He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.
—EPHESIANS 4:11
General George Washington placed chaplains throughout his army during the American Revolution and had the government pay their salaries, a precedent that extended into the twenty-first century. His intent was to make the American army worthy of God’s favor. His orders stated:
We can have little hopes of the blessing of Heaven on our arms if we insult by our impiety and folly. Let vice and immorality of every kind be discouraged, as much as possible, in your brigade: and as a chaplain is allowed to each regiment, see that the men regularly attend divine worship.
Over two centuries later, in 2003, seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company were accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners of war at Baghdad’s largest prison, Abu Ghraib. During the investigation of the scandal, which resulted in several MPs being convicted and sentenced for crimes, George Washington’s position that chaplains discouraged vice and immorality in the armed forces echoed with ironic resonance.
Chaplains at Abu Ghraib had been ordered to stay out of the way of soldiers and not intrude upon their lives. They were to stand by on the periphery and let soldiers come to them. As a result, they exerted virtually no moral or spiritual presence or influence upon the prison camp. Chapel attendance was low, sometimes attracting only a scattered handful of worshippers. A number of MPs didn’t know who the chaplains were. Some didn’t even know there were chaplains at Abu Ghraib.
Chaplains of the unit that replaced the disgraced 372nd were told they would be an active influence upon their MP soldiers, that they would be present at prisoner interrogations, at shift changes, and in the daily lives of soldiers. The entire atmosphere at Abu Ghraib changed, replacing darkness with light. Chapel attendance jumped dramatically. The prison became a model operation.
“THE FOUR CHAPLAINS,”
World War II, 1943
The United States pressed every available ship into service to carry supplies and troops to the war front in Europe. More than 16 million men and women were transported in this monumental effort. Shipping routes to England led first to Greenland via the Strait of Belle Isle between Labrador and Newfoundland, a treacherous stretch of sea known as “Torpedo Junction” because of prowling German submarines. Enemy wolf packs were sinking Allied shipping at the rate of one hundred vessels per month.
On January 23, 1943, three freighter troop transports loaded to capacity with young soldiers departed New York Harbor bound for England under the armed escort of three Coast Guard cutters. All amenities were removed from the transports in order to get as many fighting men as possible on each voyage. Cots were crammed into every available space. Designed to hold fewer than four hundred people, the aging luxury liner USAT Dorchester set sail with 920 soldiers aboard.
Listed on the Dorchester’s manifest were the names of four chaplains. Rarely were so many transported together on a single troop ship. These four had attended Chaplain School at Harvard in 1942 and had been close friends for more than a year.
Rabbi Chaplain Alexander Goode was an expert in U.S. and Middle East history and had served in a York, Pennsylvania, synagogue before volunteering for the Army. At thirty-one years old, he was the married father of a three-year-old daughter. He spent two days with his family prior to receiving debarkation orders. Hours before the convoy set sail, he wrote a quick letter to his wife, Theresa:
Just a hurried line as I rush my packing. I’ll be on my way in an hour or two. I got back yesterday afternoon just before the warning. Hard as it was for us to say goodbye in New York, at least we could see each other before I left. Don’t worry. I’ll be coming back much sooner than you think.
At age forty-two, Protestant Chaplain (Methodist) George L. Fox was the oldest of the four. Abused by his father as a child, he ran away from home at seventeen and lied about his age in order to enlist in the Army. He served as a Medical Corps assistant in World War I, winning the French Croix de Guerre and the Silver Star for valor. He became a minister after the Great War ended, then reenlisted after Pearl Harbor on the same day his eighteen-year-old son joined the Marine Corps.
“I know from experience what our boys are about to face,” he said as he kissed his wife and seven-year-old daughter good-bye. “They need me.”
Catholic Chaplain John P. Washington, thirty-three, bespectacled and mild-mannered, did not appear the sort to go to war. Although a sensitive man who loved music and art, he was as tough as green oak inside. Once the teen leader of Newark’s South Twelfth Street Gang, he received a calling from God and returned to Newark as Father to other people of the streets. He left eight brothers and sisters behind in New Jersey.
Chaplain Clark V. Poling, thirty, was the youngest of the four and pastor of a Dutch Reformed Church in Schenectady, New York. The son of Doctor Daniel Poling, a well-known radio evangelist, he seemed determined to enlist in the Army as a regular fighting soldier rather than as a chaplain.
“I’m not going to hide in some safe office off the firing line,” he insisted.
“Don’t you know that chaplains have the highest mortality rate?” his father countered. “As a chaplain, you’ll have the best chance in the world to be killed. You just can’t carry a gun yourself.”
Reverend Poling ended up attending Chaplain School with Goode, Fox, and Washington, leaving behind an infant son and his pregnant wife. He asked his father to pray for him just before he boarded the Dorchester.
“Not for my safe return,” he explained. “That wouldn’t be fair. Just pray that I do my duty, never be a coward, and have the strength, courage, and understanding of men. Just pray that I shall be adequate.”
