DIGIJOURNAL 017--21 APR 2007

DATELINE 21APR07 PATROL BASE PALIWODA

Dear Friends,

Once again it has been far too long since I have updated this blog. I want to thank you for your continued support of our soldiers and patience with the timeliness of my submissions. Due to several things, this will be a rather lengthy entry.

The main reason for the delay was the death of 1LT Phillip Neel on April 8th, Easter Morning. Phillip was perhaps the most beloved lieutenant in the battalion, and we have a great group of LTs. He represented all that was good and right about the world. Most importantly, for me, he was a model of what a Christian gentleman should be. Perhaps the greatest complement I could give him is that I want my boys to be like him someday. I will write more about Phillip later, but the subsequent Memorial Ceremony preparation and time spent with A Company delayed my writing.

I promise not to use the words “well” or “as well” in this entry. I reread my last blog and noticed several grammatical and style mistakes. I cringed. As one who prides himself on grammatical orthodoxy, I was chief among sinners in my last submission. I am usually writing these things at night, and quickly, so I do not always put out my best stuff (and you might not be too terribly impressed with even my best stuff). I will do better this time.

Thank you for your prayers, your donations, and your love for our soldiers. They are the best people that our country has to offer, and there is not enough time or computer space for me to justify and quantify this belief. After seeing their daily displays of courage and honor, I have no doubts about the veracity of this claim.

INTERESTING QUOTES
A series of quotes that I have come across in my travels or study that I thought were interesting:

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death; I will fear no evil; for You are with me—and I carry more ammo than Rambo. -One of our A Co. Platoon Mottos

I find your lack of faith…disturbing. -Darth Vader

The crown of life, the conquest of evil, the establishment of righteousness among people and nations comes only to those who refuse to stop too soon, to cry ‘quits’ before the job is done. -Thomas S. Mutch

Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. -G. K. Chesterton

Habent sua fata libelli et balli--Books and bullets have their own destinies. -Ernst Junger

But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. -Romans 13:4

BATTALION PRAYERS
A collection of prayers written for our battalion update briefings (BUBs).

11 APR
O Most High and Gracious God,
In Your hands rest the fate of men;
In the shade of Your grace we find peace;
We ask that You comfort the grieving hearts of Second Platoon and all of A Company;
Dry the tears of family and friends in Texas;
And heal us as we mourn the crossing into the Promised Land of 1LT Phillip Neel, a compassionate leader, a loving son, and a faithful friend.
Amen

18 APR
Heavenly Father,
We pray for Your continued protection of the soldiers of Warhorse;
Grant us safety in our operations;
Watch over our families as they come to grips with the news of our extension;
And work through our words and deeds to bring peace to the Iraqi people.
Amen

LEAVE
This will most likely be my last entry before I go on leave. I will leave Iraq sometime in early May and return late that same month. Almost every soldier gets two weeks of leave sometime during his/her tour. The purpose of this time is for the soldier to go home and take his mind off the war, with the hopeful outcome being a refreshed and renewed soldier once he or she returns. Due to my constant movement between FOBs, I do not always get to counsel soldiers before they go on leave. When I do speak with them, one of the things I stress is for them to go home and not think about this place: do not email, do not call, do not worry (if they can). The Army survived long before they joined up, and it will continue to roll on long after they leave it.

Realistically, every soldier, especially the leaders, is going to worry while they are gone. Everyone wants to go home for good, but no one wants to let their comrades down. The greatest fear we have while we are on leave is that something will happen and we will not be there to help. It is and will be my fear. I do not intend on checking email or calling in, so you may not hear from me for awhile. I do try to post every box that we receive and write thank you notes to everyone. I still intend on doing these things, but it might take me awhile to catch up. I will continue to pray for the safety of our soldiers and their families, giving thanks for the support that they have received from folks like you back in the States.

VIRGINIA TECH
If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it. -Genesis 4:7, God speaking to Cain before Cain murders Abel

We were all understandably shaken by the news coming out of Blacksburg, VA. What can we say to such horrific images? The most difficult thing was to view the faces and to hear the stories of the victims. It was hard to see the young people; it was hard to see the holocaust survivor and professor who gave his life for his students; it was hard to see the past pictures of some of the students who served in the military. I could not help but to think that some of those guys probably survived a tour in Iraq only to be taken out by a punk kid who had issues.

