Size Matters

Today is an unusual day.  I try to be a person who unabashedly lets others into my world, allowing them to know the real me.  However, as most people of my gender, the level to which I reveal myself is usually somewhat guarded.  But, today is an unusual day.  Today I am going to lift my robe and reveal something about myself that may change the way people think of me but I can’t avoid it.  It must be done!  But first a little background.

People need people.  We are relational beings.  One of the main ways that need pans out among humanity is through the institution of marriage.  People get married all the time for a variety of reasons, all of which boil down to a desire for relationship.  I am no exception.  I need people.  And once upon a time, I met a person.  She was 12 years old at the time and over the course of the next several years we became friends.  Nearly a decade after meeting, she had morphed from a lanky, pimply, straight haired, knocked kneed little girl, to a downright hottie.  So, in my need for “relationship”, I up and married her.

The Global war on Terror has presented many challenges to our world, our nation and the men and women who currently find themselves away from friends, family, and home.  One of the larger challenges faced by today’s American soldier is the fact that many, like myself, are married.  As such, much work must be done to maintain the quality of those marriages in the face of extended separations over many important days.  Holidays, birthdays, graduations, and promotions are days regularly missed by our uniformed service members.   And in the realm of marriage, wedding anniversaries in recent days are being spent continents apart from one another.  Online chat has of necessity replaced pillow talk among soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines deployed in support of the war.  But these great men and women are resourceful, to say the least.  And the advent of the Internet has helped bridge the distance between separated husbands and wives on this, one of the most important days of the year.

Today marks the 17th anniversary of my marriage to my wonderful wife.  She is a simple woman who doesn’t require much and yet makes the most of everything she has.  She enjoys the decidedly feminine things in life and at the same time mows a mean lawn.  My brothers call her “a pioneer woman” because of her ability to take covered wagon surroundings and turn them into a livable and enjoyable environment for her family.  And we, like many others have spent our fair share of anniversaries apart from one another.  But I have discovered a way to ease the pain of separation while at the same time, causing me much emotional grief and making this such an unusual day.  So it is that with that background information in mind, I lift the veil and expose myself.

This year, in my efforts to do something nice for my wife, I went to the source of gifts for nearly all deployed service members…the internet.  Man, you can get anything and have it sent right to your house (in a beautifully gift wrapped package) as if you had gone to the local mall.  Well, my bride loves comfortable, workable pajamas.  She loves flannel and cotton and silk.  She loves long sleeves and long pants with pretty drawstrings.  You know, the kind of things that give guys hives.  But she likes em…a lot.  So this year, I struck gold.  I went to a well from which the waters of wedded bliss can be drawn with impunity.   I went to www.pajamagram.com.  This was the move of all moves.  They had exactly what I thought she would like.  Flannel and flowers, drawstrings and daisies.  I have ordered from them before and will again.  If you like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, I’d encourage you to visit this wonderful company.  However, DO NOT try to surprise her.  This is the exposure I alluded to earlier as this is precisely what I tried to do.  I figured, “Hey, I’m millions of miles away.  I’ll find something I think she’ll like, take a guess at her size, and place my order.”  To the casual observer this may seem like a good plan.  However, if said casual observer is a guy, he is in trouble.  You see guys, women don’t wear small medium or large.  They maintain their power in the universe by wearing sizes designed to confound the average human male.  Sizes like 22.8GYT or Purple19S or XPR5Dog.  Didn’t the Packers use those last year?  So, I picked out a lovely pair of overly comfortable pajamas with a lovely bamboo pattern and clicked on the pull down tab to select her size.  Given that I didn’t have my Packers playbook with me, I had to guess.  As the law of averages dictated I guessed wrong.  I have no idea what the size was called but I knew I was excited for her to receive my very thoughtful gesture of love on this our 17th Anniversary.  When she received her beautifully gift wrapped package I called her from across the cosmos and begged her to open it even though it was several days before our day of glory.  I could hear the box opening and the paper tearing and the excitement in the air.  Then I heard the laughter.  She thanked me as best she could for her lovely new pajamas while chuckling under her breath.   Then the horror.  Her lovely new pajamas were of a particular size so that our whole family could wear simultaneously.  

