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THE MILITARY: FAITH UNDER FIRE -- Newsweek
Magazine reports on how chaplains and
soldiers keep their faith during war.
You may also want to read the three
related stories at the link below.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/
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How Chaplains, Soldiers Keep Faith During War
By Eve Conant
Newsweek
Army Chaplain Roger Benimoff heard the IED blast and saw the smoke
rising. From his vantage point at a forward-aid station on the morning
of June 7, 2005, he peered through a fog of dust as .50-caliber
machine-gun fire erupted in the distance. Then the guns went silent.
Benimoff helped medics get stretchers ready for the wounded. But when
the soldiers of Fox Troop returned to station near Tall Afar, all they
had was the bloodied corpse of one of their men. Benimoff began a
familiar death ritual. The heat was closing in on 100 degrees; a smell
of diesel fumes filled the air. Benimoff gathered the medics around the
corpse of their comrade in the shade of an armored personnel carrier.
Ignoring the din of rumbling engines and radio chatter, he began to pray
in a strong and reassuring voice, quoting Psalm 121: I lift up my eyes
to the hills—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth. He prayed for the soldier's family. He
prayed for the medics who had wanted so much to help. He prayed that God
would look down upon their small circle and surround them with his love.
Yet at times in the Iraq War zone—and after coming home—Benimoff began
to question that love. His experience, detailed in a daily journal and
voluminous e-mails from Iraq shared with NEWSWEEK, is a tale of a devout
young man who begins his time in Iraq brimming with faith and a sense of
devotion that carries him into a second tour. "My heart is filled with
prayer and God is giving me a discerning spirit," he writes at the start
of that later deployment. "The spiritual battle I am engaged in is a
minute-by-minute war." He is "on fire for God." But the start of a
full-blown crisis of faith—one he grapples with as a chaplain at Walter
Reed Army Medical Center today—is seen in his journal entry from that
night near Tall Afar: "Can [I] keep doing this? Is the pain & the
heartache worth it? ... God, please let me look to you and no other."
Benimoff's journal is written in a scribble of printed letters on 126
unlined pages. It's a tale of helicopter crashes, suicides, improvised
explosive device blasts—and the professional, spiritual and marital
troubles of soldiers seeking comfort. A mixture of adrenaline and
devotion keeps Benimoff focused in the theater of war. Yet over time,
his spiritual foundation is shaken by the carnage. The demons surface in
full once he finds more time for reflection. After joining Walter Reed
last June, Benimoff was plagued by questions. "I am not sleeping well
and I am still scared," he wrote. "I was reading my Bible and I found
myself getting violently mad at God." For a brief period early this
year, he came to "hate" God, and wanted nothing to do with religion.
God can be found or lost in a foxhole, but rarely does war leave
someone's faith untouched. In some ways, Benimoff's story is common to
people of all walks of life and all beliefs. It is the story of
spiritual struggle—and of trying to accept a world of both good and
evil, where pain and loss seem unconnected to faith and justice. Such
tensions are magnified on the battlefield. Countless soldiers—not just
chaplains—have struggled with how to reconcile a God of love with a God
who allows the terror of conflict. For centuries theologians and
philosophers have grappled with ideas of "just war": thou shalt not
kill, but under certain conditions—to prevent wider bloodshed and
suffering—slaughter by armies is acceptable.
Many American soldiers in Iraq wear crosses; some carry a pocket-size,
camouflage New Testament with an index that lists topics such as Fear,
Loneliness and Duty. U.S. troops have conducted baptisms in the Tigris.
They often huddle in prayer before they go on patrol. Not everyone is
comfortable with this. About 80 percent of soldiers polled in a 2006
Military Times survey said they felt free to practice their religion
within the military. But the same poll found that 36 percent of troops
found themselves at official gatherings at least once a month that were
supposed to be secular but started with a prayer.
The survey didn't ask soldiers whether they suffered doubt or loss of
faith. National Guard Specialist George Schmidt, 30, who was raised as a
Methodist in Titusville, Pa., and became a Wiccan before deploying to
Iraq in June 2006, says he saw fellow soldiers driven in different
directions. "Either you're running to God, grasping to hold on to the
guy you were before you came to Iraq, or you're running right away from
him because of what you're seeing," he says. Schmidt is now being
treated for posttraumatic stress disorder and anxiety at Walter Reed.
