sermon that
weekend - on what strength is."

Despite the damage he has seen, Fenton still believes in the "optimism"
of the 19-year-olds who make up a large part of his congregation -
despite being worried for them as a generation. "I still think it is one
of the best qualities of Americans - and I know we get criticised for it
- that we are optimistic that we can make a change. I still believe the
average soldier here would rather be playing with the kids in the
schools, and wants to see this place turned around, than fighting,
despite some of the darkness of their humour. And whether you believe
that this is a just war, we are here."

Confidence

"How do our soldiers react when one of their friends gets killed? Will
they go out and commit a war crime? I frame that as how we react when
confronted by evil. I have a lot of confidence. People might talk about
doing stuff but on the whole I believe they are good, although that is
not saying that some as individuals might not stray.

"And will individuals pay the price? Yes they will."

What worries him most is the cumulative effect of so much death and fear
in the long run - not only on the soldiers but on their families.

"When I was at Arlington I buried a lot of Vietnam veterans who had died
too early. They had not looked after themselves and had smoked and drunk
too much, sometimes taken drugs.

"My prayer, as a religious guy, is that these young men here do not get
colder. But I think a lot of the guys are becoming colder. My question
is - does it stay like that, or will it change?"