That reminds me of another thing that happened to me. I was on patrol one night in Vietnam when we made contact with an NVA unit. The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital (not just the aid station but a regular hospital). I really don't know how I got there but I opened my eyes and there was a Catholic Chaplain administering the last rites to me! I was surprised to say the least. In fact, it scared the beejeebers out of me.
I didn't want to interrupt the good Father so I figured I'd let him finish and then maybe I could find out how long I had left. After he finished his thing he called me by another name. I said Padre, that not me. He apologized and moved to the next bed. I told him that if I had been as bad as he made me think I was, I might have just gone over the edge when I saw him there giving me the last rites.
Believe it or not that was not to be the only time I woke up to see a priest giving me the last rites. Now it's called the anointing of the sick but I swear it could wake me up from a coma.

Sweet, D Top

I remember a chaplain at Fort Sam who was airborne qualified and had recently been reassigned from Fort Bragg if I recall correctly. He came around to our company and introduced himself and told us of his open door policy should any of us feel we needed to talk to someone outside the normal chain of command. He was a fit and tough looking 50 something soldier and it was hard to believe he was a chaplain when compared to the few other examples we had about. I do recall going to see him once as I was not a religious person by any stretch but felt it was safer than going to one of the 91G's over at the TMC. Better to be thought religious than nuts I figured. Anyways after hearing me out with barely a nod or sound I finished getting it all off my chest. He was silent a minute and then proceeded to give me the most "fatherly" arse chewing but I left that room feeling pretty damn motivated. It was exactly what I needed to hear at the time and I still fall back on it when I get down in the jaw today.

The one Padre I really remember was had been a Grunt with 1/5 in Vietnam. Got out went to the seminary and came back as a Chaplin.

He'd always be out the field with us. Not in the Bn CP, he'd make the rounds. Always with the enlisted and he and his Chaplins Asst. humped their own rucks.

The incident that sticks in my mind was a raid ex on San Clemente Island cold, rainy and generally nasty as San Clemente often is. The ceiling was so so low that the helo's could only put us in way north and our objectives were at the south end. That meant a pretty good forced march to clear the objectives on time.

I saw the Padre hump Base Plates and Tubes for the Mortar Monkies and Guns for the 31's and even take his turn helping out the Dragon gunners .

But the thing that sticks with me the most was just after we were inserted. The Skipper of my company was going over the maps and informing us where we were and how far we had to go. when the Chaplin pipes up.

" You know why the Rotor Heads put us in here right?"
Captain shrugged.
"Cause any farther North and they'd land in the ocean. And 46'S don't float worth a s ."
I laugh about that to this day.

My favorite chaplain was the last one I served with in my old artillery battalion. He was a very eager person and like others have mentioned of chaplains in this thread, he preferred to be with the troops rather than at HQ. A Catholic priest, he nonetheless took great strides to meet everyone's spiritual needs. I remember hearing him speak in Hebrew to one troop and talk about Taoism to another.

Anyway, his love of being with the men lead him to start to enjoy many of the things they did. This came to an apex when he discovered their raiding parties. Each night at ARTEP the boys would get together some adventurous souls and go off to checkout neighboring units' security measures.. Sleeping sentries had a red magic marker line drawn across their throats, unsecured weapons "disappeared" (though brought back later), maps and pertinent papers would "disappear" as well. They even "kidnapped" a sentry once just to see how long it would take before anybody knew he was missing (4 hours). Who was the most enthusiastic member of these raiding parties? None other than our chaplain. Small wonder he was affectionately known as "Father Rambo".

Great stories guys!