Just joined the forum and like it alot. Anyone got any good stories, warries, or something to say about Military Chaplains / Padres? Have a personal interest in their role and usefulness

welcome to the forum Padre

Thanks LIPS. You're not Lips Hoolihan from M*A*S*H ?

Careful that one Padre, this bloke is called LIPS but if you watch closely you'll see even when he talks his bloody lips never move. Tis freaky I tell ya, it just aint natural!

Welcome to the forums.

I don't remember any good stories about Military Chaplains / Padres right now, but I can certainly comment on their (your ) usefullness.

I don't know how you work in Australia, but here in Norway a military chaplain is normally doing much more than just "preaching the word of God".
Soldiers (and officers as well) normally don't like to talk much about their personal problems with their superiors and colleagues, so the Chaplain is often used in cases like that, regardless if the soldier/officer is religious or not.
Chaplains often gets a lot more thrust than us "normal" officers, so I've often sent soldiers that I've felt that didn't want to tell me the whole story to the Chaplain, and in most of the cases we've been able to solve the situation (to the best for all of us) together.

I'm not a very religious person myself, but I would certainly say that having a (good) military Chaplain around is very important for a unit.

Originally Posted by Redleg

Welcome to the forums.

I don't remember any good stories about Military Chaplains / Padres right now, but I can certainly comment on their (your ) usefullness.

I don't know how you work in Australia, but here in Norway a military chaplain is normally doing much more than just "preaching the word of God".
Soldiers (and officers as well) normally don't like to talk much about their personal problems with their superiors and colleagues, so the Chaplain is often used in cases like that, regardless if the soldier/officer is religious or not.
Chaplains often gets a lot more thrust than us "normal" officers, so I've often sent soldiers that I've felt that didn't want to tell me the whole story to the Chaplain, and in most of the cases we've been able to solve the situation (to the best for all of us) together.

I'm not a very religious person myself, but I would certainly say that having a (good) military Chaplain around is very important for a unit.

Ditto.

In the CAP/USAFAUX each squadron has it's own Chaplain. He not only preaches the Word of God, he helps resolves personal problems, home problems, work related problems and is an all around buffer between cadets and senior members.

Strangely I and my cadet command where discussing last week how much help our Chaplian was and how much he does. I really like his Moral Leadership Classes, they usually turn political but it is very interesting to hear everyone's opinion and veiws on religious and political subjects.

I also found it strange that a number of cadets wanted to be the Chaplian's Assistant or was interested in becoming a Chaplian's Assistant at this years Encampment. We did have a superb Chaplian at the encampment, he was awesome. For the first three days you wheren't allowed to talk during chow For the last four only during dinner). Unknown to all of us, if the Chaplian sat at your table and started to socialize everyone at the table could talk. The subject was mostly politics, religion, current conflict's, and other things, I forget what it is called, when the Chaplian sits at your table and your able to socialize.

Welcome Padre. I could probably recall a few stories about the Chaplains that I have had the good fortune to have met. Many of the stories are not of the funny variety but there are a couple that still make me smile.
One is about a young Chaplain that was assigned to my unit in Vietnam. He happened to come from a home town near mine so we had some things in common and we hit it off right away. Usually, we didn't often see Chaplains around much out in the remote firebases. This Chaplain was different though, he'd be out there more often than any I had seen any before him. I think that because we didn't see Chaplains very often, we considered them just another rear eschelon type and were kind of suspicious when they did show.
I was assigned to the heavy mortars at the time and we would regularly come under enemy fire and our outer perimeter was being compromised almost nightly. As a result, everyone was practising noise and light discipline. In the mortar platoon we would practice our "silent fire missions" where none of the commands were verbal. We would practise this during the day so that we'd be proficient at night.
Anyway, this new Chaplain would come around and seek me out to talk to. He'd ask about everyone in the platoon and I would direct him to anyone who needed to talk to him.
One day while we were doing one of those silent fire missions, he showed up. He sought me out and started to talk to me. He had his back to the guns when the signal was given for the mission to start. I signaled him to be silent and tried to signal him that the mission was about to commence. He wasn't used to the signals I guess and when the four guns went off he jumped so high that he lost his balance, slammed into me and I tried to catch him but he ended up landing in some paint that we had around and was virtually covered with it. After finding that he was physically OK, we laughed so hard. In fact the whole platoon laughed. From that day on he was "Padre Paint" and he became very well liked. The guys looked forward to his services and would ask for him when he couldn't come to our AO.
Unfortunately Padre Paint was killed when his chopper was downed while he was on his way to another fire base. After I came home, I looked up his family and told them how well liked he was. We all had a laugh at how he got his nickname.

Welcome Padre. I don't know if anyone remembers the T.S. card but every time someone in the Battery had a gripe, the ranking man would tell him to go get his TS card punched by the Chaplain. Most new troopers would usually question this thinking that he didn't get all his paperwork when he left basic training. The older troops would carry this to great lengths saying"yeah, you should have a card with squares around the edge with the appropriate problem in each square and you take it to the Chaplain and he'll punch it for you to show you completed your gripe session." It didn't take them long to realize the hoax was a "Tough S***" card.

Good posts everyone. When I was training they showed us a video of padres who served in Vietnam. One retired padre told how one day some of his brigade came back to base from a few days leave from a near-by provincial town. The soldiers headed straight to padre and said "Padre, you would have been proud of us, we did a very good and Christian thing." What was that? asked the Padre. "You would have been so pround of us they repeated, "We tore down a damn brothel!" The Padre raised a suspicious eyebrow as he knew these soldiers well and was surprised. "You did that did you?" said the Padre. "Yes Sir" they said, "Nobody should be allowed to charge prices like they did and bloody get away with it!"

The only War Story my pop every told me, was when he was posted up on Thursday Island in WWII, They had been put on full alert, this was about a week before Coral Sea, so they were really worried.

Well one night pop got a bit on shuteye, and the next morning, he woke up and there was a chaplin standing over him. Pop had no idea how he got there, the enitre camp was in was locked down, and this chaplin had snuk in, and was staning over this Bren Gunner for about an hour. The rest of his platoon thought it was pretty funny.
Pop then said to me, "those Sky-Pilots, don't know how they got there, but they were always there when you needed them"