Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
June 23, 2008
Pg. 1
The chaplain detects the invisible burdens of war as he counsels a young sniper who talks of high-speed adventure --- and of killing.
By Moni Basu, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Part 2 of an exclusive series
BAGHDAD--One evening, a young sniper steps into the chaplain's office.
"Hey, whassup, sir?"
Spc. Brandon Smith is 20. He isn't religious and has little interest in Darren Turner as a spiritual leader. The two began to talk when Smith learned the chaplain's hometown--Canton--was just a few miles north of his own on I-75. Tonight the soldier from McDonough wants Turner's advice on life after deployment.
Soon enough, though, the talk will turn to killing.
"I just wanna do high-speed stuff," the sniper tells Turner. He'd like to join the Special Forces.
Smith was in a mortar platoon in the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment. In Iraq, he was assigned to a sniper section of 10 soldiers. He was lucky, he says. He grew up hunting in the Georgia woods and likes to sit and wait for his prey. Not every soldier has that kind of patience.
His team has four "kills" so far, he tells Turner.
His personal tally: one.
Soldiers often stop by the chaplain's office at Forward Operating Base Falcon in southeast Baghdad. Turner returned here from leave in February and promptly restocked his shelves with movies, books, beef jerky, trail mix and toothpaste, stuff delivered almost every week in care packages from America.
The convenience-store look is a camouflage to lure the war-weary.
If a conversation opens up, Turner will invite the soldier to sit in a cherry-colored upholstered chair he scavenged. He calls it the seat of contemplation. It can do for a soldier what a Band-Aid does for an open wound.
The young sniper, however, hasn't yet recognized war's burden.
He plunges into a description of the day he made his first kill.
His team was on a rooftop in Arab Jabour, surveilling the area with high-powered opticals known as the Long Range Advanced Scout Surveillance System. It was early in the morning and difficult to focus through dense fog.
Smith spotted a man trying to hide from choppers overhead. He saw him pick up an object, put it over his shoulder and attempt to cover it with a blanket. Smith thought it might be a shaped-charge explosive, the kind that can pierce even the sturdiest armored vehicles.
He opened fire with his .50-caliber rifle--two rounds through the trees, two more on either side.
"I wasn't nervous or anything. I didn't feel nothing," he says.
"What did you think you would feel?" Turner asks.
"I guess I thought I would be upset," Smith replies, his baby face expressionless.
Like chaplains, snipers are a special breed, though they play opposite roles: Snipers live to kill. Chaplains live to help others go on living.
Only 2 percent of men are suited to the job of killing, Turner learned from the book "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society." He thinks Smith might be one of them but worries about the impact on someone still so impressionable.
"What was going through your head when you pulled the trigger?" Turner asks.
"All I heard was the word: engage. Then I was like, OK, back to work. . . . I look at it this way: I saved other people's lives by killing that guy."
Turner never outwardly judges. He believes murder is a sin--but doesn't believe all killing is murder.
He struggled with this issue while in seminary and wrote a research paper about the Bible's views on taking human life. He says the New Testament outlines a different mandate for people who "bear the sword" for a police force or the military. They are not bound to uphold the individual commandment in the Law of Moses, "Thou shalt not kill."
Scripture also tells him that war is sometimes necessary--and inevitable in a fallen world of sinners. John Lennon got it all wrong in his song "Imagine," the chaplain says. Global peace is a pipe dream.
The sniper talks nonstop.
He helped evacuate a local militiaman injured in a bomb blast, he tells Turner. The man's legs were dangling. His hip, broken. His flesh, burned. Smith reached for his arm to lift him up--but there was no arm.
"There's nothing like the smell of burning flesh," Turner says, knowing how its putridity can haunt a man.
"It's horrible," Smith says, spitting his Copenhagen Long Cut into an empty water bottle. "I'm 20 years old, pulled dead bodies out of a car. That's messed up."
The conversation turns back to killing. One death bothered the sniper.
He heard the howls of a wife and two daughters standing by the body of a man Smith's team had killed. Smith thought about how his own mother and two brothers would react to his death. He had a bad feeling in his gut.
"Most of the world doesn't live like we do," Turner says. "It changes you. So what are you going to do different when you go home?"
"I'm going to enjoy my life. I think I deserve to have a little bit of fun."
"You can get stupid when you get home," Turner says. "Do you think it's worth it?"
"Yeah, I know someone is going to die the first week we are home, or they are going to kill someone. I know a lotta people are going to go home and drink and do drugs and get crazy. I'm not going to lie. I'm gonna get completely wasted."
Turner, 35, sees a lot of himself in Smith. He was young and crazy once. At Cherokee County High School, he downed beer and smoked dope. He did more of the same at Reinhardt College, where he was arrested for possession of marijuana, and later at the University of Georgia, where he was arrested for public urination behind the Georgia Theatre. He went to court, paid his $180 fine and faced humiliation.
