Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
June 29, 2008
Pg. 1
A dangerous mission, a devastating night --- and God's foot soldier marches on.
By Moni Basu, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Part 8 of an exclusive series
Chaplain Darren Turner's battalion has lost another soldier. Now he must see three platoons off on a mission in unfamiliar territory. Before the day is over, more bad news tests the chaplain's emotional endurance.
Chaplain Darren Turner hurtles toward the motor pool at Forward Operating Base Falcon. He is anxious to see his men off to battle.
Turner is ordinarily not one for prayers before a mission--he abhors the idea of a soldier nurturing a 911 relationship with God: Pray before you roll out the gates. Pray when a buddy gets hurt. Then stuff your Bible back into the trunk.
But Turner also understands the comfort that prayer can bring. And this mission to Baghdad's Sadr City is big.
It is March 28, and three 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment platoons in Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Abrams tanks have been called up to support U.S. forces already in the thick of battle.
An impoverished enclave of 2.5 million Shiites, Sadr City is unfamiliar and raw territory for Turner's soldiers. The battalion has not yet experienced urban guerrilla warfare--it is more accustomed to the farmlands and villages of Arab Jabour.
"Hey, what's up, fellas?"
Turner greets the visibly nervous soldiers.
"Ready to ride?"
They reply in a chorus of "hooahs."
"I just wanted to come and encourage you guys before you head out."
Two men who Turner baptized on Good Friday are here. The chaplain notices several others who regularly seek him out.
With those who share his Christian faith, Turner takes extra risks to know them well, to love them as brothers. It's an emotional roll of the dice, because at war, any day could be a soldier's last.
Like today.
Turner reads aloud Psalm 140.
"Keep me safe from violent people ... who plot my downfall. The proud have set a trap for me; they have laid their snares, and along the path they have set traps to catch me."
King David's words resonate, as though they were written specifically about this war, where roads are booby-trapped with improvised explosive devices.
The soldiers bow their heads before the chaplain.
Several fall to their knees.
The next night, when the "all clear" sounds at Falcon, Turner crawls out of a bunker and heads back to the battalion's command center. After a steady barrage of incoming rounds, after news of a soldier's death the day before, Turner is looking forward to chilling out with fellow officers.
Tonight's show is "Hitman," the 2007 movie based on the video game of the same name.
Celluloid violence is often popular with soldiers, even with the chaplain. Turner can laugh through the fake stuff.
The movie is already in the DVD player when another officer walks in, stone-faced.
"Gator just hit an IED," he says about one of the 1-30 platoons in Sadr City. "The Bradley's on fire."
The room falls silent.
Turner is thinking what everyone else is: On Easter Sunday, four men in a sister battalion burned to death in their Bradley. This can't be happening to our own guys.
He steps into the tactical operations room at one end of the command center and stares at grainy images of Sadr City beamed back from an unmanned aerial vehicle.
Heat shows up black in the camera's night-vision mode. The entire Bradley is shades of black, the troop compartment the darkest.
As a newly minted chaplain, Turner had pleaded for an assignment with a combat unit that would be at the tip of the spear. He had expected to see chilling scenes such as this, but even after 10 months at war, he is upended emotionally.
Nothing braces a man, not even a chaplain with unfailing faith, to watch comrades suffer.
Turner struggles to find the right words. The stunned officers try breaking the awkward silence with nervous chatter about sports.
But they cannot escape the frightening scenario in Sadr City.
"I can't believe he's not dead yet," says a second lieutenant about anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. "We're not supposed to be in this fight."
U.S. commanders in Iraq blame al-Sadr's radical Mahdi Army for rising violence in Shiite areas.
Turner sits down with the officers, his head in his hands.
"I'm sick," he says. "I want to go home and take all these guys with me. Sadr City--that place can burn for all I care right now. There are 2.5 million bad guys there."
Even a chaplain who counsels soldiers on managing anger cannot hold in his own fury, his urge for justice.
The officers wait. Details trickle in. Then, relief. The soldiers in the Bradley are alive. All nine escaped through the roof hatch.
They have been evacuated to hospitals in serious condition: burns, smoke inhalation, shrapnel, traumatic brain injuries. Doctors are unsure whether they will survive the night.
The sergeant major asks Turner if he wants to go to the Combat Support Hospital in the Green Zone.
That, too, is one of Turner's primary duties: to comfort the wounded.