The worst winter storm to hit the Atlantic in half a century froze decks to crystal ice and tossed the convoy about in a giant washer of churning waves. Frightened soldiers, most of whom had never been to sea before, were seasick most of the time. The stench in steamy bays and holds was almost unbearable.
Midafternoon of February 1, seven days out of New York and still one hundred miles short of Greenland, the skipper of U.S. Coast Guard cutter Tampa signaled the other craft that he had picked up disturbing sonar signals.
“We are being followed. Submarines estimated in our vicinity. Inform all ships to close up tightly and stay close for the night.”
Dorchester’s Captain, Hans Danielsen, got on his PA system. His voice spilled into crowded holds: “Every soldier is ordered to sleep with his clothes and life jacket on.”
Most of the troops belowdecks disregarded Captain Danielsen’s order. Hot and sweaty, they cast aside bulky life jackets and elected to sleep in their skivvies. The four chaplains were the most conspicuous exceptions as, fully dressed in fatigues and wearing life preservers, they circulated among the nervous troops doing what military chaplains do during times of threat: reassure men that the Lord watches over them.
Most of the soldiers were sleeping fitfully by midnight. The chaplains ventured onto the main deck to pray together. The transport carried no running lights in such dangerous waters, and they could make out nothing in the night, not even the horizon. Freezing rain and sleet pelted their exposed faces as they huddled together and bowed their heads.
Afterward, Chaplain Fox suggested they get some sleep themselves. “God will watch over us.”
The attack occurred at 12:55 A.M., February 2. Submerged beneath the black chop, a German U-boat released three torpedoes. Two missed their target, but the third struck the Dorchester’s engine room with a blinding flash, knocking out the ship’s power and instantly killing one hundred men. The transport rolled precariously to starboard as cold salt water poured into the vessel through its awful wounds. It immediately began to sink.
Panic and darkness engulfed terrified soldiers belowdecks. Ammonia fumes and spilt oil burned lungs and eyes. Injured men cried out. Frightened survivors screamed in horror as they groped frantically in the darkness to find exits. Piles of discarded clothing and unclaimed life jackets were flung about. Many men who reached the slanted, icy decks wore nothing more than underwear.
Water was flowing across the main decks within ten minutes. Icy waves broke over the railings, tossing men into the sea, many of whom had ignored the captain’s warning and were without life jackets. Flames licked up through the decks from the engine room. Wind made the flames roar and flap like dragons, their light illuminating the horrible pantomime of frantic and desperate men.
Some lifeboats were frozen in their rigging. Others floated away empty. Panicked survivors capsized boats or sunk them by loading them beyond capacity.
Fully dressed and wearing life jackets, the chaplains could readily have saved themselves. Instead, working together, they organized escape efforts in the holds and directed soldiers to exits with calm words of encouragement, bringing some order to the bedlam.
On the main deck above, shouting to be heard above the chaos, they passed out spare life vests from deck lockers as frightened soldiers pressed forward in ragged lines with the seas already sucking at their ankles. A Merchant Marine seaman, dazed and confused and reeling from the cold, headed back to his cabin.
“Where are you going?” Rabbi Goode asked.
“To get my gloves.”
The rabbi peeled off his own gloves. “Here. Take mine.”
“I can’t take your gloves.”
“Why not? I have two pairs.”
The seaman accepted the gloves on those terms and rushed off to assist in freeing one of the last remaining life boats.
Rabbi Goode continued to hand out life jackets with his bare hands; he actually had no spare gloves. Soon, the deck lockers were empty. No more life vests. Soldiers still in line realized they were doomed. They would be frozen and unable to swim within minutes after they went overboard unbuoyed.
Chaplain Fox stripped off his own life preserver and thrust it to a boyish-faced kid with blond hair. “God bless you, son,” he said.
Rabbi Goode put his vest on a soldier suffering from a broken shoulder, using the laces from his own boots to tie it around the injured man.
Chaplain Poling and Father Washington likewise relinquished their life jackets and thus their only hope of survival.
Ragged lines remained before the empty lockers, still hoping, but there was nothing else the chaplains could do for the doomed remnants of their flock except pray. Remaining soldiers crying out in terror were swept into the sea. Orange flames leaping into the superstructures backlighted the last men left aboard the rapidly sinking ship—the four chaplains. Up to their thighs now in black water, they clung to the railing on the tipped deck. Their strong voices lifted in the cold, dark night above screams of pain and fear.
“Shma Yisrael Adonai Elohenu, Adona Echad…”
“Our Father Who art in Heaven…”
“Hallowed be Thy name…”
“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done…”
The four men of God had saved as many men as they could. They braced themselves against the railing and one another, arms linked together, and prayed and sang in a valiant final declaration of faith. The fine, clear tones of Father Washington’s singing carried across the sea—and then all went silent. The Dorchester with the chaplains still at the railing sank to her watery grave in the North Atlantic. They had sacrificed themselves that others might live.