So today is an unusual day because I have the honor of celebrating my 17th wedding anniversary and because my wife is the proud owner of a brand new, bamboo patterned, silk tent.

The Fight

I think few would argue with me when I say that the job of a chaplain is not necessarily a physical job. Oh, sure, we have our occasional displays of superhumanity, such as when my heart continues beating after running a few miles trying to keep up with the much younger and obviously better-fit soldiers that surround me. But overall, I think being a chaplain is not unlike being an armchair when it comes to actual motion in the performance of the job. But that’s not to say it is an easy job. The difficulty of being a military chaplain during war comes not from the exertion of muscle and sinew, but from an altogether different kind of exercise—one that is unique to the chaplain, I believe, and one that I have not seen explicitly addressed before.

In order to gain a clear understanding of the world of a chaplain, you must understand that the chaplain is more than just a pastor in a pickle suit. The chaplain differs from the civilian clergyman in that he wears two primary hats: that of the pastor and spiritual guide and that of the staff officer and advisor to the commander. These two functions work in tandem with each other, the one making the other possible in a military setting. As a staff officer, the chaplain is part of the mission-planning process. He speaks with and advises the commander on the moral, ethical, and religious aspects of a given mission. As a spiritual leader, the chaplain reaches out to those men and women who will actually be conducting the planned missions to offer them a spiritual and/or moral foundation upon which to build their actions.

One of the things I do, and enjoy very much, is to muster with the soldiers as they gather in preparation for an evening of fighting, patrolling, flying, etc. In a word, I see them off. However, this is not the “seeing off” of the movies. This is not the mother, with her hair in a bun and her ankle-length, dust-covered skirt, standing on the wraparound porch waving her hanky as her boys head off to war. I’m not there as an observer. I’m not there as a bystander. I’m there as a participant. But instead of a weapon and body armor, I carry a small bottle of oil. As my soldiers prepare for their mission, without interfering with their activities, I walk around and pray for them and with them. It is something spectacular to see an American soldier, armed to the gills with pistols and rifles and all manner of explosive accoutrements, covered head to toe with Kevlar, and watch him bow to pray as I dab oil on his forehead and pray the protection and blessing of God on his life and his mission. Then to hear that same battle-hardened warrior, in a voice shaky from anticipation, adrenaline, and appreciation, say, “Amen” and “Thank you, chaplain.” I then move from vehicle to vehicle, aircraft to aircraft, and weapon system to weapon system, and like a camo-clad prophet of old, pray for the safe return of my soldiers and the success of their mission. The sounds of clinking armors and snorting horses can almost be heard as the entire entourage loads up and moves out to the objective—by air, by land, by foot. If you’ve never seen that kind of bravado or courage, you’re missing something. I see it before every mission.

Then comes the difficult part of being a chaplain in war. As the sounds of marching armies fade into the distance, the night closes in like a body bag, and I’m left with the struggle that few others will ever experience. It is a fight with me and my theology. It is an individual free-for-all of the heart and soul. Alone in the dark, I hope and pray that my part was sufficient. I pray my life was what it needed to be for my prayers to be heard so that my boys would come home safely. Will someone die tonight because I didn’t pray hard enough, or long enough, or sincerely enough? Did I use the right words or make the right motions? What in my life might cost someone theirs? This is the battle for the chaplain’s heart. It is an almost nightly occurrence. And I believe it could crush Atlas himself.

It is here, in the middle of questions and questioning, under the weight of the burden of lives not my own, that out of the darkness comes a single, simple idea straight from the Throne of Grace: I did my part, now relax and let God do His. I’m the chaplain, not the Lord. So until they return, I monitor the radio and continue to pray, believing that God can do incredible things in the lives and spirits of my soldiers.

So I may not have the most difficult job, but it is a struggle nonetheless. I may not fight with my men, but I certainly fight for them. And we will continue to fight, physically and spiritually, until the struggle is ended, the war is won, and we can return home to the smiles of our families or the judgment of our God.