The combat hospital, known as the CSH and pronounced "cash," is inside Ibn Sina, one of Baghdad's busiest and grimmest hospitals.
Turner thinks about all the time he has spent in the dreary hallways there. And of his journey in February to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where he visited recuperating soldiers.
Spc. David Battle, who lost three limbs in an explosion, was still fighting for his life when Turner saw him.
On leave at the time, Turner did not have to make that trip, but he felt compelled to go. He stood beside Battle's bed, reassured his wife that their lives were far from finished.
He was humbled by their sacrifice.
The wounded, he says, are the trophies of war--reminders of America's greatness and the price that is paid for it.
He felt called by God to help shepherd a flock scarred by war. He knows that though his soldiers will leave Iraq in July, Iraq will never leave his soldiers.
Chaplain Turner's war is destined to unfold even when he returns home to Georgia.
His thoughts are interrupted by the sound of the chief medical officer on the radio, inquiring about the condition of the injured soldiers. The sergeant major is still arranging a ride to the combat hospital in the Green Zone. Will Turner go visit the wounded?
It's been a pressure-cooker evening; God's foot soldier is weary.
"I don't want to go," Turner blurts out. "I hate that place."
He slinks back to his office, puts his feet up on the desk, next to his laptop, and stares at the dog and dinosaur his children gave him.
Small toys, huge symbols of sanity.
It's nearly midnight, the trying day almost over, when a young soldier rushes into the chaplain's office. Anger flashes in Spc. Jason Denson's eyes.
He once served in the same platoon as the soldiers in the burning Bradley. He's fighting an urge to mow down every last Iraqi.
"I don't know what to do, sir," he tells Turner, breaking down in tears, his arms reaching for the sky.
"Why is God doing this to me?"
Turner puts aside thoughts of his sleeping bag. He cannot turn Denson away without asking God to grant him peace.
He opens his Bible and asks the panicked soldier to take a seat across from his desk, in the red chair he scavenged, the one he calls the seat of contemplation.
Coming home
On Memorial Day, Chaplain Darren Turner's battalion held ceremonies at five different battlefield sites to remember their 15 soldiers who died at war. The battalion is expected to return home to Georgia this week and has already been alerted for another deployment in November 2009.
June 29, 2008
Pg. 1
A dangerous mission, a devastating night --- and God's foot soldier marches on.
By Moni Basu, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Part 8 of an exclusive series
Chaplain Darren Turner's battalion has lost another soldier. Now he must see three platoons off on a mission in unfamiliar territory. Before the day is over, more bad news tests the chaplain's emotional endurance.
Chaplain Darren Turner hurtles toward the motor pool at Forward Operating Base Falcon. He is anxious to see his men off to battle.
Turner is ordinarily not one for prayers before a mission--he abhors the idea of a soldier nurturing a 911 relationship with God: Pray before you roll out the gates. Pray when a buddy gets hurt. Then stuff your Bible back into the trunk.
But Turner also understands the comfort that prayer can bring. And this mission to Baghdad's Sadr City is big.
It is March 28, and three 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment platoons in Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Abrams tanks have been called up to support U.S. forces already in the thick of battle.
An impoverished enclave of 2.5 million Shiites, Sadr City is unfamiliar and raw territory for Turner's soldiers. The battalion has not yet experienced urban guerrilla warfare--it is more accustomed to the farmlands and villages of Arab Jabour.
"Hey, what's up, fellas?"
Turner greets the visibly nervous soldiers.
"Ready to ride?"
They reply in a chorus of "hooahs."
"I just wanted to come and encourage you guys before you head out."
Two men who Turner baptized on Good Friday are here. The chaplain notices several others who regularly seek him out.
With those who share his Christian faith, Turner takes extra risks to know them well, to love them as brothers. It's an emotional roll of the dice, because at war, any day could be a soldier's last.
Like today.
Turner reads aloud Psalm 140.
"Keep me safe from violent people ... who plot my downfall. The proud have set a trap for me; they have laid their snares, and along the path they have set traps to catch me."
King David's words resonate, as though they were written specifically about this war, where roads are booby-trapped with improvised explosive devices.
The soldiers bow their heads before the chaplain.
Several fall to their knees.
The next night, when the "all clear" sounds at Falcon, Turner crawls out of a bunker and heads back to the battalion's command center. After a steady barrage of incoming rounds, after news of a soldier's death the day before, Turner is looking forward to chilling out with fellow officers.
