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Thursday, April 22, 2004
Chaplain's fight: to keep the faith
Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. | ||||||||||||||||||
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Also on this page: In Iraq | |||||||||||||||||
MOSUL, Iraq - He always knew that if it came to this, his would be one of the hardest jobs at Camp Marez. But only now, sitting in his cubbyhole office in the back of the camp's Olive Garden Chapel, did Chaplain David Sivret appreciate how hard. "Yesterday was a horrendous day for all of us," Sivret, an Episcopal priest from Calais, said Wednesday afternoon. That it was. Tuesday morning, insurgents ambushed a four-vehicle convoy of 12 soldiers - six from the Maine National Guard's 133rd Engineer Battalion and six from units in New York and South Carolina - as they drove through a crowded neighborhood on the western edge of Mosul. Killed in the attack was Spc. Christopher Gelineau, 23, of Portland. Seriously injured was Spc. Craig Ardry, 30, of Pittsfield. Ardry is now recovering at a military hospital in Baghdad. For Sivret, the crisis began just after 9 a.m., when he saw a field company commander running toward the 133rd's headquarters. Sivret followed, arriving just in time to hear the convoy calling for a medical evacuation helicopter over the radio. The chaplain raced back to his office, donned his helmet and tactical vest and started up his Humvee. His destination: the field hospital at nearby Camp Diamondback. "They had just landed and (Gelineau and Ardry) had just gotten into the emergency room," Sivret said. Pausing, he then added, "They both drilled with me (during National Guard maneuvers) in Gardiner. They're two young, married soldiers and . . ." The thought went uncompleted - interrupted by a memory that will stay with Sivret long after this deployment is over: First one soldier, then the other, being carried back out to the tarmac for emergency airlifts to Baghdad. "I held their left arms as they were being put onto the choppers," he said. "And I prayed with them." He is the only one of the 500-plus soldiers in his battalion who doesn't carry a weapon. The roster lists him as "captain," but the tiny black cross stitched to the lapel of his desert camouflage fatigues sets him apart from the rest of the 133rd's command staff. Back home in Down East Maine, he was the brand new pastor of St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Calais, Christ Church in Eastport and St. Luke's summer chapel in Woodland before the call to war uprooted him in November. Here, amid the ruins of ancient Christianity and the modern-day mayhem of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he is much more than that: spiritual guide, mental-health counselor and, in a place that sorely needs one, keeper of the faith. "The chaplaincy is the second-oldest branch in the Army, second only to the infantry," Sivret said. "We have a very rich, proud history." Sivret is one of five clergy spread across Camp Marez and neighboring Camp Diamondback, serving an estimated 5,000 soldiers attached to northern Iraq's Task Force Olympia. His most visible job is to don his vestments each Sunday, light the candle, power up the chapel's small electric keyboard and lead soldiers of varied denominations through one of the few rituals on this post that is not rooted in military protocol. But then, often without warning, the war intervenes. Sivret, 48, reports directly to battalion commander Lt. Col. John Jansen - not only as chaplain, but as the 133rd's "morale officer." It is Sivret, more than anyone else, who watches and listens to the troops for signs that this yearlong deployment - now nearing the end of its second month - might be taking an undue psychological or emotional toll. His radar goes well beyond the separation anxiety that first surfaced months ago while the 133rd trained at Fort Drum in upstate New York. "That's a natural thing - we're going to have that," Sivret said. "But some (soldiers) have gotten to the point where we thought they were going to snap, go off the deep end." He also can be proactive, screening troops before they embark on difficult assignments. One such mission, reduced by army jargon to the simple term "forensic," was canceled recently at the last minute, much to Sivret's relief. "Basically, it's searching for mass graves," he said. "Once we found out about it, the doc (medical unit commander Maj. John Nelson) and I talked about it and we basically said, 'We need to see those soldiers before you send them out on that mission.' " Canceling the mission, however, did not remove the potential for trauma. One day during a routine excavating project, Alabama's 877th Engineer Battalion (the 133rd's predecessor at Camp Marez) uncovered a mass grave with no prior knowledge it was there. "I can't imagine what that must have been like," Sivret said, shaking his head. Nor can he imagine what it was like Tuesday for 12 U.S. soldiers as they protected their wounded and waited desperately for help to arrive. Sivret has already met individually with the soldiers who were involved in Tuesday's attack. This weekend, he will gather them together for a mandatory "critical-event debriefing." "I will sit down with them in a circle - basically you get them to talk about what happened," he said. "Nobody is allowed to be there who was not involved in the critical event, except for me and my assistant (Spc. Ryan Chapman of Boothbay Harbor)." What is said in the room stays there. And if the emotional floodgates should open, so much the better. "Shedding a few tears helps," said Sivret. "There are those guys still today who, you know, are macho and are not supposed to cry. Well . . . OK . . . If that's what you want to be. But I shed my tears yesterday and I'm sure I will again as I think about this situation." Comfort for the convoy soldiers, and by extension the entire battalion, will come from their common roots in Maine, Sivret said. For years they've trained together. Now, they live together and, when necessary, fight together. "But then there's a downside," he said. "When you lose somebody, it hits hard." All day Wednesday, Sivret immersed himself in helping to plan a memorial ceremony for Gelineau. Its time and location are for now a tightly kept secret - too much advance notice might invite more trouble. Beyond that, while the rest of the engineer battalion gets back to the business of rebuilding northern Iraq, the chaplain will maintain his tiny chapel. It is a place where the glass windows, repeatedly shattered by incoming mortars, have now been replaced with Plexiglas. Where incoming shells canceled one Easter Sunday service and put a serious dent in several others. But it is also a place where a large banner covers the back wall, signed in bright colors by children at Cathedral School in Portland. "We are very proud of you," the banner says. "You are in our thoughts and prayers." It's a place where plastic tubs brimming with Juicy Fruit gum, Skippy Squeeze It peanut butter, Ramen Noodles and Chap Stick - all free for the taking - fill the chapel lobby, compliments of the children at Songo Locks School in Naples. It's a place where cardboard boxes stuffed with brand new infant clothing, donated by Sivret's congregation at St. Anne's in Calais, await delivery to an impoverished Iraqi village just outside Mosul. In a conversation after his Episcopal Mass on Sunday, Sivret noted that Alabama's 877th Engineer Battalion made it through its entire 12-month deployment here without a single combat casualty. "I think God had a lot to do with that," he said at the time. Now, less than two months into its tour, the 133rd has already been hit - and hurt - by an enemy that appears out of nowhere. How does Sivret explain that? The only way a man with a cross on his lapel can explain it. "One life is a tragedy," he said. "But it could have been a lot worse. We could have had all of them killed." Outside the empty chapel, trucks rumbled by - other convoys returning safely from other missions. The Maine state flag, at half staff, fluttered in the warm breeze. "It could have been worse," Sivret repeated. "God's hand is still at work."
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Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram journalists