Of the 920 aboard the USAT Dorchester who left New York, 690 either died in the explosion or were lost in the frigid waters, the third-highest loss of life at sea during World War II. But for the chaplains, the toll would have been much higher. In 1948, the U.S. Postal Service issued a special stamp commemorating the brotherhood, service, and sacrifice of Chaplains Goode, Washington, Poling, and Fox. In 1960, the U.S. Congress authorized the Four Chaplains Medal. Inscribed on it in relief are the Star of David, the tablets of Moses, the Christian cross, and the names of the four heroic men of God who went down with their ship after midnight on February 2, 1943.
ARMY SENIOR CHAPLAIN DENNIS GOODWIN,
Iraq, 2004
On April 4, 2004, Brigade Chaplain Dennis Goodwin of the 30th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, got together with Baptist Chaplain Darrell Brumfield and Presbyterian Chaplain Kevin Wainwright to conduct Palm Sunday services on the big parade field of the Kirkush Military Training Base, Diyala Province, Iraq. Even just after sunrise, the weather was dry and hot, the sand already burning through the soles of boots. Some 150 soldiers from across the brigade gathered under the Iraqi sun to witness the baptism of eleven of their number.
Chaplain assistants had constructed the baptistry. It was a huge wooden box with a plastic liner to hold water, wooden steps up one side, and camouflage netting around it. From his open-air pulpit, Chaplain Goodwin delivered a short sermon in which he explained how baptism signified the washing away of one’s sins and rebirth into a new life as a Christian.
The eleven soldiers awaiting baptism stepped forward. They came from a wide range of backgrounds, male and female, black and white, officer and enlisted. Their common denominator was combat boots, cammie uniforms, and a desire to serve God. The shortest soldier was barely over five feet, the tallest was six-eight.
A woman soldier with a lovely voice sang “Down to the River to Pray” from the soundtrack of the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Chaplain Brumfield began baptism by immersing two men, one of whom was the six-eight soldier. Only five feet six, Chaplain Brumfield elicited a trickle of laughter from the congregation at his efforts to maneuver the tall sergeant into the tank and dunk him.
Chaplain Wainwright had never immersed anyone before. He made the rookie mistake of failing to hold the noses of his first two parishioners and almost drowned them. They came up sputtering and coughing.
He did much better on his next two.
Chaplain Goodwin conducted the final immersions. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost…”
Someone pointed out that some of the new Christians had lived lives not completely acceptable by traditional standards.
“Those who have sinned the most often provide the most fertile field for spreading and sowing the Gospel,” Chaplain Goodwin responded.
It was a significant day for the chaplains of the 30th Brigade Combat Team. Eleven children went down to the river to pray—and eleven brothers and sisters joined the Body of Christ.
On the following Sunday, over two hundred Easter sunrise worshippers packed the room that served as chapel. There was standing room only, even though attendance was not mandatory. The chain of command from the general on down attended. The walls of the building vibrated with the singing of hymns.
NAVY CHAPLAIN BRIAN KIMBALL,
Iraq, 2004
Navy chaplains have served in war and in peace with the U.S. Marine Corps on land, sea, and air for nearly 230 years. On a typical day at the Al Taqaddum Air Base, forty-five miles west of downtown Baghdad, home of 3rd Battalion, 24th Marines, Chaplain Brian Kimball rose at precisely 0600, shined, shaved, and showered, then grabbed his trademark guitar and went to work.
Stocky and fit, the twenty-seven-year-old lieutenant, with buzz-cut brown hair, rimless eyeglasses, and open smile, was the youngest Navy chaplain in-theater, as well as the most recognized figure on the airbase. After stuffing down breakfast in the chow hall, he started his daily rounds to visit every work area on the base. Far from waiting for parishioners to come to him, he went to them, walking with a loose, merry gait, sometimes whistling to himself, often plucking a few chords on the strings of his guitar to announce his arrival.
Daily temperatures averaged 100 degrees plus, up to 115 degrees. The air was always so gritty with sand that no one ever felt clean. However hot and miserable the weather, grease monkeys in the motor pool, grunts preparing for patrol, sentries in guard towers called out to the chaplain with smiles and laughter of recognition. “Hey, Padre!” He responded by clutching his Bible and whanging on his guitar.
The Bible Answer Man. That was what troops called him.
“Chaplain, I got a question for you. What do you think God meant when He said, ‘Thou shalt not kill’? We’re Marines. We break things and kill people. That’s what we do. Does that mean we’re going to Hell?”
Many Marines who had time on their hands took to reading the Bible. Chaplain Kimball always took the opportunity to answer their questions, whatever they were, quoting scripture to support his responses, showing them where to read further.
“Everything you do every single day matters,” he said. “Each of our days here is more important because of the uncertainty of tomorrow. God helps us to learn to enjoy each and every day, regardless of circumstances. Come to chapel Sunday morning. We’ll discuss it more in-depth.”