A punk kid who had issues…a harsh thing for a chaplain to say? Perhaps, but I think not, and here is why. The pundits, intellectuals, and other social Brahmin of our society have already begun to enlist this tragedy in their cause (just like they do this war). The blame game has started, with the goal being to somehow understand what happened so that we could prevent it in the future, but can or will we ever be able to prevent such things? Well, let me suggest some reading of the facts.

• Fact: this was planned out, i.e. premeditated—-he had more ammo to reload (suggesting premeditation), he mailed his screed and photos to NBC after his first two murders (more premeditation), and went back to murder those he had wounded (again, more premeditation).
  
• Fact: most sufferers of mental illness are not harmful to society. They are most likely to be harmful to themselves. To blame mental illness is to claim that the murderer snapped. See first fact arguing for premeditation and then return to question of was it mental illness.
  
• Fact: I work with soldiers every day who carry a full combat load of M-4 ammo (210 5.56 rounds). Many of these soldiers have backgrounds that make the background of this murderer look like a kindergarten birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s. The horrific stories I have heard from some of our soldiers describing their childhoods are truly heartbreaking. Yet these soldiers, some of them only 18 years old, are handed automatic weapons and then directed to go out and act with restraint, responsibility, and moral courage against an enemy that is not only trying to kill them but also has no problem killing innocent bystanders. And guess what, the vast majority of soldiers go out and do just that, act responsible. And if they do not, they are held accountable and get a one way and much deserved ticket to Ft. Leavenworth and the high security military prison that houses rapists, war criminals, and murderers.
  
• Fact: we cannot control people. It took me seven years as a pastor before I finally learned this (I am a slow learner).
  
• Fact: most everyone gets bullied at some point in their lives. There are many people who are outcasts who do not go out and shoot people.
  

Question (personal note: I do not own a gun, I do not like guns [which is why I joined the Army...see irony], and I do not belong to the NRA, so I do not have a dog in this fight): how many people would the murderer have killed if a couple of the students or teachers had handguns to fire back? Again, I am not arguing for vigilante style justice that would turn our college campuses into latter-day Tombstone, Arizonas. I am asking that everyone think before we start going after the NRA crowd.

We should examine what caused this guy to do what he did. We should look with compassion upon all people, but, and this is a revolutionary thought, let us hold one another responsible and accountable for what we do. Under the guise of feelings and compassion, we desire to absolve ourselves of personal responsibility, making us all victims. Well, guess what--once you become a victim you can no longer act upon the world, the world can only act upon you. Your well-being then rests in the hands of a king, a caesar, or a political leader. Check out the Revolutionary War, Hitler’s Germany, and, I do not know, perhaps guys with names like Pilate and Herod to see how it usually works out when your well-being is protected by another who “knows better.” Instead of blaming everybody and ourselves, let us blame this murderer, a punk kid who completely planned out and executed, in cold blood, a mass killing against innocents because he was angry at the world. He is no different than the murderers we are fighting over here. It was his fault.

Furthermore, what has happened to the concept of evil? We have explained it away. I paraphrase from the movie The Usual Suspects: “The best thing the Devil ever did was to make people believe he did not exist.” To acknowledge evil is to also acknowledge good, which, by logic, means to acknowledge the prime mover of goodness, a Guy that the philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas called God. Evil appeared that day in Blacksburg and with horrifying results. But yet, an elderly man who had seen the worst that evil could dish out stood against a doorway so that others might live. Evil was present, but did it triumph? Will it triumph?

EXTENSION
The crown of life, the conquest of evil, the establishment of righteousness among people and nations comes only to those who refuse to stop too soon, to cry ‘quits’ before the job is done. -Thomas S. Mutch

• Q: How does one begin to discuss the topic of extension?
  
• A: You don’t and pretend that it does not exist.
  

I, however, do not have that luxury. By now it has sunk in that our tour has been extended beyond the original 12 months. Before I move into any attempt at an explanation, let me first acknowledge the emotions, ranging from frustration…to outright despair…to numbing ambivalence that almost everyone is feeling. I liken our response to grieving. What we thought was going to be a happy reunion in five months or less is now going to be longer. Dreams are deferred, another birthday missed, another anniversary dinner delayed, and a vacation cancelled. If we combine these things with the more important reality of further exposure to danger while deployed, it is easy to see that dealing with these new challenges can seem overwhelming.

