Copyright
Copyright 2008 by Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Introduction copyright 2012 by Moni Basu
Photos by Curtis Compton, copyright by Atlanta Journal-Constitution
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the publisher.
Ebook edition 1.0 April 2012
ISBN-10 1-57284-405-1
ISBN-13 978-1-57284-405-6
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Introduction
In January 2008, I began documenting life at war with Darren Turner, chaplain for the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, part of the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia.
The unit was part of the surge of American troops in Iraq that the administration of President George W. Bush argued was necessary to defeat the insurgency raging there.
I first met Turner at a memorial service for a fallen soldier in his battalion. The weather was dreary that day at Fort Stewart and I could not differentiate between tears and rain on the faces of the soldiers and their families.
It was tradition at Fort Stewart to plant a redbud tree in a field called Warriors Walk in honor of every soldier who died.
Turner was home on three weeks leave but he was using part of his time to make a trip to Silver Spring, Maryland, to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Several of his wounded soldiers were recuperating there. It was important for him to go.
I traveled with Turner to Walter Reed. And the next month, I caught up with him in Iraq, where I spent many weeks reporting this story.
At first his battalion commander, Lt. Col. Ken Adgie, was not so sure a woman should be permitted to spend so much time with a male chaplain. But in the end, I was able to shadow Turner as he counseled soldiers, baptized several on Easter, and dealt with the many hardships of war.
All the soldiers in this story gave me permission to write about their interactions with the chaplain. All except one of the scenes in this book were witnessed firsthand. The one reconstructed scene, describing the events of summer 2007, appears in Chapter 3 and was pieced together through interviews with soldiers who were there. This story first appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June 2008. It ran over eight days as Chaplain Turners infantry battalion was about to come home from Iraq. This revised version has been republished with permission from the newspaper.
I am indebted to my editors, Jan Winburn and Valerie Boyd, for their commitment to this story.
Chapter 1
Chaplain Darren Turner arrives at the entrance to Ward 45-C at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, fumbling in his pocket for a special coin he wants to give a soldier he has come to see. A verse from Ephesians is etched on one side: Put on the whole armor of God. Pray always.
The last time Turner saw Spc. David Battle was several months ago in Baghdad. He was not unlike any other soldier then, enduring a 15-month tour of Iraq.
But now Battle is a trophy of war. Thats how Turner describes the nations wounded.
Battle arrived at Walter Reed on Christmas Day 2007 without three of his limbs. His legs and right arm were blown off in a roadside bombing. Five weeks later, on this dreary day in February, doctors still are not certain he will survive.
Home on leave from Iraq, Turner did not have to visit Walter Reed. He wanted to.
The Georgia chaplain requested a few extra days off so he could travel to Washington from his home in Richmond Hill, near Savannah, to see the wounded soldiers from his unit, 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, based at Fort Stewart, the largest Army installation east of the Mississippi River. He knew it would be his most important assignment to date.
Still a novice in the Armys chaplain corps, Turner was anxious about the trip, perhaps because here, amid the landscape of suburban America and the normal rhythms of life, the ugliness of war hits hardest.
He stands in the hospital hallway, the drab linoleum floor patched with tiles that dont quite match. He takes a breath and opens the door to the warrior care ward, his heart brimming with trepidation.
Not even his spiritual armor can fully protect him.
Hi, David, Turner says.
Painkillers pulse through Battles veins. He stares at Turner from a hospital bed, his eyes vacant, his broken body covered in white sheets from the neck down. His two-year-old son, Ahmarion, sleeps at the foot of his fathers bed. Battles wife, Lakesia, hovers over a mess of plastic tubes snaking out from her husbands body. Turner can tell she is Jell-O wobbly under the steel veneer shes erected for outsiders.
He dreads these moments. But this is why he became an Army chaplain. He wanted to be where the suffering was greatest.
Jesus ran to crises. Turner wanted to do the same.
He has visited the injured beforeat Baghdads combat hospital. Some guys are numb. Some put their trembling hands in Turners and want him to take away their suffering. The wounded are always wanting something that cant be explained.
Walter Reed is difficult for yet another reason. Turner has never faced the loved ones of the wounded. In Iraq, he counsels soldiers but not their families. What do you say to a mother? A wife? To a boy who will not remember the father who went to war, only the one who has come back?
The chaplain tells Battle and his wife that he feels privileged to stand in their presence.
A soft-spoken man from the nearby Maryland town of La Plata, Battle served in a small tank company. The guys were all close.
We were all holding our breath as you were trying to catch yours, Turner says. Even though you didnt plan this, you served your country. Anything you want me to tell the boys?
Many of the soldiers in Battles platoon had walked over the same spot where the bomb exploded. When Turner went to see them shortly after Battle was evacuated, they told him they felt guilty. Why were they spared?
Tell all of them...
Battle pauses. Its a struggle to mouth words in his drug-induced haze. Turner bends closer to hear the soldiers soft whisper amidst the drone and beeps of hospital equipment.
Tell them, thanks, Battle manages to say.
A tear rolls down his left cheek.
Turners 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. Shes a special lady.
Lakesias eyes scan the Get Well and Happy Birthday cards and posters pasted on a wall of her husbands room. Yesterday was Davids 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 Turners 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 chaplains job is filled with awkward moments like this, when words are inadequate but silence is not an answer. But this moment is particularly tough.
