Chaplain Struggles with PTSD from Time in Iraq

Chaplain Struggles with PTSD from Time in Iraq
by Jane Arraf
All Things Considered, January 6, 2008 ·
Chaplain Douglas Fenton is quite matter-of-fact as he tells the story of the severed foot.

He'd been deployed to Baquba, Iraq. Soldiers handed him a cardboard box containing the foot they had just found, a foot belonging to one of their buddies whose body had already been sent home. They didn't know what else to do with it. "They did the right thing," he says.

And he did the right thing. He took the box and sat with it on his lap on a helicopter flight as pilots fired flares to deflect potential heat-seeking missiles. That's the unimaginable, everyday horror of war.

It took its toll on Maj. Fenton. I first met him in May in Baquba, where he was chaplain for the 1st Cavalry Division's 3rd Brigade. I would go out on clearing operations with soldiers fighting insurgents who had been burying improvised explosive devices so deep in the ground that when they exploded, they could flip over armored vehicles. Exhausted and grief-stricken, the soldiers would come back to the base long enough for showers and too often, memorials, and then go out and fight all over again. As brigade chaplain, Fenton was the one who flew to see the wounded and dead. By the time he left last August, he had prayed over 88 dead soldiers.
go here for the rest
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17854907