Not much older than most of the Marines to whom he ministered, he related to them as a big brother as much as a chaplain. A big brother with answers to their spiritual questions. Sometimes late at night he was still answering questions, counseling young men and women with marital issues, acting as go-between with the Red Cross concerning emergency leaves, handling the other problems faced by young people far from home in a combat environment, making rounds to check on his people. Whatever happened, he always left troops chuckling and in good humor—plucking out a Weird Al Yankovic song on his guitar and singing the lyrics before packing up his Bible and guitar and moving on, like a wartime Johnny Appleseed sowing his seeds of faith.
Sunday church at his makeshift on-base chapel offered more than a sermon and a prayer. He recruited other Marines with musical talents and formed a worship band that played and sang with him during services. Shortly after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, he performed at the EPW camp with his band as part of the armed forces’ effort to make chaplains and their influences felt among the troops.
“Is this a great country or what?” he would sing out in imitation of Weird Al. “Let us pray.”
While this might be the chaplain’s typical day at Al Taqaddum, a combat zone produced dreadful atypical days as well.
Marine duties at Taqaddum included road patrolling the area surrounding the airbase. Chaplain Kimball commonly chatted with patrols, sometimes praying with them, before they donned their battle-rattle (combat gear), fired up their Humvees, and departed through the wire. Most of the time, security patrols were routine with few incidents.
Routine was broken, however, in mid-April just before Easter Sunday when a homemade IED detonated next to a patrol’s lead vehicle. Iraqi terrorists in hiding opened up with RPGs and small arms fire.
Corporal Billy Willis, manning the grenade launcher on the turret of his hummer, was knocked off his mount and to the ground by the force of the initial explosion. His face, neck, and arms were bleeding from shrapnel wounds. He scrambled back to his perch and opened grenade fire at ambushers occupying two mud houses about four hundred meters away.
“Willis, you’re losing blood!” another leatherneck yelled at him.
“I ain’t got time to bleed!” he shouted back.
Enemy bullets sang all around the squad, thudding into the ground and ricocheting off armor plating. RPGs hissed smoke in erratic patterns as Marines took cover behind nearby mud walls and houses and returned fire.
A bullet punctured the helmet of Lance Corporal Curtis Hensley as he scurried for the wall, lodging in his brain and knocking him unconscious. Navy Corpsman Greg Cinelli braved the fusilade of hostile fire to drag the downed gyrene to safety.
The firefight continued unabated until a helicopter gunship and a mobile quick reaction force swept to the rescue. Terrorist attackers fled to melt back into the city’s population. Willis and Hensley were the only friendly casualties this time.
Chaplain Kimball was waiting at the gate for the blooded patrol when it returned to base. There would be more questions for the Bible Answer Man, circumstances having impressed upon each Marine the reality that each passing day might be his last.
Lance Corporal Curtis Hensley and Corporal Billy Willis recovered from their wounds, although Hensley lost his right eye. Chaplain Kimball returned to the United States to become a civilian minister.
ARMY CORPORAL DAYTON KANNON,
World War II, 1944
As an ordained minister, Dayton Kannon could have sought a clergy deferment or requested to enter the Army as a chaplain. Instead, he chose to enlist as an ordinary infantry private.
“I’m no better than the other boys,” he reasoned.
Soon enough, he was carrying a new Browning automatic rifle (BAR) in the jungles of New Guinea, rooting out strongholds of recalcitrant Japanese. Fellow GIs nicknamed him “Preacher,” appropriately enough since he was a minister. He carried his BAR and his Bible.
The New Guinea rain forest was some of the darkest, most inhospitable geography on the entire planet. Blistering sun. Rainwater down the back of the neck and the crack of the buttocks. Wet and freezing at night. Exhausting treks through solid jungle teeming in the dark with shadows and silence. Swarms of bugs biting and sucking. Always craving fresh water, a break from what was treated in canteens to kill germs. Foot rot, coughs, and dysentery. “Oh, no! I’ve crapped my pants again!”
“Who cares? You already stink.”
By May 1944, war for most of the U.S. Sixth Army in New Guinea consisted of mopping up what advancing forces had left behind. It was more skirmish than set-piece battle. Reverend Kannon’s war was like that. And for several days, Kannon enjoyed the luxury of bed and real sheets in a rear hospital while being treated for minor shrapnel wounds. Although not fully recovered, he joined a group of eight soldiers headed back to his battalion with a load of ammunition. The BAR across his shoulders and pouches of ammo hanging off his frame were heavy enough to stagger an Aussie mule.
The jungle path serpentined beneath thick foliage. The trail was dimly lighted and the triple-canopy forest absorbed sound. Kannon lagged behind, weaker than he expected. Another GI dropped back to help him. At just that moment, Japanese ambushed the patrol with a rattle of machine guns and rifles that no amount of jungle canopy could absorb.
Machine gun slugs ripped a swath through the foliage and stitched Kannon from groin to ankles, knocking him flat on the trail. The other GI literally exploded at the waist, ripped into two parts. His top half flew one direction. His legs, still kicking, went the opposite.
Then, silence. Kannon had no way of knowing if the other Americans were dead or alive in hiding. He did know, however, that Japs always approached their victims to finish them off with bayonets and knives. A single movement of his pain-wracked body was sure to invite another volley of shots.
