A Chaplain's War Correspondance

Carl Wright is an Air Force Chaplain from our Diocese. He is also a good friend of Grant's and a seminary classmate of mine. --brian


War Correspondence: Here We Go Again!
by Chaplain Carl W. Wright

“Here we go again, same old stuff again!” Those are words to the soldier’s well-known marching jodie (cleaned-up of course for Christian consumption). Here I go again, in the Middle East, in the middle of Lent, my second tour of duty at the Front. I think I’m a part of the surge that’s supposed to make everything right once and for all. (No comment on that.) But I had a feeling my Lent would be profitable this year, and God has not disappointed.

Having been here in Kuwait a couple of weeks, I’d like to share some thoughts about my present reality. First it begs comparison to the combat M*A*S*H hospital in Iraq last year. There is no comparison. Last year was more danger and more action. This year is safer and more remote. I am an Air Force chaplain on the Kuwaiti Naval Base, situated right on the beautiful Persian Gulf, in a small Air Force contingent, making occasional forays into Iraq, answerable to an Army chain-of-command, serving hundreds of transient sailors, soldiers and marines! How’s that for a clear description? It may be bad grammar, but it perfectly describes my job. Worse, I’m quartered in what could easily pass for an Iraqi prison, in my own little cell. My private bath consists of a crude shower head that looks like an instrument of torture and toilet that’s a hole in the floor attractively surrounded by Arabic ceramic tiles. But I’m not complaining.

Already I’ve divined a first Lenten lesson: this wartime experience will be more difficult for me than last year’s. Last year I experienced first hand the horrors of war. I touched death daily. This year I’m slightly removed from it; and will go in and out of it. Where last year I was an eye-witness, almost a victim; this year I’m a “hear-say” witness to the action.

God is speaking to me. It was easier to deal with the opposite extreme of my American way of life; which was Iraq last year. It will be more difficult, however, to deal with oil-rich Kuwait for these six months, where the most exciting thing I’ll do is preach the Gospel, celebrate the Sacraments, feed the orphans, and listen to warriors’ confessions.

Oh dear, what am I saying? How ungrateful can one be? Have I forgotten how blessed I am to be here, God’s servant to hundreds of grateful young souls? Too many of us chaplains vainly seek to be where the “action” is, forgetting that in ministry the action is wherever God sends us. So I guess my second Lenten lesson can be summarised in the words of that good ole Baptist hymn, “Count your blessings, name them one-by-one; count your blessings and see what the Lord hath done!” Amen.