Army Specialist Joe Schaffel, 24, who is also being treated for PTSD,
went to Roman Catholic school in Sleepy Hollow, Ill. "I had faith until
I got to Iraq," says Schaffel, who returned from his second deployment
last September. "I haven't gotten it back since. Once you get there, you
wonder how God could allow anyone to go through that."
It is up to military chaplains to help relieve battlefield stress, even
as they may be suffering themselves. According to a 2006 military study,
27 percent of chaplains and their assistants in the field reported
burnout levels that were "high" or "very high." Some of the potential
effects of what the Army calls "provider fatigue" are acutely troubling
for chaplains: hopelessness and doubts about spirituality.
No polls show how many chaplains have difficulty reconciling a good and
loving God with the carnage of war. And it's clear that battle can both
strain and strengthen faith. "I still have dreams where I'm throwing up
little flag-draped caskets," says Chaplain (Maj.) Victor Chatham, who
served with the National Guard in Kuwait in 2004, conducting funeral
"ramp ceremonies" and debriefing traumatized soldiers. "It wasn't so bad
blessing one or two caskets, but when there were 13 at once, it's a
different kind of duty." He retired from the guard shortly after that
deployment and sought therapy. He's still a believer, but he says "there
is no way that questions of faith don't come up in an atmosphere like
that."
Many chaplains think that war strengthens their belief and the
spirituality of the troops they serve. "It is the trials of life that
ultimately help us to grow in our faith," says Air Force Chaplain
(Capt.) Trent Davis, who was deployed to Iraq in 2005. He recalls one
soldier who wasn't much of a believer at home but decided to read a
Psalm each day while deployed. The day the soldier started in his
vehicle across the Iraqi sands was the day he read from Psalm 23: Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no
evil. "After that his faith grew much deeper," says Davis.
Military chaplains are further stressed because there aren't enough of
them. About 2,700 chaplains minister to an active-duty force of 1.4
million, meaning there's one chaplain for every 518 service members. In
peacetime, the ratio is deemed adequate. But with the military fighting
two wars, service members often need daily counseling to cope with
emotional trauma. Many soldiers suffer spiritual doubts in war, but the
stresses can be especially acute for chaplains. By ministering to men
and women who are struggling to keep faith, many are forced to confront
their own doubt again and again.
Chaplains are unarmed, but they go where the troops go. They help in any
way they can. "When there were 17 or 18 bodies, it was more than
mortuary services could handle," says Army Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Dick
Olmstead, now retired, speaking of his deployment to Kuwait and Iraq in
2004. "Maybe it's not the brightest move to have chaplains opening body
bags to place 40-pound bags of ice on dead soldiers, but you have to go
where your hands and heart are needed." Still, after 20 or 30 ramp
ceremonies, he says, "you can't help but wonder if God is really
listening to you."
Benimoff didn't ever expect to enter into such a close relationship with
God. Born in New York in 1972 to parents with Jewish ancestry, he was
raised in a Baptist household by his mother and stepfather, who moved to
Austin, Texas, when Roger was 7. The family went to church on Sundays,
but Benimoff wasn't particularly devout. When he graduated from
Smithville High School in 1991, he enlisted in the Army and was sent to
Fort Riley, Kans. Later he joined the National Guard while studying for
a criminal-justice degree at Texas State University-San Marcos. It was
around this time, he says, when he needed "God's presence."
Benimoff didn't just want a job; he wanted a meaningful life. At a
Baptist student-group meeting, he met his future wife, Rebekah McIntyre.
"It was the first time I saw people practicing what they preached, and
it amazed me," he recalls. "And I recognized her as having the kind of
relationship I wanted with God—she was truly in love with the Lord." She
was also very pretty and had a great sense of humor. He had found his
family and his calling.
They married in 1996. Their first son, Tyler, was born just after
Benimoff began divinity school at the Southwest Baptist Theological
Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas. Their second son, Blaine, was born during
his chaplain residency at a Texas hospital. But Benimoff knew where he
was destined to serve. He had already taken the summer of 2000 to
complete the Army chaplains' officer program at Fort Jackson, S.C. "I
had always been a soldier," Benimoff says. "What better way to serve God
than to help soldiers spiritually and emotionally?" He went back to
regular duty in the Army on July 16, 2003, as a chaplain and a captain.
