Читать книгу Chaplain Turner's War - Moni Basu - Страница 4

Introduction

In January 2008, I began documenting life at war with Darren Turner, chaplain for the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, part of the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia.

The unit was part of the surge of American troops in Iraq that the administration of President George W. Bush argued was necessary to defeat the insurgency raging there.

I first met Turner at a memorial service for a fallen soldier in his battalion. The weather was dreary that day at Fort Stewart and I could not differentiate between tears and rain on the faces of the soldiers and their families.

It was tradition at Fort Stewart to plant a redbud tree in a field called Warrior’s Walk in honor of every soldier who died.

Turner was home on three weeks leave but he was using part of his time to make a trip to Silver Spring, Maryland, to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Several of his wounded soldiers were recuperating there. It was important for him to go.

I traveled with Turner to Walter Reed. And the next month, I caught up with him in Iraq, where I spent many weeks reporting this story.

At first his battalion commander, Lt. Col. Ken Adgie, was not so sure a woman should be permitted to spend so much time with a male chaplain. But in the end, I was able to shadow Turner as he counseled soldiers, baptized several on Easter, and dealt with the many hardships of war.

All the soldiers in this story gave me permission to write about their interactions with the chaplain. All except one of the scenes in this book were witnessed firsthand. The one reconstructed scene, describing the events of summer 2007, appears in Chapter 3 and was pieced together through interviews with soldiers who were there. This story first appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June 2008. It ran over eight days as Chaplain Turner’s infantry battalion was about to come home from Iraq. This revised version has been republished with permission from the newspaper.

I am indebted to my editors, Jan Winburn and Valerie Boyd, for their commitment to this story.