He had fallen with his BAR pointed in the direction of the ambush. He cautiously felt for the trigger. Then he waited, playing dead while inside he trembled with rage, terror, and anguish.
Turning to God, as he did in times of need, the minister-turned-warrior prayed silently and fervently. “Oh, God. If You get me out of this, I’ll do anything You say for the rest of my life.”
Leaves and bushes rustled. He heard stealthy footfalls approaching. His heart pounded against the jungle floor as, through slitted eyes, he watched enemy soldiers advance toward him. Gradually, they assumed human form against the foliage, their long rifles pointed, bayonets glistening like slivers of ice.
He dared wait no longer. He squeezed the trigger of his BAR, raking the flaming muzzle of the .30-caliber automatic rifle back and forth, spraying the Japanese, making them convulse and jerk in their tracks before heavy slugs slammed them to the ground.
An enemy sniper hiding in the top of a distant tree reacted to the slaughter of his comrades. His first shot punctured the muscles of Preacher’s left arm with a numbing blow. A second and third shot followed immediately, the reports from the rifle blending and ringing. One bullet gouged a bloody hole through Preacher’s neck. The second pounded his steel helmet like a sledgehammer driving a railroad spike through his brain. He went deaf. His eyes blurred, went almost blind.
He knew he had to be dead. A man couldn’t live with a bullet through his skull.
So this was what it was like to be killed?
The Jap sniper must have been astounded beyond words when the “dead” GI suddenly came back to life and snaked away through the brush, low-crawling as fast as he could. By the time the sniper regained his senses, he was too late to score further. The rest of his shots went wild.
Kannon tumbled out of sight into a shallow gully, the bottom of which was already occupied by another GI survivor of the ill-fated ammo patrol. This guy had been nailed through the heel of his foot and was hysterical with fear.
“I’ve lost my helmet and they’re going to kill me!” he howled.
Preacher thought he was probably dying anyhow, what with bullets through his arm, neck, hips, legs, and head. He took off his own damaged steel pot to give to the other soldier. That was when he discovered that the sniper’s slug had miraculously glanced off his helmet liner rather than continuing into his skull.
As the Japanese quickly withdrew, knowing that American reserves would be rushing to the scene, Preacher Kannon rolled over onto his back and, thankful to be alive, peered groggily up through where stray, thin shafts of sunlight penetrated jungle tops.
“Thank You, Lord…”
Unbelievably, Dayton Kannon’s numerous wounds proved superficial. True to his promise to serve God, he pastored churches for the next thirty-five years of his life.
ARMY SERGEANT JEFF STRUECKER,
Somalia, 1993
In 1993, Mogadishu, Somalia, was a shot-to-pieces dirtbag desert city on the northeastern tip of Africa where warlords had been fighting one another for power for three years. By the use of guile, terror, and drug dealing, Mohammed Farrah Aidid, a notorious warlord, struggled to the top of the trash heap. He dominated Somalia’s capital by starving half the population into submission and doping up the other half to fight his rivals for him.
UNOSOM II (U.N. Operations in Somalia II) dispatched troops consisting mostly of U.S. Rangers and Special Operations soldiers to end Aidid’s reign of terror and bring him to justice. Operating from a secure airfield and soccer stadium, U.S. Task Force Rangers conducted six raids into the dusty, chaotic city as of the first of October, nabbing key players each time.
On Sunday afternoon, October 3, the task force commander received intelligence that Aidid’s henchmen were holding a high-level meeting in a three-story building on Hawlwadig Road. In the middle of the day when the hostile streets were packed with people was no time to launch a raid. Nothing drew crowds faster than a fight. But in a situation like this, peacekeepers had to strike when the iron was hot.
The mission was hastily organized. It called for Army Rangers to fast rope in to secure the building on all sides, while Green Berets and Delta Force roped out of Black Hawk choppers onto the flat top of the building to make the snatch. A convoy of twelve Humvees and five-ton flatbeds for hauling out captives set out ahead of time from the airport en route to downtown Mogadishu. Sergeant Jeff Struecker’s ten-man squad of the 3rd Ranger Battalion led the procession in two Humvees.
Things went horribly wrong almost from the beginning. A young Ranger named Todd Blackburn fell from one of the Black Hawks during the rappelling, and critically injured himself. Armed Sammies—as soldiers called the Somalis—rallied to the target site in overwhelming numbers and opened fire on Americans with AK-47s and RPGs from every window, rooftop, and alleyway. The prisoner transport convoy was still blocks away when sounds of the fierce battle reached it.
As soon as the convoy arrived, the Ranger commander ordered Sergeant Struecker and his squad to escort the injured Blackburn to the field hospital at the airport. Struecker’s much-truncated cavalcade now consisted of three Humvees and fourteen soldiers.
Private First Class Jeremy Kerr drove the lead vehicle with Struecker in the front seat with him, Sergeant Dominick Pilla and Specialist Tim Moynihan in the backseat behind the metal protection plate, and Private First Class Brad Paulson at the trigger of the .50-caliber machine gun in the turret.