Widows and Orphans

Much has happened this summer that I have been unable to comment on due to operational security or personal reasons. June 28th marked the blackest day in my career as a chaplain thus far. You may remember that was the day a helicopter was shot down over Afghanistan killing 16. Seven of those were my soldiers. The fact is that often a chaplain is seen as irrelevant or unnecessary until a tragedy occurs, and then he becomes the most desired individual to have around. In the early days of July 2005 I found myself speaking to young widows, grieving parents, and children with no fathers. I chose not to write about this event as it unfolded out of deference to the families of the grieving, and for that same reason I will not go into great detail here. However, sufficient time having passed, I think, I wanted to get some things recorded for posterity, if you will.

June 29th was spent trying to keep the media at bay so that we would have time to inform the families properly about what had happened to their loved ones. We were not entirely successful as the news runs unchecked through events of the day while we were tied to a series of events that, of necessity, had to be conducted in order. So it was that the race to honor our fallen by treating their families with the respect they are due was hastened by a need to do things correctly and in order.

On the one hand I pray it is the last time I will ever have to do something like that. On the other hand, it was a privilege to be able to spend time crying and grieving with family members of all religious persuasions and praying that the peace of God would infuse their lives during that trying time (which continues to this day).

We are at war and people die. It is a sad reality. But I can say without hesitation that as the details of the actions of those lost that day come to my attention, I clearly understand that they willingly gave everything so that someday others would not have to do the same.

They lived to fight, and they fought to win.

Poultry Without Morals

I do a little bit of browsing through other blogs, especially mil blogs. I enjoy reading about the experiences of other soldiers and how they differ from mine. To be sure the experience here is highly individual. However, there are some things that are the same for every soldier, everywhere, at just about every point in history. One could, if one were so inclined, put the wartime experiences of the average soldier on something of a continuum. It would range from that which is perfectly individual (such as the fit of the uniform) through the semi-individual / semi-corporate (such as the sound of gunfire at various times of the day and night) all the way through the entirely corporate (such as dust and heat). And on the corporate end of that spectrum would be something that every soldier experiences every day, if not multiple times a day. I am, of course, referring to chickens.

In my humble estimation, chickens are THE common denominator of daily life for the American soldier. Because different soldiers are on different schedules most chow halls offer not a mere three meals but an impressive four meals a day: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the ever popular and name free midnight meal. And while each meal will offer a variety of foods from which to choose, such as veal, green beans, milk, burritos, etc. Without exception something in the meal cornucopia is made of chicken.

It is staggering, when you think about it, the number of ways the average chicken can be prepared, modified, recycled and reused. It can be fried, broiled, basted, roasted, and barbecued. Truly unique among the ingredients of the world. And as everyone knows, anything that is either unidentifiable or heinously unpalatable is usually said to taste like the wonder food, chicken. It would take volumes to adequately explain the creativity with which the food service personnel manipulate this culinary delight. And as I think back on my many months overseas in support of the war effort, I believe I can say with very little uncertainty that the US Army euthanizes and consumes at least one hundred billion chickens a day.

While I normally try to include in my entries some point, reason or moral, today I have none. Today's entry is little more than an ode for the food of the masses...our friend, the chicken. That said, it's dinner time and today I'm in the mood for a big, succulent piece of meatloaf.

The Power of a Pear

It's only 9:20am but it's been a pretty good day so far, if for no other reason than that it was different. There is a bazaar just off post where local craftsmen and businessmen come to sell their wares. It is a good source of revenue for the locals, which works to our advantage. See, if there is any kind of attack against coalition forces during the week, the bazaar is cancelled that week and the local economy takes a hit. The locals are then pressured to cough up whoever was responsible for the attack so as to kick start the income producing wares sell-off. That may sound kind of harsh but it keeps coalition forces from being harassed or hurt, keeps the bad guys at bay, and offers local tradesmen a source of income.

The bazaar offers everything from local clothing, to pseudo antique stuff, to bootleg DVDs. It is a great place to buy souvenirs for folks back home or find a keepsake from the war. It was fun because if you even said "hello" to the sales guys they would point to something they thought you were looking at and say, "You're my friend. How much for that?" The game was to lowball the seller and see how far down he would come on his price. I wanted to find a teacup for my wife to add to her small collection. I thought it would make an interesting addition. But there were none to be found. The only thing I found was a small holy-grail-looking chalice made out of stone. Rather old looking but who knows. They guy said it was 2000 years old and cost $75. I chuckled and offered him $5. He chuckled back and said $75. He was the only guy who wouldn't budge on his prices. Most of his stuff looked like real antiques but you can never tell. Plus, he had unique stuff whereas most of the other guys were selling multiple copies of the same item.