Three weeks later he was in Al Anbar province, in charge of the
spiritual welfare of 1,100 troops.
Benimoff wasn't supposed to be on the front lines. He was a chaplain
with the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, within a support squadron not
designated for combat. But in Iraq, that distinction is easily lost. On
Nov. 29 that first year, Benimoff was resting in his office when the
headquarters troop commander rushed in to say a convoy had been
ambushed. Benimoff raced to the hospital to meet the choppers; he helped
identify two dead soldiers. He recalled a verse quoting God from Isaiah
54:10, which he had passed out to soldiers earlier in the week: Though
the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love
for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed. He
continued to use that verse in sermons; it captured the soldier's sense
of grief and his own belief in God's steadfast presence. But it didn't
explain why bad things happen to good people, a question Benimoff would
face again and again from the soldiers he served with—and from within
himself.
Once back in safe territory at Fort Carson, Colo., Benimoff learned he
would soon be deployed again. This time he asked to be placed with a
combat maneuver squadron. "These are the guys that go in and kick down
doors and drive tanks," says Benimoff. "I wanted to be there for them."
He confided in his journal, however, that he was not sure he'd recovered
yet from the deaths he endured during his first deployment. And he was
terrified of getting killed.
He headed back to Iraq in February 2005, this time to Tall Afar. "It was
a ghost town when we got there, no one went on the roads," he recalls.
"There were decapitated bodies on the street." Benimoff often traveled
in Bradley fighting vehicles or Abrams tanks to reach soldiers in small
outposts. "I could go to one post and the next day the soldier there
might be killed by a sniper," he says. He writes in March, "I feel that
God is maturing and blessing me ... [This] is almost a monastic type of
existence." Later that month he quotes to himself from Hebrews 11:1,
What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is
going to happen.
Yet Iraq is a place that often kills hope. Soldiers come to him
distraught as marriages fall apart. Others feel tricked by the military
when their tours are extended. On April 20, he writes of a memorial
service he just finished for a private first class. A week later a
Bradley crew is badly shaken up after a roadside blast. On April 29, two
soldiers are killed by an IED. "Already, I am repeating my pattern from
[the first tour]: I am doing more memorial ceremonies than preaching ...
I feel numb."
One day in May, snipers take aim at him and other soldiers on a hospital
rooftop in Tall Afar. "The Army must be warping me," he writes, "because
it was not a big deal to get shot at. Last time I was petrified." The
adrenaline rush soon wears off; he writes that it is "hard for me to
feel at all."
He's racked by contradiction. He is "getting to impact soldiers
spiritually ... and personally as they go through this difficult time
... I am in the middle of history and I have a captive audience!" Yet
looking back, he says, he could see that he was reaching a point "when
your cup of grief gets full, you can't hear another horrible story." In
a single two-week period there were four suicide bombings in the area he
was stationed. He counseled his men on many questions he was struggling
with himself. "They would ask me: if I'm a child of God, then why isn't
God protecting me?" he says. "In the book of Job we see that God rains
on the just and the unjust, but that's not always easy to accept. Some
soldiers stop believing in God, others grow closer to him. Everything is
accelerated in a war zone."
Soldiers would also feel hopeless because of domestic troubles "like
when the water heater breaks at home and they can't help." In a June 19
entry, he writes of one of his men threatening to hurt himself to get
home to a wife demanding a divorce. By this time, Benimoff's own wife is
uncertain about what is happening to her husband, with whom she
communicates by e-mail, instant message and hurried phone calls. "He
would say some things that flew in the face of my own beliefs about
God," Rebekah recalls. "Sometimes he would ask me: why does a loving God
allow suicide bombers to attack civilians? We were both brought up with
a picture of God that was different from the world he was seeing. But I
was afraid he might turn away from God completely. The things he said
didn't sound like something I wanted my husband to be saying. But after
a while, I realized that he was having a crisis. So I said, 'OK, better
to let him test than to tell him 20 reasons why he's wrong'."
As the months go on, there are more killings; more blood and shattered
glass in the Humvees; and the suicide of an American soldier in another
squadron. On Aug. 13, Benimoff writes, "I start the service in 45
minutes and I am really feeling 'out of it'." Two days later he admits
to himself, "I don't have a desire to totally give myself to God.