The rest of Struecker’s squad, another five Rangers, followed in the second hummer, while the third cargo Humvee carried Blackburn, a medic, and a couple of other Rangers from Blackburn’s unit.
By now the entire city seemed to have exploded. Hammered from every angle, Struecker’s little band wended its way through narrow, sandy, garbage-littered streets cluttered with signs of previous gunfights—burned out vehicles, piles of old tires, broken furniture, and wood scraps. All of these could be set ablaze to block streets and attract more fighters. The din of battle was terrifying, maddening. Sammies darted everywhere in bunches, firing as they ran. Roadblocks belched black smoke to mark the convoy’s route and summon Somali reinforcements.
“Paulson, you take the left side,” Sergeant Struecker directed. “Pilla, you take the right.”
Rangers fought back with everything they had—M-16s, carbines, submachine guns, .50-caliber heavy machine guns. Paulson swung his machine gun from side to side, thumping targets from anywhere and everywhere.
The three Humvees stormed through five blocks of pure hell before breaking out onto National Street, a four-lane boulevard that led back to the airfield. Miraculously, the squad had so far sustained no injuries.
Dom Pilla spotted a gunner in the mouth of an alley leveling an AK-47 at him when Kerr, at the steering wheel, whipped the hummer around a corner. He fired his M-16, answered at the same instant by the Sammie. The two blasts resounded simultaneously, covering each other.
Moynihan screamed, “Pilla’s hit! My God, he’s shot in the head!”
Struecker twisted around to look into the backseat past the metal plating. Sergeant Pilla, a big man with a big laugh from “New Joyzee,” was slumped over into Moynihan’s lap. The bullet had entered less than an inch above his left eye, just below the rim of his Kevlar helmet, and blew off the back of his head upon exiting. Blood was splattered all over the back of the Humvee, as though someone had taken a bucketful and splashed it.
Sergeant Dominick Pilla was the first American lost in combat in Mogadishu.
The tiny convoy reached the airfield after the most intense forty minutes any of the Rangers had ever experienced.
Square-jawed and good-looking with an iron physique and so much bottom that he never seemed to tire, Jeff Struecker had enlisted in the Army in 1987 at the age of eighteen. Wanting to be “the best,” he volunteered for airborne and the Army Rangers. By 1991, he was already a combat veteran, having shipped to Iraq for Desert Storm, the first Iraq war.
Struecker was also a devout Christian, having committed himself to Christ when he was thirteen years old, then recommitting himself after he became a Ranger. In the rough-and-bang culture of the Army’s elite branches, a Christian soldier was automatically considered weaker because of his compassion and expressed love for his fellow man. Struecker never saw it that way.
In his opinion, a soldier with a moral foundation was stronger than one without, as he had proved many times so far in his leadership, devotion to duty, and stamina. While combat soldiers formed bonds as tight as brothers, the Bible stated in Proverbs how Jesus Christ “sticks closer than a brother.”
Sergeant Struecker and his squad were shook up over Pilla’s death. Nonetheless, they received orders that would throw them back into “the Mog’s” fiery maw. Two Black Hawk helicopters had been shot down in the city. A rescue effort was being organized to reach the birds and their crews.
Before leading his men back into the fight, Struecker bowed his head and prayed. “God, I’m in deep trouble, as You can see. I need help. I’m not saying You should get me out of this. I just need Your help. My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet, I want Your will, not mine…”
Twice during that long and bloody African day and night, Struecker and his squad fought their way through the streets of Mogadishu in efforts to rescue helicopter pilot Mike Durant and his airmen. But U.N. forces reached the crash site too late. Durant had been taken captive and his crew killed.
After daybreak, Struecker’s worn and grimy squad straggled back to the safety of the airbase. Two members of the squad—Paulson and Specialist Bonnett—had been wounded, but the remaining seven were all right. The soccer stadium and the airport were gory scenes of death and human destruction. Shot-up helicopters and wrecked vehicles full of bullet holes were strewn about. More corpses were being brought in, extending the line of body bags on the tarmac. Eighteen Rangers and SpecOps would eventually be listed as killed in action.
Doctors and medics hooked up IVs and tended dozens of wounded. Helicopter rotors churned air constantly between the soccer field and the airbase as the more seriously wounded were airlifted to the field hospital. Some seventy-three soldiers would be treated for injuries ranging from minor to critical.
Stunned soldiers clustered around TV sets in hangars as CNN ran endless clips of jubilant Somalis dragging mutilated bodies of Americans through the streets. Weary and heartsick to the point of numbness, Sergeant Struecker went to his cot in the hangar to await further orders. He sat down, exhausted, face in his hands.
Soon, other Rangers confronting hard facts about their mortality and about life here and hereafter began to drift over to his cot. They knew Struecker had declared his Christianity. Now, they had questions.
“Jeff, why would God let this happen? If He had wanted to keep us from getting hammered so bad, He could have stopped it.”