Fast-living college days eventually left Turner with a thirst he couldn't quench with a bottle or a pill or a line. One spring break, instead of piling into a car packed with party favors, Turner went home to Canton and picked up a New Testament.
For all his recklessness, though, Turner never struggled with the kinds of issues plaguing his soldiers. His alcohol and drug binges weren't escape from war.
It's only March, but the sniper has already planned his first few days back in Georgia in July. "I'm gonna buy a bike," he announces.
"Why don't you wait three months?" Turner says. "What's the No. 1 reason you want a bike? Because you want to go fast? Get a bicycle first. Get a moped."
Smith laughs.
When he was in McDonough on leave, he drove a motorcycle on 1-75, whizzing by his mom's car at 160 mph. He liked the high-speed rush. He needed it after Arab Jabour, he says.
"You're going to die," Turner says. "You think you can handle 160 two or three times? You can't. Don't put your mom through that."
Turner tries to get his guys to see their actions through the people they cherish. For young, carefree soldiers, there is not much else to ground them.
Smith ponders Turner's words. He sits so quietly for a few moments that the only sound is combat boots grinding on gravel outside.
The chaplain understands Smith's compulsions. At his age, Turner, too, thought older folks just wanted to cut in on his fun. That was before he could see his own need for adventure through a lens of faith.
Early in his spiritual journey, he read "Wild at Heart" by Christian writer John Eldredge, who suggests American men have abandoned the stuff of heroic dreams, aided by a Christianity that tells them to be a "nice guy." God, says Eldredge, designed men to be daring, even dangerous.
Turner recognized himself in Eldredge's words. He always knew he was a little rough around the edges. His internal faith and external ruggedness, it seemed, could meld perfectly in the Army's chaplain corps.
But the wildness in the sniper's heart, Turner knows, could turn deadly. He can only hope that his words will temper Smith.
"Are you gonna go 160?" Turner asks. "You know who you are lying to if you are lying."
"I know," Smith says.
He picks up his weapon, puts on his sweat-ringed patrol cap and gets up to leave. In a few hours, he will be back at his outpost in Arab Jabour, peering through a scope, waiting for his prey.
Turner knows some soldiers survive Iraq only to become casualties at home.
He tells Smith: "Make sure you're not a statistic."
June 23, 2008
Pg. 1
The chaplain detects the invisible burdens of war as he counsels a young sniper who talks of high-speed adventure --- and of killing.
By Moni Basu, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Part 2 of an exclusive series
BAGHDAD--One evening, a young sniper steps into the chaplain's office.
"Hey, whassup, sir?"
Spc. Brandon Smith is 20. He isn't religious and has little interest in Darren Turner as a spiritual leader. The two began to talk when Smith learned the chaplain's hometown--Canton--was just a few miles north of his own on I-75. Tonight the soldier from McDonough wants Turner's advice on life after deployment.
Soon enough, though, the talk will turn to killing.
"I just wanna do high-speed stuff," the sniper tells Turner. He'd like to join the Special Forces.
Smith was in a mortar platoon in the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment. In Iraq, he was assigned to a sniper section of 10 soldiers. He was lucky, he says. He grew up hunting in the Georgia woods and likes to sit and wait for his prey. Not every soldier has that kind of patience.
His team has four "kills" so far, he tells Turner.
His personal tally: one.
Soldiers often stop by the chaplain's office at Forward Operating Base Falcon in southeast Baghdad. Turner returned here from leave in February and promptly restocked his shelves with movies, books, beef jerky, trail mix and toothpaste, stuff delivered almost every week in care packages from America.
The convenience-store look is a camouflage to lure the war-weary.
If a conversation opens up, Turner will invite the soldier to sit in a cherry-colored upholstered chair he scavenged. He calls it the seat of contemplation. It can do for a soldier what a Band-Aid does for an open wound.
The young sniper, however, hasn't yet recognized war's burden.
He plunges into a description of the day he made his first kill.
His team was on a rooftop in Arab Jabour, surveilling the area with high-powered opticals known as the Long Range Advanced Scout Surveillance System. It was early in the morning and difficult to focus through dense fog.
Smith spotted a man trying to hide from choppers overhead. He saw him pick up an object, put it over his shoulder and attempt to cover it with a blanket. Smith thought it might be a shaped-charge explosive, the kind that can pierce even the sturdiest armored vehicles.
He opened fire with his .50-caliber rifle--two rounds through the trees, two more on either side.
"I wasn't nervous or anything. I didn't feel nothing," he says.
"What did you think you would feel?" Turner asks.
"I guess I thought I would be upset," Smith replies, his baby face expressionless.