What I am not going to do is to tell folks, in essence, to suck it up, nor will I remind you on how much extra money our soldiers will be paid. I will not tell people that our soldiers have obligations and must do their duty. Why? Because all these things are already true. You have sucked it up, we have and will continue to perform our duty, and no amount of pay is going to buy back the time we will miss with you, the ones we love. Sometimes, when we as an Army deliver bad news, we want to quickly rush to the fix it and forget it stage without dealing with the inevitable emotions that come with disappointment. We cannot sweep under the rug, no matter how many briefings we attend, another fall of getting the kids to school on your own, another Thanksgiving missed, another soccer game without daddy on the sideline, and all the other sacrifices that come with a wartime deployment.
While I cannot speak any magic words or phrases to unmake the decisions that have been made, I can tell you that there are people out there who do understand your sacrifice and share your anxieties over further time in theater, and more time apart. These are the same people that can all too easily become the enemy or the folks on whom we take out our anger. These people are your fellow wives, soldiers, and families.

While we cannot change or control the bad news, we can control how we respond to it. Turning to, and not against, one another for support is the only real positive way to deal with this news. One of the best ways our soldiers cope with the stresses and disappointments that they face is that they can rely on one another. This deployment brought together many strangers that have now become closer than brothers. For better or worse, we have come to Iraq during a time of increasing stakes in the outcome of this war combined with a greater intensity of the actual battles. For a while we can rage against the powers that be, but eventually that will only involve kicking an unmovable boulder until we break our feet. The way that most of us, the deployed, have worked through the news is to realize that now more than ever before we need to rely on each other, our professionalism, our training, and our shared sense of sacrifice. We do this first in order to not let one another down, but we also do it knowing that we want to bring honor to you and all that you have done to help keep our minds focused on the battles here and not on worries about home.

As one who is a witness to the daily displays of the honor and courage of your loved ones, I want to also acknowledge your acts of heroism on the home front. You may not receive medals or awards, but we can only do what we do, remain positive and focused, and continue with our responsibilities by resting assuredly in the peace of knowing that we have your love and support. We need you, and we pray that you still need us, and we can and will be able to navigate through any shadowed valley knowing that you are with us, together, for better or for worse.

The hopeful dawn of redeployment will shatter the dark night of this extension. May God continue to bless you with strength of character, the honor of purpose, and the courage of heart that comes from knowing that what we do now matters and that we can gain strength from the actions and attitudes of one another. God bless you.

CARDS WITH COMMO
One of the highlights of a typical week, as a reward if I can get my sermon done early, is I get to go play cards with out commo section on Saturday nights. The card game we play is called Phase 10; it is some obscure game that I had never heard of before until SPC A introduced it to me while we were waiting on our flight to Kuwait. The real treat is the food. SGT P, a true Cajun from Louisiana, is quite possibly the best cook in the battalion. I joke with him by saying that he is a cook whose hobby is working on communications systems in the Army. He is able to get steak, shrimp, chicken, sausage, and rice from the mess hall, combine it with his special and secret seasonings, grill or steam it, and voila, we have a great dinner. I cannot believe how much this guy can do with so little. He is better than Emeril.

This past Saturday night SGT P had taken SGT Ph under his wing and let him cook dinner. SGT Ph is from Vietnam, has a B.S. in electrical engineering, and joined the Army when the economy of Silicon Valley took a turn for the worse in the 90s. Instead of Cajun night, we had Vietnamese night. It is an interesting world to be fighting in a war with folks who used to live in countries we fought now fighting for us against new enemies. One could write sermon after sermon on this topic and add to it numerous volumes of social commentary. I will not worry about such things. Instead, I got to enjoy the company of some really great guys who also happen to be really great cooks. Now there are rough days over here, but the oases of good times help us get through the deserts of misery as we soldier on in the Land between the Rivers.

EASTER SUNDAY
I have put off writing about this long enough. I wish I could say we had a good Easter. I can say that we had a meaningful Easter. Easter Eve, as I was putting my finishing touches on my sermon, I decided to take a break and go to the gym. On my way there I stopped into the TOC and heard that A Co. had received casualties. I will not get into the details, but Warhorse 6 (WH6), the Battalion Commander, called me into his office a short while later. When I saw Warhorse 9 (WH9), the Battalion CSM, and our Battalion S3, I knew that this was not going to be good news. Early Easter morning 1LT Phillip Isaac Neel died of wounds.

Every injury or death of a soldier causes one to pause with an ache in his heart. You get physically ill inside when the news breaks. I care deeply about every soldier equally, but I know soldiers differently. I really knew 1LT N. He was a regular in chapel, was a West Point grad (2005), and he and I would have long talks about what was going on in his life. Despite the fact that I was ten years older than Phillip, I believe he was more of a Christian role model for me than I was for him. Everything about him was good and honest and true.