I bought my boys some shepherd hats and a small walnut jewelry box for my daughter. I also found a small shield like you might see in a movie about the middle ages. The guy wanted $80 for it and I told him $20. He said no so I walked away but stayed in the area knowing he would make a counter offer. He did. $60! I said I could pay $20. OK, then $45 but no lower. How about $20, I countered. Final offer, $25. I'll pay $20, no more. As we stood there not budging, I pulled a pear out of my pocket that I had left over from lunch and began to polish it on my sleeve. That did the trick and he flinched. "OK, I'll take $20 and the pear".

I'm sure some of my readers may be thinking how cruel I was to lowball this poor man. Here I will interject that in fact the shield in question wasn't worth $15 and certainly not worth my pear.

The Global War Against Groundhog Day

It could be called several very appropriate names. The most popular of which is, unquestionably, "The Global War on Terrorism," or GWOT. It's a good name. After all, we are here to fight terror. Peace-loving people from many nations are dead because of terror, and the goal is to defeat the scourge of terror around the world. It's a good name and a good goal.

It could also be called "Groundhog Day." Each day is a near carbon copy of the day before. In fact, it can be outright boring. Sure, there are the occasional heart-stopping experiences that seem to come out of nowhere, but the mundane, everyday stuff is nothing to write home about.

We are sleeping in 8-man "B-Huts" that are not unlike your grandfather's tool shed, except without the tools or the accompanying yard. Plywood and bunk beds round out the decor. Privacy is the rarest of commodities. However, when you exit your living quarters, the drabness of plain plywood gives way to a sight right out of a movie, if that movie were titled "The Day the Earth Turned Brown." Man, is it brown. The dirt is something of a light mocha color, like the perfect cup of rich, dark coffee destroyed by a touch of milk. And to ensure that depth perception is next to impossible, the Department of Defense Hue Equivalence Team has developed an exterior paint that perfectly matches the dirt. It is the most impressive display of chemistry in action that I think I've ever witnessed.

In stark contrast to the extreme brownness of the world outside is the little dabs of color and life God puts on display. This morning, as I languished in my 8-man den of public non-privacy, I happened upon the smell of coffee. One of the guys in my room had brewed a fresh pot of coffee, and man, did it smell good. Side note here: the coffee was actually Starbucks that was donated to the American Red Cross and handed out to the troops. Wow, was that a nice smell to wake to. So I got up, grabbed a cup, and headed out the door to enjoy the morning air and the fresh coffee. It was relatively quiet, and there was a light rain coming down—not the soggy type, but the kind that makes everything smell damp. It was actually quite lovely. Some things, like the smell of morning, are the same around the world (except in Korea, of course). Just beyond the front door of our B-hut is a wall made out of Hesco Barriers, which are essentially 6 x 6 x 6-foot sandbags. So we have what amounts to a large, 12-foot wall of very brown paint-colored dirt just outside. As we sat and talked and enjoyed that beautiful cup of Joe, I noticed something. There, atop the brown wall, silhouetted in a dusty brown sky, was a single, scarlet flower. It stood out like a lit match in a dark closet (not that I ever lit any matches in the closet, mind you; it's just a metaphor... or simile... or metaphor). The thing is, that one flower had the potential to become a whole acre of flowers, given the right growing conditions.

Here is where reality punched me right in the face. We are fighting a fight against an enemy that is all around us but so blended in that you can't see him. But despite the violence and hatred, a seed of freedom has been planted and watered by the scarlet blood of combatants and non-combatants alike. And, given the right conditions, it will eventually become a huge field of color where only drab brown reigned before.

When that happens, look out, 'cause a whole bunch of tired GIs are coming home.

