Soldiers pray for each other in battle

See the story below this note:


Dear Readers,

Next month, I plan to give away my book, No Small Miracles, to the hospital staff in Balad Iraq. To do this, I need your help.

I need people who are willing to sponsor the wholesale cost of the book. The books come 24 to a carton and the publisher charges me $168. I'll pay for shipping and I won't make any profit from this.

If you can donate toward the costs, I'll write your name in the book with your email address so that the soldier or airman can communicate with you.

Most of you are familiar wtih the book and you know that it has been helpful to heatlhcare workers as well as those experiencing grief.

Let me know by email if you can help and I'll give you an address to mail the check.

Blessings!

I

February 21, 2009
Soldiers pray for each other in battle

BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY

-- As the chaplain at the Air Force Theater Hospital here at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, I often ask wounded soldiers what they are praying for.

Their answers contain some surprises. They usually are praying more for their battle buddies than themselves.

Army Sgt. Robert Stucki from Clarksville, Ky., was praying such a prayer when I met him earlier this month at the hospital.

As a member of the 194th Military Police Co. out of Fort Campbell, he was the truck commander in a convoy leaving Fallujah when he saw something thrown toward his truck.

The small "thing" was a grenade, and it packed a punch.

Fortunately for Stucki's crew, they weren't riding in an average vehicle. They were in a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle.

Lying in a hospital bed relating his story, Stucki told me the explosion was like a "welding arc in front of my eyes."

" 'We've been hit!' " Stucki remembers thinking. " 'I need to know about my crew.' I started yelling for my driver to push through."

Twenty minutes later, the MRAP pulled into the battalion aid station.

Stucki remembers "praying the whole way for my gunner and my driver to be OK."

Only after Battalion Aid assured him his crew suffered superficial injuries did Stucki turn his attention to his own spiritual aid and requested his chaplain come and pray.

"I put my faith in the Lord and my trust in Him," he told me. "I was just praying, 'Take care of my guys and help me with the pain.' "

However, Stucki's injuries were serious enough for medics to load him on a helicopter for transport to the theater hospital. With rotors turning, a lay minister from his church administered a blessing just before takeoff.

Minutes later, I prayed alongside his gurney as Emergency Room staff worked on both his arm and leg.

The next day, Stucki was making light of those injuries: "Comparatively minor," he concluded, "compared to the potential of this attack."

Minor? Really? I wondered.

"What should have happened?" I asked him.

Stucki looked away. A bit of moisture surfaced in the eye of this 15-year veteran.

"Let's just say," he answered, "that with this type of attack, our survival was a testament to God watching out for us."

As he worked to regain some composure, Stucki explained his crew had traded their humvee for the MRAP two days before the attack. MRAPs are designed to protect occupants against armor-piercing roadside bombs.

"By the grace of God, we were in the MRAP, and the thing passed between my legs."

Then with a glance at his legs -- both intact -- he said all he needed was "a few surgeries with plates and screws."

As we finished our visit, the nursing staff were making preparations to load Stucki on the plane to Germany and then home to Clarksville.

"I don't want to leave my guys," he said. "They're my family.

"I'm so grateful to be watched over like I was and to have my crew saved."

Then, pointing toward the nursing station, with a noticeable break in his voice, he added, "The guys here are doing a wonderful job taking care of me; they are the real heroes!"

Burkes is stationed at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, through April. E-mail him at norris@
thechaplain.net or write him at Chaplain Maj. Norris Burkes, 332 AEW/HC, APO AE 09315-9997.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

quick favor requested

Dear readers,

I'm working on confirming the list of papers running my columns and I need your help. Below is a list of places I need help to confirm.

If you live in one of the towns below, can you email me with confirmation that your paper is running the column on a regular basis.

If you don't see your paper, it's because I'm certain about them running it or not.

Arkansas
The Baxter Bulletin Mountain Home AK

CONNECTICUT
The Norwich Bulletin, Norwich, CT

FLORIDA
Tallahassee Democrat

INDIANA
Journal and Courier, Lafayette
The Star Press, Muncie
Palladium-Item, Richmond

KENTUCKY
The Courier-Journal, Louisville

MICHIGAN
Battle Creek Enquirer
Daily Press & Argus, Livingston County
Times Herald, Port Huron

Minnesota
St. Cloud Times, St. Cloud, MN


NEW JERSY
Courier News, Bridgewater
The Daily Journal, Vineland
Ocean County Observer, Toms River, NJ

NEW YORK
Star-Gazette, Elmira
The Ithaca Journal

OHIO

The News-Messenger, Fremont
Lancaster Eagle-Gazette
The Marion Star
News Herald, Port Clinton


NORTH CAROLINA
Asheville Citizen-Times

SOUTH CAROLINA
The Greenville News, Greenville, SC

TENNESSEE
The Tennessean, Nashville
Ashland City Times, Ashland TN


WISCONSON
The Reporter, Fond du Lac
Green Bay Press-Gazette
Herald Times Reporter, Manitowoc
Marshfield News-Herald
Oshkosh Northwestern
The Sheboygan Press
The Daily Tribune, Wisconsin Rapids

A glint of hope amid war's chaos

JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq -- "What do you do during your shift?" asked a surgeon over a plate of chili macaroni.

My mind drifted over the past three days here at the Air Force Theatre Hospital in Balad.

The first day started with my visit to an Iraqi boy who was burned over most of his body from playing with matches and fuel.

"They don't know 'stop, drop and roll' here," whispered the pediatrician, who was weaving bandages between the boy's toes.

