Download PDF of this full issue: v30n2.pdf (11.8 MB)

Chaplains

By James May

Once, while acting as a company first sergeant, I gave myself the collateral duty of chaplain's driver and assistant, during one of the wargames in the desert as part of the 11th Armored Cavalry, Blackhorse. Now, the chaplain can go all over this little pretend battlefield, roughly a sixty by sixty mile box, and he can't be killed, so it was a wonderful way for someone below the rank of general to see the whole shebang.

The desert at Fort Irwin is very much like Iraq, with a slight difference in flora and fauna, as there is no tchemma or camelthorn, and the scorpions are a somewhat flatter species, but there was a heat wave and the 140 degree temp made it exactly like Iraq.

Being a spiritual person I have sometimes taken up the role of chaplain - when that overpaid, underworked person was off slacking too much to hold services for them what wanted it, which was frequently.

In one case I came upon a kid who was nervous and depressed, with that certain lack of self-worth that sometimes afflicts Arab Americans in this country, perhaps akin to some Native Americans, I don't know. Not doing too well. So I question the soldier, ostensibly about a misplaced feeling of guilt that his track commander (an amiable and really tough Jewish mechanic from Chicago and a good pal) tells me the kid was suffering over a recent training accident involving fatalities. Hell, this kid is really a Palestinian American, I discover, but one whose parents did not pass on quite enough about language or religion, which is quite common. So I conduct a class in Islamic prayer, with the real chaplains looking on somewhat stony-faced from their *HMMMV*. I demonstrate something called tayummim, substituting the finest film of desert dust for the water of ritual ablution, and taught the kid the Fatiha (prayer verse of the Koran), and how to use an assault rifle for the qibla (facing direction) desert warrior fashion, and made Arab culture something honorable and acceptable, and afterwards linked him up with other Muslims. After a couple of repeat doses, the patient had about 80 or 90% more balance and self confidence. Track commander and crew members liked that.

* * *
Chaplains.

During the war I remember two, a somber young Catholic priest and a large, fat, loudmouthed Everything-else, who prated about being on a crusade against the "Chicoms" while chomping a cigar. Most of the troops hated him, and I actually saw them stuffing helmets and jackets into the loudspeaker once when the evening prayer came on. In a vain appeal to the troops his prayer was often obscene; one I remember was "Please, God, let the bombs fall straight on the little yellow motherfuckers." His dislike for "negroes" was well known, too. That gentleman must have had a fun war, slept when he wanted, plenty of chow and no danger ever, except when four black troops beat the stuffings outta him once.

One Sunday he got some very senior guy to order everyone to attend his famous fire and brimstone sermon. There were these clean, starched officers sitting all prissy in the front row. My two best friends happened to be a couple of arrogant, swashbuckling Puertoriquenos, and they halted the chaplain's braying just as he was really getting in stride, as if seriously disturbed about a doctrinal matter.

"Question! Is man made in the image of God?" one yelled in his heavy accent. Well, yes. Suspicious.

"Is God, according to the Law of Moses, circumcised?" The bosses up front all twist around.

"If so, what happened to the foreskin?" And the other joined in, screaming angrily in a blind passion, "Yeah! Yeah, what happened to the foreskin?!"

Other guys started bawling, "Yeah!" I was quaking like a spastic. The preacher's head turned purple and he started spitting like a cat. "Get these mmm - mmmm - pffft out of here!"

* * *
Recently I heard on the shortwave some seminary student proudly read his magnum opus in praise of some Vietnam combat chaplain. Between the lines, however, the knowing listener could pick up a disclaimer that the man had ministered only to known, practicing Catholics, even on the battlefield.

Our Catholic chaplain had been like that: he dealt with the war by strictly limiting his activities to the conduct of ritual for card-carrying Catholics only, a tiny group of groupies. Sundry lost souls had sometimes wished to speak to him, I have no doubt, as he seemed intelligent and aware. But no way any of us accursed heretics could get him to violate his SOP. One would have to be a very lost soul indeed to approach "Little Yellow Motherfuckers," and at least one who tried committed suicide. I thought of looking up that reticent priest now on the Internet and berating him for having been one damned useless individual, or maybe really dumping on the young seminarian. But why beat one's head against the stone wall of closed minds, or rail against hypocrites who will only hate you the more for it?

I don't blame the Protestant. Perhaps he couldn't help being only a goddamned idiot, but I think that young priest knew better. So at last, after enough years, I figured I myself might minister to the troops just about as well, in the absence of anything better.