leaves Walter Reed for a nearby hotel where his wife, Heather, waits. He asked her to accompany him to Washington. Even though it was a sobering trip, he didn’t want to squander a chance for extra moments together.
Time at home has hurtled by. There haven’t been enough quiet moments with Heather. He longs for more hours in the day to bounce on the backyard trampoline with Elie, six, and Sam, four. Or to hold Meribeth, almost two, in his arms. She will be talking the next time he sees her.
With the mystique of war forever dulled, the thought of leaving his family again is crushing.
Turner wonders what will unfold in the six months that remain in this deployment. He’s made mental notes to keep busy with plans for Easter, just a few weeks away. It will be a crescendo of some sort, he hopes, when the holiest and humblest day in Christianity is celebrated on ancient ground.
In five days, Turner will be back there, to behold the holy lands of the Bible through the mask of war.
Chapter 2
Inside a canvas tent, one of 70 erected in neat rows at Iraq’s Forward Operating Base Falcon, sits a soother of souls.
Turner stocks his office with movies, books, beef jerky, trail mix and toothpaste, stuff delivered almost every week in care packages from America.
The chaplain knows that a uniformed man seeking emotional help risks ridicule, especially in an infantry unit where a “suck-it-up” mentality reigns. The convenience-store look is a camouflage that helps lure in the war-weary.
When he sees a soldier lingering by the shelves, checking out every last DVD, Turner knows it’s an invitation to ask: ”How’s it going?”
If the conversation opens up, he will sometimes invite the soldier to sit in a cherry-colored upholstered chair he scavenged. It’s the seat of contemplation, and can do for a soldier what a bandage does for an open wound.
Turner’s flock is a battalion of almost one thousand soldiers who arrived in Iraq in May 2007 as part of the surge in U.S. troops ordered by President Bush. There was no room in the barracks for the extra soldiers at this base east of Baghdad, designed to house five thousand. The 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment was relegated to drab, dusty tents.
Turner set up shop in a tent tucked away at one end of the encampment, out of sight of the high-traffic command center. Outside his hooch, stacks of sandbags keep bullets and shrapnel from penetrating. A small sign crafted in the blue and white colors of the Fort Stewart-based 3rd Infantry Division is the only indication that consolation awaits inside. It says: “Battle Chaplain.”
Part of Turner’s job here is to intervene in soldier crises. Unscripted and plentiful, they require improvisation that seems antithetical to military doctrine, in which everything is planned, rehearsed, tweaked, then re-planned and re-rehearsed.
Turner keeps his door open late into the night. When he’s gone, he posts a note on an erasable marker board. On this March afternoon, he scribbles: ”At the gym. Back at 16:00.”
A month has gone by since he visited David Battle and other wounded soldiers at Walter Reed, since he said goodbye to his wife and children for a second time and returned to Iraq.
He has enlarged a family photograph, taken at a Savannah square last year, and taped it on a plywood wall that separates his space from others. After nine long months, the ache for Heather and the kids is constant now. War has lost its promise of adventure.
He keeps occupied with thoughts of Easter and welcomes diversions that make the hours tick by faster—like working out at the gym.
In his black Army shorts and gray t-shirt, Turner crunches through a field of thick gravel, which the U.S. military put down at all its Iraqi bases to keep the dust down. He contemplates which muscles he will work at the gym. He’s been trying to bulk up his upper body.
Suddenly, Turner hears a sucking sound in the air. A rocket whizzes overhead and slams into a dirt road about 75 yards away.
The chaplain drops to his knees. Shrapnel flies past him. He hears it ping off a concrete barrier.
Out there—on missions in Iraq’s villages and cities—soldiers expect to come under enemy fire. But a rocket attack on base catches everyone off guard. It’s the closest Turner has been to incoming fire at Falcon. His pulse is racing.
”I’ve already had my workout, and I haven’t even gone to the gym yet,” he says, trying to stay calm.
”Wow. That was a close one.”
He runs instinctively into the aid station, where Master Sgt. James Alderson is wincing in pain. His blood-soaked shirt hangs on the back of a chair.
”That hurts,” Alderson says to the medics attending to him. ”Son of a ----.” He catches his language in front of the chaplain.
Alderson has shrapnel lodged under his left arm, but he’s going to be all right.
“I’m glad you’re OK,” Turner says. “Crazy day.”
He runs brazenly back outside and resumes a brisk pace to the gym, a popular place for soldiers looking to relieve stress. Last summer, he worried much more about dying. He has learned to rely on his ”bullet-proof faith.”
He doesn’t take risks to test his faith, but deep in his soul, he rests in his devotion to God. He can’t help the adrenaline rush when a bomb explodes, but he isn’t paralyzed by fear.
”I don’t want my kids to grow up without their dad. But I’m OK with dying,” he says matter-of-factly, scanning the gravel for shrapnel. He picks up a shard of metal that’s still hot—a souvenir for his desk, a reminder of life’s fragility.
Turner keeps walking. He is halfway to the Falcon gym, near a series of basketball courts, when he hears his name called out.
”Hey sir! Over here.”
The sun is high in the sky, and Turner strains to see who it is.
”Aren’t you gonna play basketball?”
Turner squints and realizes the guys from Bravo Company have assembled on a court. Among them are Sgt. Luke Hitchcock and Spc. John Figueroa, known affectionately as “Hitch” and “Fig.”
”C’mon, sir,” they yell. ”It’s us!”
Bravo’s 2nd platoon is at Falcon from nearby Patrol Base Hawkes for 24 hours of relaxation. It’s the first time they’ve had a chance to play basketball together in almost a year.
Turner can’t refuse. Not after everything the platoon went through.
On a searing July day in 2007, Figueroa, only 24 years old, entered a suspected insurgent building in rural Arab Jabour. With him were his roommate Pfc. Bruce Salazar, an explosives expert, and a trained German shepherd.
Fig was helping clear the premises, his eyes surveying every corner, his M-4 rifle locked and loaded.
Though the area is just 10 miles southeast of central Baghdad, it had