I beamed a smile toward the boy's perfect and untouched face. He offered no emotion in return. Without much ability to talk to the family, I knew of only one way to offer respect.

I passed a copy of the Koran to the father. He placed his hand on his heart and gratefully received the book by kissing it and positioning it on the boy's pillow.

As we stood above the boy, we heard the PA crackle to life.

"Trauma call, trauma call, trauma call times four."

Four Americans wounded by an IED blast were being brought into our emergency room by people who work a 72-hour week in other jobs, but volunteer their spare time to help us.

During a trauma call, the frantic pace rivals the floor of the U.S. stock exchange. Amid this chaos, my assistant, Staff Sgt. David Pastorius, and I do our best to determine whether someone needs a priest.

Mostly, I stand alongside the medical folks as they work. I walk among the wounded and keep an eye out for those who might need to talk later. Some staff members are those who'd shed tears in the chapel service a few weeks back.

While most of the soldiers arrived in good shape, there would be tears again on Sunday, as one military member would go home without legs.

The rest of the day was quiet, but we try not to say that Q word among emergency staff. They are somewhat superstitious and jokingly consider the word "quiet" to be a jinx.

The next day, I was called for a committee meeting and hoped that meant a quiet day.

"Ethics Committee meeting," shouted the head nurse into the small space I share with my assistant. I exchanged questioning looks with Pastorius. These meetings are rare.

Our little burn patient wasn't doing so well. With burns over most of his body, he'd had a stroke and was septic. The Ethics Committee unanimously recommended the boy be allowed to die at home. We would send him home with maximum pain control so he could see a family that anxiously longed to hold him.

I left the meeting to find the pediatrician and the father rewrapping the boy's burns. The father loved this boy more than most of us could imagine and was taking the role of a nurse's aide alongside the doctor.

Sharing heavenward glances with the father, we both made the prayer gesture with palms pressed together. An hour later, the family left with their son, creating a torrent of staff tears in their wake.

During the next two days, someone must have jinxed us again with the Q word, because more trauma and more burn patients came to replace the ones to whom we'd said goodbye.

As I sat in the cafeteria, jets screamed overhead, helicopters fluttered in the distance, an occasional mortar struggled to penetrate our defenses, and this surgeon was asking me, "What do you do?"

I do what I also hope you do.

In the midst of chaos, I pray. I share a laugh. I wipe a tear. I offer a shoulder. I lend an ear.

And at the end of the day -- whether quiet or rushed -- I strive to be a visible reminder of the holy to a place that desperately needs it.

Burkes is stationed at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, through April. E-mail him at norris@thechaplain.net or write him at Chaplain Maj. Norris Burkes, 332 AEW/HC, APO AE 09315-9997.

Finding humor on deployment helps sanity

February 7, 2009

BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY

During my first month in Balad, Iraq, my columns have been pretty serious.

But I want to remind myself, and others, that lighter moments exist. It is these moments that remind us that a little laughter in our heart will help keep the sanity in our brains.

In that spirit, I offer this heavily edited version of a column written during my first deployment in early 2001 to Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Never before published, it's called "The Hat Full." It comes with the dubious warning: Don't read this while eating.

It's easy to lose things when you're deployed, especially my hat. It's shaped much like a baseball cap, and I'll usually place it under my shirt by tucking the bill into my beltline at the small of my back. It feels a bit like I'm shoplifting, but I'm less likely to lose it.

One morning, after finishing breakfast, I tucked my hat into the usual place and headed to the men's room to, well uh, you know.

Now, I definitely wasn't thinking, but if you thought about it, you'd realized that a hat falling into a porcelain fixture is unusually silent.

When I stood, I was surprised to notice that some careless fool ditched their hat in my toilet.

My first thought was, "Why didn't I notice this before?"

My second, and more sober thought, was that this fool's had a chaplain's cross on the front.

There was only one course of action here. I implemented a hat recovery mission and headed for the clinic's bio-waste bag.

I was going to need a new hat, but before Base Supply would issue a new hat, I'd have to justify my loss to the chapel's noncommissioned officer in charge. As Ricky Ricardo used to tell Lucy, I had "some 'splainin to do."

It can be difficult confessing your mistakes to a subordinate, but most military NCOICs are professionals at hiding their smirks.

Not this guy.

As I unfolded my story, he folded in half -- laughing hard enough to have a stroke.

Slapping his knees with both hands, he told me he'd heard of people crazy enough to have a head full of crap, but he'd never heard of anyone having a hat full.

He then demanded I give him "one good reason" why I should be issued a new hat.

Well, I explained, "There are a few bad officers who obviously have a hat full of crap, but it takes a really good officer to admit it."

With that remark, my NCOIC fell prostrate, hysterically beating the floor with his fist.

"I give up, Chaplain," he declared. "You got your new hat."

It's taken me eight years to think of a spiritual point, but here it is: The Bible says in James 5:16, "Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed."

I confessed my mistake -- my sin -- and got a new hat. The NCOIC gave me a new hat because admitting your mistakes always is the first step toward improvement; or perhaps because I gave him the best laugh he's had since being stationed there.

I've never again lost a hat in a toilet.

If that's not spiritual enough, please accept my apology, and give me one more chance next week. Not all my columns are such a hat full.

Burkes is stationed at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, through April. E-mail him at norris@thechaplain.net or write him at Chaplain Maj. Norris Burkes, 332 AEW/HC, APO AE 09315-9997.