Lines of soldiers with such questions approached Struecker’s cot one after the other throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening. Nearby, Sergeant Kurt Smith, a Christian friend, counseled other soldiers. The task force chaplain was also busy at the other end of the hangar. Combat and death forced warriors to look beyond the slender threads of life that anchored them to today.
“Jeff, I got questions. I need to talk to somebody.”
“Sit down here with me, man.”
“What I want to know is, where’s Dom Pilla now? What’s happened to him? And what’s going to happen to me if I get sent out there, and I get blown up? Then what?”
Struecker gave it to them straight as he understood it. “What I know is what the Bible says about all this. It is destined that each person dies only once and after that comes judgment. If a guy has put his faith and trust in Jesus Christ, he goes to heaven. If not—unfortunately, he doesn’t.”
“Man, that stinks, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t make the rules, you know. I’m just trying to give you the Bible answer to your questions. Jesus is the only one good enough to deserve Heaven. He made it possible for us to ride His coattails, so to speak, if we’ll turn from our sins and ask him to take us on. That’s the amazing offer of grace He extends to us.”
A number of tough Rangers in the hangar at Mogadishu that day knelt to recite the sinner’s prayer and invite Jesus into their hearts.
Sergeant Jeff Struecker made the decision shortly after returning to the United States from Somalia to become a military chaplain. He completed college in his off-duty time to earn his degree. On April 16, 2000, he mustered out of the Army as an enlisted soldier and immediately rejoined the Chaplain Candidate Program. In March 2001, Chaplain (Captain) Jeff Struecker took his first ministry assignment with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and is still on active duty.
ARMY CHAPLAIN DELBERT KUEHL,
World War II, 1944**
After battling its way up the boot of Italy—Sicily, Salerno, Anzio—the 504th Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division retired to England to refit and recuperate. It had been so shot up that Eisenhower held it in reserve on D-Day. By September 1944, however, the regiment was ready to fight again. It became part of the ill-fated operation known as Market Garden, the largest parachute attack in history.
After four days of intense fighting, British airborne troops trying to secure the bridge at Arnhem needed immediate relief. The 82nd Airborne was assigned to take a pair of side-by-side bridges, one a railroad, the other a highway, in the vicinity of Nijmegen. The seizure of these would allow British tanks to cross over and head up the road to relieve besieged paratroopers at Arnhem. General James Gavin, commander of the 82nd, came up with the idea of sending the 504th across the Waal River from the south to attack the bridges in open daylight. The maneuver had to be done swiftly and violently to prevent Krauts from blowing up the bridges if they concluded they could not hold them.
The display of might preparing for the daring mission was something to behold. Brits brought up their own forces to attack the southern ends of the bridges as soon as the 504th forded the river and moved against the northern ends. Day and night, British infantry and mechanized vehicles of all types and sizes moved up and into place—tanks, armored cars, half-tracks, mounted artillery pieces…
Regimental Chaplain Delbert Kuehl, twenty-seven, circulated among the soldiers of the 82nd on the afternoon of September 18, the day before the next morning’s attempt to cross the Waal, stopping here and there to chat or to pray with GIs. He had been with the 504th since before North Africa in 1943. Rather short and slight of build with boyish features, Kuehl belied in action his mild appearance. The rowdy paratroopers to whom he ministered knew him to be as tough as they. Armed only with his Bible, a cross, and a prayer, the little chaplain had already made two combat parachute jumps and accompanied his GIs all the way across Italy. He contributed whatever he could as spiritual guide to bedraggled soldiers and as stretcher bearer, medical assistant, and “mule” for transporting food, water, and supplies.
He approached a wooded area next to the main road leading toward Nijmegen and the two contested bridges. There, several officers of the 3rd Battalion were discussing how the regiment would cross the river and take its objective.
“Brits are bringing up the boats,” one officer commented.
“I hear there aren’t enough boats for everybody to cross at once,” said another. “We’ll have to do it in waves.”
“My God! In the daylight, no less.”
Boats still hadn’t arrived. How would they ever get here in time? Chaplain Kuehl expected large armored craft with powerful gasoline engines. After all, the river was wide with a strong current. The bridges were each 1,500 feet long, a span of over a quarter mile.
British trucks arrived at daybreak the next morning, each stacked with boats almost as flat as sheets of plywood. Officers and men alike stared with surprise and consternation as twenty-six flimsy craft were off-loaded and hurriedly assembled behind a berm out of sight of the river and Germans on the other side.
Each boat was nineteen feet long with collapsible canvas sides and a flat plywood bottom. Sides were held up by wooden staves that measured a scant thirty inches from floor to gunwales. Fifteen paratroopers with weapons and battle gear would be jammed into each fragile craft.
Chaplain Kuehl did the math. At best, only four hundred fighters could be sent across in the initial wave, against an enemy force that numbered several thousands massed along the river banks, at the bridges, and inside Fort Hof van Holland on the flats a short distance back from the river. At least that many paratroopers could start out from this side of the river. How many reached the other side was in God’s hands. What remained of the boats would have to come back across for second and subsequent waves.
Watching the boats being assembled, Chaplain Kuehl shook his head. “How are they propelled?” he asked.
