Chaplains hone survival skills
Washington Post
BALTIMORE — It has been a long time since anyone told Maj. Clark Carr to keep his head down, watch out for snipers and move, move, move!
Carr wears a cross on his camouflage helmet, and as an Army chaplain, he is a noncombatant, forbidden to carry a weapon. But if Carr is deployed to Iraq, where chaplains can suddenly find themselves in the heat of battle, he knows he will need to bring with him sharper survival skills.
That's why he and five other Maryland National Guard chaplains went through a sort of mini-boot camp recently at an Army installation outside Baltimore. They ducked and covered from imaginary enemy fire. They hit the dirt and ran more than many of them had in awhile.
And they did it over and over again as a master sergeant pounded home to them that Iraqi insurgents may not distinguish between men of the cloth and men of arms.
"It hones the skills and keeps us aware of the environment the soldiers are facing," said Carr, a pastor at Grace United Methodist Church in Hagerstown, Md., as he wiped sweat from his forehead.
The idea for the training came from a chaplain stationed in Iraq who told his stateside brethren that this war was like nothing he had ever seen, and that the chaplains needed to be better prepared for it, said Col. William Sean Lee, senior chaplain of the Maryland National Guard.
"We don't want to be a liability," Lee said. "We want to be able to keep ourselves safe."
So far, only one chaplain has been seriously wounded in Iraq, according to the Army Chief of Chaplains office. Timothy Vakoc, a Roman Catholic priest from Minnesota, was injured when a bomb blew up next to his Humvee in May 2004 as he was returning from presiding over Mass for soldiers in Mosul.
His injury was a reminder that this is a war without front lines, Lee said.
That's exactly the message Master Sgt. Wayne Henderson tried to get across as he lectured the chaplains last week.
"Over there, it can go south at any time," he said.
Chaplains aren't completely without protection in war zones. They're accompanied at all times by assistants, armed soldiers who act as bodyguards — or, as Williams put it, "the hammer of God."
During training, the assistants practiced keeping the chaplains in tow as they ran an obstacle course designed to simulate an urban battlefield.
When it was Chaplain Ronald Martin-Minnich's turn to charge through the course last week, he held on tightly to his assistant, a staff sergeant, who told him: "We'll run to the car, sir, staying low. OK, let's go!"
After they sprinted the 20 yards and crouched behind the car, the staff sergeant chastised his charge: "You've got to get down, sir."
Then they were off again.
Henderson paced the course, critiquing the pairs' technique, telling them to move faster and stay lower, exhorting them to stay alert for snipers in the shadows.
In between drills, he dispensed rapid-fire advice: Never sleep during a convoy. Keep a safe distance from anyone suspicious. Stay close to your assistant. And after the course left some of the chaplains gasping, he also suggested some time on the treadmill.
Carr, who resembles a modern-day Friar Tuck, readily admitted that he wasn't in war-time shape. The training was a reminder that in addition to blessing the dead and leading troops in prayer, he'll need to know what to do when the bullets start flying.
Even though he has accompanied the 82nd Airborne and the 1st Armored divisions in the past, his biggest fear these days is aggressive local drivers.
"When I'm behind the pulpit, I'm not looking for snipers in the rafters," he said.