Self-Inflated Travel

This trip began much the same way my previous deployment did (as recounted in "The 50,000 Foot Nap of Death". After rising early in anticipation of freezing my tail off for several hours on end, my wife and I hurried to prep the kids for another day of school. After dropping them off we stopped for breakfast at a local greasy spoon and then she drove me to the air field. I hate saying goodbye but even more, I hate saying goodbye over time. So I checked in, walked her back to the car, and sent her off with one more kiss.

The first leg of our journey was again on a C-17 which took off right on schedule. As we sat and waited to depart, I glanced around the plane, which is really little more than a flying tube. It was loaded to the gills with all manner of equipment, ranging from large vehicles to small people. A vehicle near me had a warning sticker on it that read, "No Smoking Within 40 Feet From The Vehicle". I couldn't say what was wrong with it but I knew an English major had not composed that sentence. I figured that would not be a good time to take up smoking as I was well within 40 feet from the vehicle.

If you have ever graced the tubular interior of a properly functioning C-17 with your presence, then you would know that the sound is not unlike the sound of an industrial strength shop vac running at full bore inside an echo chamber. So, to ensure that passengers and crew exit the aircraft with the ability to hear a normal human voice, we were issued ear plugs. These are wonderful little devices. They are small bullet-shaped chunks of foam that can be rolled up like a playdough snake and inserted into the ear canal where they expand. This serves two major functions. The first is that they protect the hearing of the wearer by basically forming a sound barrier inside the ear. The second function they serve is to cause such pain that the wearer is forced to make a judgment call as to whether it is worse to loose his hearing altogether or be subjected to a lifetime of aural bruising. I like to think of myself as a practical man, but I'm not sure I did the right thing, judging from the lack of hearing in my left ear and the excruciating pain in my right.

Once at altitude, we were allowed to find a comfortable spot on the floor and try to catch a few hours of sleep. I happened upon a cozy portion of flight deck right next to the non-smoking vehicle and something that looked like a big box on wheels. The first thing I did was to reach for one of the greatest pieces of equipment ever devised...the self-inflating sleeping pad. I think the idea is that this pad, when released from the confines of whatever is containing it, will slowly inflate and offer a comfortable surface upon which to repose. So, I released my self-inflating sleeping pad to do it's magic and after a few moments of sleeping bag preparation and combat boot removal, I curled up on said self-inflating sleeping pad with no small measure of anticipation, only to find that it's self-inflating feature seems to work best when manually-inflated by mouth. Thus, I began to assist the self-inflation process until my cozy little pad resembled a thin, nylon hunk of three quarter inch plywood. Finally, with my manually-inflated-self-inflating pad ready to go, I climbed aboard in search of my friend, Sleep. Sadly, he was nowhere to be found! Besides the sensation of thumb screws jammed in my ears, my sleeping pad did not appear to be doing it's job. In order for the reader to understand why this is so, it is important to know that I weigh approximately 150 pounds when wrapped in a soaking wet yak fleece. Therefore, I have many pointy parts, including my hips and my shoulders (both principle sleeping equipment). Thus, in order for me to experience pressure pointless sleep, that upon which I seek softness must, by definition, be at least 13 inches thick. You, the reader, can approximate my experience by doing the following: First, get a large plastic garbage bag and lay it flat on a concrete surface (this will serve as your manually-inflated-self-inflating sleeping pad on the metal floor of your standard C-17). Next, find two large marbles. Laying on your side (as though feigning sleep) slip one marble under your shoulder and the other under your hip. Isn't that comfy? It doesn't end there.

As I mentioned, I had taken up some prime real estate between the non-smoking vehicle and a large-wheeled box. As I looked at this box I could not figure out what it was for. However, once I snuggled up to it for about 2 seconds, it became very clear that this thing's sole purpose was to smell like diesel fuel. And I must say it did it's job very well. The result was twofold. As the plane continued to climb, I flew even higher, reaching a place of euphoria rarely experienced by mortals. It also produced one of the most intense, brain wrenching headaches I've ever known. Fortunately for all, the smelly box car was not a smoker either as it too was within 40 feet from the other vehicle.

All that said, God bless our medics for providing Ambien(r)!

The final show stopper came as we approached the end of our first leg of travel. As I awoke from my drug induced, gasoline assisted, manually-inflated-self-inflating slumber, my eye happened upon one of my soldiers sleeping soundly in the arms of his teddy bear!