Over here, one’s mind plays games with itself to pass the time. Periodically CPL C and I would make lists of folks in the battalion, lists based on various topics. One of our lists was who would be in the top five soldiers in the battalion who, if the lives of all the battalion’s soldiers depended upon their success, would make the quest for the Holy Grail. In the Grail legend, the only person who could go after it was the most pure of heart, faithful of character, and true to the Christian faith. 1LT Neel and SSG L were usually tied for first. I was not on the top ten list, not even close to it.

1LT N's death was a heavy blow to all of us. Rarely does one meet a platoon leader who does not have at least one soldier say something negative thing about him. In fact, the only thing said, and this was not a negative, was that 1LT N was always the first one to show restraint. He cared deeply about the Iraqi children and the people of this country. He cared even more about his soldiers.

Most of what I could possibly say is contained in the Memorial Message that my wife posted earlier. The thing that will stick with me is that Phillip was the type of young man that I wish I had been. He is the type of man I want my own sons to be. As I was preparing my sermon for tomorrow, I came across his namesake in Acts, chapter 8. The Apostle Phillip was the first to evangelize the Samaritans—the outcasts of the outcasts. He made the first Christian convert in Africa—the Ethiopian Eunuch. My prayer is that we do not look upon Phillip’s life with a sentimental heart touched with sadness. Instead, I hope his life causes all of us to pause and look at our own, look at what we have been doing and start doing what should be done, examine our own hearts and stop thinking of excuses for not living like we should and instead just do it.

The great sadness that I will have will be for his family: his parents and his brothers and sisters. I am going to try, if they will allow it, to visit them when I eventually get back. And every time that I return to West Point for whatever reason I will now have two friends, two role models, two heroes to visit: my classmate and middle school friend MAJ Bill Hecker (’91) and 1LT Phillip Neel (’05), the young lieutenant who taught an old chaplain how to walk boldly and peacefully in the Christian faith. “Well Done, Be Thou At Peace.”

FLIGHT TO SPEICHER
Before Easter, CPL C and I had to make a trip to COB Speicher for a Religious Support Team (RST) conference. The conference was quite good, and it had a very humbling effect on yours truly. Just the fact that I write a blog says something about my lack of humility. I have always thought it presumptive to think that I have something to say worth reading (and I am sure many first time-only time readers would agree). What was so meaningful about the conference was that I had the opportunity to meet some other very gifted and able chaplains. I am somewhat isolated here in Warhorse Land, so I can get either an over inflated or undervalued (usually over inflated) view of myself. I met some guys from the 82nd Airborne who were in better shape, better spiritual health, and of better hearts than me. One should always try to associate with a group of folks a little better morally than oneself. This was such a group.

The highlight of the trip was the flight from LSAA to Speicher. Everything that could have gone wrong for CPL C, my fearless and trustworthy assistant, did go wrong. We were supposed to fly out at 0115, but our flight was bumped to 0400 (pilots!!!!!), and then to 0515. We arrived at Speicher in time for the conference to begin, ensuring that we would be up for approximately 36 straight hours (do not weep for us; an infantryman will do things like this but do it on no food, uphill, in the rain, at night, with someone firing bullets at or detonating bombs underneath him). As we loaded the Chinook helicopter, we noticed than an entire military working dog team (3 dogs plus handlers) would join us. They had more stuff than our soldiers. They stacked a bunch of hard-shell cases right in front of CPL C, guaranteeing he would have zero legroom. As we took off, one of the dogs pooped in his kennel, the kennel right next to CPL C. The smell was great. Worried that it was oil burning or other mechanical malfunction, I was just about to state my objection to liftoff when Paul looked over at me laughing. About a third of the way into the flight, the pilot turned off his auto-adjustment program that fine tunes the numerous, manual adjustments pilots must make in a helicopter. Of course he did this for extra training, since it was an especially windy night. So, as we bumped along, a different dog yakked into his kennel, now combining the poop smell with the yak smell wafting into CPL C’s nostrils. Finally, to top it off, one of the handlers barfed into her hat, and she was, of course, sitting next to CPL C. All I can say is (with evil tone of voice), “Excellent! Excellent! Excellent!” When we landed, I could not stop laughing at him. Although I am not sure this is a good thing, especially since he is entrusted with protecting me on the battlefield.

Gratia et Veritas
Warhorse Archangel