However, I am praying that God changes my desire."
By November, exhaustion sets in: "24 critical stress debriefings for
over 300 soldiers and six memorial services later I am very tired. I
have so much anger inside." Yet Benimoff has been offered a chance to
join Walter Reed as a chaplain working with wounded outpatients. He is
excited by the prospect, but daunted by his own misgivings. Flying home
in January 2006, his group is met at the Bangor, Maine, airport by a
group of veterans. They include a World War II vet who speaks to them of
his joy and pride in liberating Jews from a concentration camp. Benimoff
later admits in his journal, "I do not feel the same about what I have
done but maybe I will feel different years from now."
As time goes by, though, he feels worse. He sees himself growing
emotionally detached and begins taking anxiety medication. When the
insomnia subsides, there are nightmares. When he's awake, he's
hyper-vigilant. He can't stop the visions: flags draped on caskets,
C130s lifting off on "hero flights" to take a fallen soldier home for
burial. He finds solace in running, sometimes several times a day; he
loses 30 pounds in six months. He forgets to eat. "I was back in the
States," he says. "I thought everything was supposed to be fine, but it
wasn't." He avoids public places and he avoids his faith. "I am not
doing my readings and I don't care," he writes on Aug. 28. "I have been
ruined." Three months later, he adds: "Have I wasted 10 years of my
life? My God doesn't protect me and I feel vulnerable!"
Benimoff becomes distant to his wife and sons. "He wouldn't respond to
the smallest things," says Rebekah. "I'd ask, 'Do you want a sandwich?'
and he'd say, 'I can't talk about that right now.' ... It was hard to go
through that time, and in a way, we're still figuring it out."
Benimoff's fear of groups even made it hard for him to attend church.
"We went to a megachurch one time, with 5,000 people, and we won't do
that again," says Rebekah.
Benimoff's journal ends Jan. 22 of this year. The last lines read: "I do
not want anything to do with God. I am sick of religion. It is a crutch
for the weak ... We make God into what we need for the moment. I hate
God. I hate all those who try to explain God when they really don't
know." By late March, during his first interview with NEWSWEEK, he was
recovering his faith but the pain had not subsided. "The symptoms are
still there; this past year has been the most challenging of my life,"
he says. "But I have a new relationship with God. I tend to be much more
blunt with him."
As part of his daily rounds at Walter Reed, Benimoff strolls the campus
gardens or the lobbies where outpatient vets congregate. Some are on
crutches, some walk with prosthetics and some are in wheelchairs. His
job is to be there, to say hello and to see if they need someone to talk
to. Benimoff even offers up his cell-phone number, and tells the vets
they can call 24/7. He invites 22-year-old Army Specialist Brent
Hendrix, a Southern Baptist, to talk. Hendrix lost his right leg, and
suffered multiple other injuries when an IED hit his vehicle last June
in Al Anbar province. He talks with Benimoff about NASCAR—and later
about how there's no time to think of commandments like "Thou shalt not
kill" when enemies are shooting at you. Army Sgt. Andrew Buchanan, 25,
who lost part of his right heel in an IED blast in Baghdad, tells
Benimoff he's not much of a believer—but that his brother's a born-again
Christian. He shows Benimoff a medallion of Saint George that his mother
gave him before he deployed, and they chat about patron saints.
The rounds make Benimoff feel a certain kinship. The patients talk about
their spirituality, and they can discuss "the same issues I am dealing
with—anger towards God and grief over loss," he says. He shares a verse
that best describes where he is today with his faith, Psalm 40:1-2. I
waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He
lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet
on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. After two deployments and
his new mission serving the wounded from Iraq, anger and grief are daily
companions. But, Benimoff says: "God gave me room to cry out as I
flashed back to traumatic events and the soldiers my unit lost in those
two deployments. He allowed me to slowly move through the mud and the
mire." Now Benimoff is trying to look forward as much as back. "It's
messy, it's not a pretty ending," he says. "I cannot tie a pretty bow on
my story and I don't believe that God would want me to." He thinks of
the soldiers whose lives were lost, but also of those who survived. He
hopes that the verse of Psalm 40—I waited patiently for the Lord—which
is so meaningful to him, might help to lift the spirits of other
soldiers who fall into the same slimy pit.
With Dan Ephron, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Rod Nordland
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Larry Scott --