“Canoe paddles,” came the reply.
“It’s a suicide mission,” an officer gloomily predicted.
Another officer took out his cigarettes and lighter and hurled them as far as he could. “I won’t need them,” he said. “I have no chance of getting across.”
Kuehl decided to accompany H and I Companies of the 3rd Battalion in the first wave. As regimental chaplain, he didn’t have to go on the mission. But if ever there was a time when his men needed a chaplain, this was it. He declined to advise the regimental commander of his decision; he knew Colonel Reuben Tucker would disapprove.
Lying on his belly behind the river berm with the sounds of maritime construction behind him, he cynically surveyed the river bathed in morning sunlight. Battle plans called for H and I Companies to cross the river, attack the dikes and sweep over flat terrain to neutralize and bypass Fort Hof van Holland. Then they were to seize the railroad and Nijmegen-Arnhem highway junction, and, finally, drive southeast along the highway to take the north ends of the bridges. A tall order for GIs fortunate enough or blessed enough to survive the blanket of fire from Germans dug in along the dikes.
Chaplain Kuehl closed his eyes and prayed silently for the paratroopers.
British Typhoon attack aircraft prepped the objective a half hour prior to the assault, strafing the entire north bank with bombs, rockets, and automatic cannon fire. German AA saturated the sky with black puffs of exploding shells so thick it seemed the crossing might be better accomplished by walking on them rather than floating the river.
Allied artillery took the last punch with HE and white phosphorus to lay down a smoke screen on the river. At 1500 hours, the 3rd Battalion’s CO blew his whistle. Paratroopers grabbed the gunwales of their assigned boats and rushed up and over the embankment to reach the river. Erratic winds dissipated the smoke, denying the boats cover, and exposing them to German fire from the other side.
It took the Gemans a few minutes to recover from their surprise, during which time not a single shot was fired. Then they opened up with everything they had: machine guns, 30mm flak cannon, mortars, artillery, small arms. Shells exploded all along the bank and among the frantic Americans as they launched their boats. Small arms fire and shrapnel agitated the surface of the river like a hail storm. Men, screaming and crying out, were falling all around. Chaos and confusion reigned. A living nightmare.
Chaplain Kuehl tumbled headfirst into a boat with Major Julian Cook, the battalion commander, and a dozen other GIs. Another soldier reached for the gunwale, cried out in pain, and immediately sank in a swirl of bloody red water. Machine gun fire shredded an adjacent boat, sending men flying and reducing the craft to a piece of floating junk. One paratrooper got stuck in the mud and couldn’t extricate himself, becoming a stationary target for enemy sharpshooters.
Frantically paddling men strived desperately to get across the Waal before they were killed. Some paddled with the butts of their rifles, others with their hands, anything to keep the defenseless boats floating across and downstream toward the north shore. Blood and water rose knee deep in some of the boats. Large numbers of men fell over onto the knees of their friends. Bodies floated on the river or hung over the sides of the craft.
Chaplain Kuehl paddled with his hands. He heard Major Cook’s loud, quivering voice repeatedly reciting a cadence for the efforts of his paddlers: “Hail Mary, full of grace…Hail Mary, full of grace…”
The chaplain repeated his own phrase. “Lord, Thy will be done…Lord, Thy will be done…”
Thirteen of the original twenty-six boats and somewhat over half the initial first wave of men made it to the other side. Men more dead than alive scrambled over the dead and dying to reach the embankment. Fighting grew even more brutal as paratroopers caught their breath and headed up the banks to attack machine gun nests.
Carrying a first aid kit, Kuehl joined the brawl as part medic, part stretcher bearer, and part chaplain, working on the wounded and disregarding his own safety. Hearing a loud grunt, he glanced over his shoulder and, to his horror, saw a GI with his head completely blown off.
A mortar round exploded behind him as he tended a kid with three bullet holes in his belly. Shrapnel sprayed his back and knocked him forward. The frightened kid, though critically injured, cried out in alarm, “Oh, God! Chaplain, they got you, too!”
“I’m all right, son,” the chaplain responded. He felt blood trickling down his back.
He spent four hours on the beach under constant automatic weapons and sniper fire. He seemed to be everywhere he was needed. Again and again he ranged the battlefield to bandage and comfort the wounded and carry them to the remaining boats for evacuation. It was later estimated he personally carried more than thirty-five wounded men to safety.
The 504th finally took the bridges. As the action subsided, an officer landing on the north riverbank surveyed the scene of devastation and soon encountered a bloody and injured young chaplain.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he cried in amazement.
Chaplain Kuehl replied with a simple “This is where the men are.”
Chaplain Delbert Kuehl remained on the front lines with the 504th until the war ended. He received a Silver Star and two Bronze Stars for valor, a Purple Heart, and three Presidential Unit Citations. He returned to his native Minnesota in 1946 and married. His wife, Dolores, and he later went to Japan as missionaries and had five children, four of whom became Christian missionaries. In 1981 he retired to Lake Louise, Minnesota, where he still lives with his wife.