”Tell all of them...”
Battle pauses. It’s a struggle to mouth words in his drug-induced haze. Turner bends closer to hear the soldier’s soft whisper amidst the drone and beeps of hospital equipment.
”Tell them, thanks,” Battle manages to say.
A tear rolls down his left cheek.
Turner’s mind is racing to find the right words.
”You probably have had many bad emotions. But you got your life and your wife right here for you,” he says. “She’s a special lady.”
Lakesia’s eyes scan the “Get Well” and “Happy Birthday” cards and posters pasted on a wall of her husband’s room. Yesterday was David’s birthday. He is only 22, and saddled with a lifetime of unknowns.
”You are an inspiration,” Turner continues, taking out the coin he has carried with him from Baghdad.
Decorated with a sword representing honor and a breastplate of righteousness, the coin is Turner’s way of bestowing hope to the wounded. Tradition dictates that it be passed from one soldier to another in a firm handshake. But Battle cannot move.
Turner has thought long and hard about the presentation. A chaplain’s job is filled with awkward moments like this, when words are inadequate but silence is not an answer. But this moment is particularly tough.
Two weeks before this difficult visit to Walter Reed, Turner faced a soldier’s survivors for the first time, at a ceremony at Fort Stewart. He watched Lui Tumanuvao’s grieving wife and two young children huddle by the Eastern Redbud planted in his honor in the tree-lined Warrior’s Walk.
Tumanuvao, a sergeant in Turner’s battalion, died in November 2007 when he stepped on an improvised explosive device. Turner conducted his memorial ceremony in Iraq.
It had drizzled that day in south Georgia, just as it did this morning on Turner’s drive from Reagan National Airport to Walter Reed. Mist rose like ghosts from the Potomac.
Turner remembered all the times he had stood in front of Washington’s war memorials. He never understood why people were so affected by a bunch of names on a slab of stone.
Now, after almost eight months in Iraq, he knows.
Turner is distressed and drained by what he has seen. The 1-30th has lost 15 men. Another 100 have been wounded; some, like Battle, face uncertain futures with crippling injuries. Others are struggling through broken marriages and home lives.
Part of President George W. Bush’s troop buildup, the 1-30th arrived in Iraq in late May 2007. Chunks of the battalion remained at a Baghdad base while several companies fanned out southward in a Sunni district known as Arab Jabour. The restive area had not seen a sustained American presence since late 2005.
”We were going into a dance with the devil,” Turner says. “We knew it would be a fight. I could mentally imagine that but I wasn’t prepared emotionally.”
At 35, Turner was so green—new to the army, new to the ministry—that his boss thought the young chaplain might be better suited behind a desk in a support battalion, which would be spared combat missions. Chaplain (Maj.) Jay Hearn knew that as a surge unit, the 1-30th would be at the tip of the spear in Iraq, and at high risk for casualties.
He discussed the matter with Turner in January 2007, just months before the deployment. He told him soldier deaths were a chaplain’s toughest battleground; that Turner could still serve meaningfully in Iraq without stepping into that ring of fire.
But Turner had learned in seminary that people in pain are wide open to inviting God into their lives. He wanted to practice faith amid a flock of the suffering.
Chaplain Turner’s war would unfold on many fronts. He would be a soldier on the battlefield. A counselor behind closed doors. A minister at the altar. A friend. A father.
He would be the backbone of a rough and tough infantry battalion, on its third deployment in Iraq. As the sole chaplain for a thousand men and women, he would absorb all that befell them. He would share in absolute joy—and tragedy.
He had eagerly awaited his precious 18 days of respite. Instead, when he returned home in January, the war came with him.
On this winter day, the wounded at Walter Reed are chilling reminders of what he will face again in a few days, when his leave ends and he boards a chartered plane in Atlanta that will carry him back to the desert.
Standing at the head of Battle’s hospital bed, Turner grasps the “Armor of God” medallion in his left hand and places his right hand on Battle’s shoulder.
”This is a really, really cool coin,” he says, sticking to the plan he conjured for this awkward moment.
His eyes steadfast on the soldier’s face, he slips the shiny disc into his wife’s palm.
”I know you know that you still have a life to live. We love you.”
Turner feels the compassion a man does for his newborn child, an unfaltering urge to protect. He bows his head to pray.
He asks God to give Battle and his family the strength they will need in the coming weeks, months, years.
“God is not finished with you yet,” he says.
He gives Lakesia a long hug and steps back out into the antiseptic hallway.
”Whew,” he says, his face flushed red and his eyes moist. “I’m wondering why I have two legs and arms still.”
The young chaplain has seen so many deaths. Today, for the first time, he has encountered the grim realities of life after near-death.
”If I were where he is, I’d be wondering: why me? I’d be feeling sorry for myself, maybe wondering why I didn’t just die.”
Oblivious to the rain drenching his patrol cap and uniform, Turner leaves Walter Reed for a nearby hotel where his wife, Heather, waits. He asked her to accompany him to Washington. Even though it was a sobering trip, he didn’t want to squander a chance for extra moments together.
Time at home has hurtled by. There haven’t been enough quiet moments with Heather. He longs for more hours in the day to bounce on the backyard trampoline with Elie, six, and Sam, four. Or to hold Meribeth, almost two, in his arms. She will be talking the next time he sees her.
With the mystique of war forever dulled, the thought of leaving his family again is crushing.
Turner wonders what will unfold in the six months that remain in this deployment. He’s made mental notes to keep busy with plans for Easter, just a few weeks away. It will be a crescendo of some sort, he hopes, when the holiest and humblest day in Christianity is celebrated on ancient ground.
In five days, Turner will be back there, to behold the holy lands of the Bible through the mask of war.
Chapter 2
Inside a canvas tent, one of 70 erected in neat rows at Iraq’s Forward Operating Base Falcon, sits a soother of souls.
Turner stocks his office with movies, books, beef jerky, trail mix and toothpaste, stuff delivered almost every week in care packages from America.
The chaplain knows that a uniformed man seeking emotional help risks ridicule, especially in an infantry unit where a “suck-it-up” mentality reigns. The convenience-store look is a camouflage that helps lure in the war-weary.
When