Like chaplains, snipers are a special breed, though they play opposite roles: Snipers live to kill. Chaplains live to help others go on living.
Only 2 percent of men are suited to the job of killing, Turner learned from the book "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society." He thinks Smith might be one of them but worries about the impact on someone still so impressionable.
"What was going through your head when you pulled the trigger?" Turner asks.
"All I heard was the word: engage. Then I was like, OK, back to work. . . . I look at it this way: I saved other people's lives by killing that guy."
Turner never outwardly judges. He believes murder is a sin--but doesn't believe all killing is murder.
He struggled with this issue while in seminary and wrote a research paper about the Bible's views on taking human life. He says the New Testament outlines a different mandate for people who "bear the sword" for a police force or the military. They are not bound to uphold the individual commandment in the Law of Moses, "Thou shalt not kill."
Scripture also tells him that war is sometimes necessary--and inevitable in a fallen world of sinners. John Lennon got it all wrong in his song "Imagine," the chaplain says. Global peace is a pipe dream.
The sniper talks nonstop.
He helped evacuate a local militiaman injured in a bomb blast, he tells Turner. The man's legs were dangling. His hip, broken. His flesh, burned. Smith reached for his arm to lift him up--but there was no arm.
"There's nothing like the smell of burning flesh," Turner says, knowing how its putridity can haunt a man.
"It's horrible," Smith says, spitting his Copenhagen Long Cut into an empty water bottle. "I'm 20 years old, pulled dead bodies out of a car. That's messed up."
The conversation turns back to killing. One death bothered the sniper.
He heard the howls of a wife and two daughters standing by the body of a man Smith's team had killed. Smith thought about how his own mother and two brothers would react to his death. He had a bad feeling in his gut.
"Most of the world doesn't live like we do," Turner says. "It changes you. So what are you going to do different when you go home?"
"I'm going to enjoy my life. I think I deserve to have a little bit of fun."
"You can get stupid when you get home," Turner says. "Do you think it's worth it?"
"Yeah, I know someone is going to die the first week we are home, or they are going to kill someone. I know a lotta people are going to go home and drink and do drugs and get crazy. I'm not going to lie. I'm gonna get completely wasted."
Turner, 35, sees a lot of himself in Smith. He was young and crazy once. At Cherokee County High School, he downed beer and smoked dope. He did more of the same at Reinhardt College, where he was arrested for possession of marijuana, and later at the University of Georgia, where he was arrested for public urination behind the Georgia Theatre. He went to court, paid his $180 fine and faced humiliation.
Fast-living college days eventually left Turner with a thirst he couldn't quench with a bottle or a pill or a line. One spring break, instead of piling into a car packed with party favors, Turner went home to Canton and picked up a New Testament.
For all his recklessness, though, Turner never struggled with the kinds of issues plaguing his soldiers. His alcohol and drug binges weren't escape from war.
It's only March, but the sniper has already planned his first few days back in Georgia in July. "I'm gonna buy a bike," he announces.
"Why don't you wait three months?" Turner says. "What's the No. 1 reason you want a bike? Because you want to go fast? Get a bicycle first. Get a moped."
Smith laughs.
When he was in McDonough on leave, he drove a motorcycle on 1-75, whizzing by his mom's car at 160 mph. He liked the high-speed rush. He needed it after Arab Jabour, he says.
"You're going to die," Turner says. "You think you can handle 160 two or three times? You can't. Don't put your mom through that."
Turner tries to get his guys to see their actions through the people they cherish. For young, carefree soldiers, there is not much else to ground them.
Smith ponders Turner's words. He sits so quietly for a few moments that the only sound is combat boots grinding on gravel outside.
The chaplain understands Smith's compulsions. At his age, Turner, too, thought older folks just wanted to cut in on his fun. That was before he could see his own need for adventure through a lens of faith.
Early in his spiritual journey, he read "Wild at Heart" by Christian writer John Eldredge, who suggests American men have abandoned the stuff of heroic dreams, aided by a Christianity that tells them to be a "nice guy." God, says Eldredge, designed men to be daring, even dangerous.
Turner recognized himself in Eldredge's words. He always knew he was a little rough around the edges. His internal faith and external ruggedness, it seemed, could meld perfectly in the Army's chaplain corps.
But the wildness in the sniper's heart, Turner knows, could turn deadly. He can only hope that his words will temper Smith.
"Are you gonna go 160?" Turner asks. "You know who you are lying to if you are lying."
"I know," Smith says.
He picks up his weapon, puts on his sweat-ringed patrol cap and gets up to leave. In a few hours, he will be back at his outpost in Arab Jabour, peering through a scope, waiting for his prey.
Turner knows some soldiers survive Iraq only to become casualties at home.
He tells Smith: "Make sure you're not a statistic."