Tonight's show is "Hitman," the 2007 movie based on the video game of the same name.
Celluloid violence is often popular with soldiers, even with the chaplain. Turner can laugh through the fake stuff.
The movie is already in the DVD player when another officer walks in, stone-faced.
"Gator just hit an IED," he says about one of the 1-30 platoons in Sadr City. "The Bradley's on fire."
The room falls silent.
Turner is thinking what everyone else is: On Easter Sunday, four men in a sister battalion burned to death in their Bradley. This can't be happening to our own guys.
He steps into the tactical operations room at one end of the command center and stares at grainy images of Sadr City beamed back from an unmanned aerial vehicle.
Heat shows up black in the camera's night-vision mode. The entire Bradley is shades of black, the troop compartment the darkest.
As a newly minted chaplain, Turner had pleaded for an assignment with a combat unit that would be at the tip of the spear. He had expected to see chilling scenes such as this, but even after 10 months at war, he is upended emotionally.
Nothing braces a man, not even a chaplain with unfailing faith, to watch comrades suffer.
Turner struggles to find the right words. The stunned officers try breaking the awkward silence with nervous chatter about sports.
But they cannot escape the frightening scenario in Sadr City.
"I can't believe he's not dead yet," says a second lieutenant about anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. "We're not supposed to be in this fight."
U.S. commanders in Iraq blame al-Sadr's radical Mahdi Army for rising violence in Shiite areas.
Turner sits down with the officers, his head in his hands.
"I'm sick," he says. "I want to go home and take all these guys with me. Sadr City--that place can burn for all I care right now. There are 2.5 million bad guys there."
Even a chaplain who counsels soldiers on managing anger cannot hold in his own fury, his urge for justice.
The officers wait. Details trickle in. Then, relief. The soldiers in the Bradley are alive. All nine escaped through the roof hatch.
They have been evacuated to hospitals in serious condition: burns, smoke inhalation, shrapnel, traumatic brain injuries. Doctors are unsure whether they will survive the night.
The sergeant major asks Turner if he wants to go to the Combat Support Hospital in the Green Zone.
That, too, is one of Turner's primary duties: to comfort the wounded.
The combat hospital, known as the CSH and pronounced "cash," is inside Ibn Sina, one of Baghdad's busiest and grimmest hospitals.
Turner thinks about all the time he has spent in the dreary hallways there. And of his journey in February to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where he visited recuperating soldiers.
Spc. David Battle, who lost three limbs in an explosion, was still fighting for his life when Turner saw him.
On leave at the time, Turner did not have to make that trip, but he felt compelled to go. He stood beside Battle's bed, reassured his wife that their lives were far from finished.
He was humbled by their sacrifice.
The wounded, he says, are the trophies of war--reminders of America's greatness and the price that is paid for it.
He felt called by God to help shepherd a flock scarred by war. He knows that though his soldiers will leave Iraq in July, Iraq will never leave his soldiers.
Chaplain Turner's war is destined to unfold even when he returns home to Georgia.
His thoughts are interrupted by the sound of the chief medical officer on the radio, inquiring about the condition of the injured soldiers. The sergeant major is still arranging a ride to the combat hospital in the Green Zone. Will Turner go visit the wounded?
It's been a pressure-cooker evening; God's foot soldier is weary.
"I don't want to go," Turner blurts out. "I hate that place."
He slinks back to his office, puts his feet up on the desk, next to his laptop, and stares at the dog and dinosaur his children gave him.
Small toys, huge symbols of sanity.
It's nearly midnight, the trying day almost over, when a young soldier rushes into the chaplain's office. Anger flashes in Spc. Jason Denson's eyes.
He once served in the same platoon as the soldiers in the burning Bradley. He's fighting an urge to mow down every last Iraqi.
"I don't know what to do, sir," he tells Turner, breaking down in tears, his arms reaching for the sky.
"Why is God doing this to me?"
Turner puts aside thoughts of his sleeping bag. He cannot turn Denson away without asking God to grant him peace.
He opens his Bible and asks the panicked soldier to take a seat across from his desk, in the red chair he scavenged, the one he calls the seat of contemplation.
Coming home
On Memorial Day, Chaplain Darren Turner's battalion held ceremonies at five different battlefield sites to remember their 15 soldiers who died at war. The battalion is expected to return home to Georgia this week and has already been alerted for another deployment in November 2009.