Georgia chaplain provides comfort in the toughest of places

Georgia chaplain provides comfort in the toughest of places: War in Iraq


By MONI BASU
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 06/22/08

WASHINGTON — Chaplain Darren Turner stands at the entrance to Ward 45-C at Walter Reed Army Medical Center with a special coin in his pocket and trepidation in his heart. He is here to see a warrior who only two months earlier was hunting insurgents in Iraq — and is now a man without three limbs.

Spc. David Battle arrived here on Christmas Day, his legs and right arm blown off in a roadside bombing. On this dreary February afternoon, doctors still are not certain he will survive.

wounded.

Home on leave from Iraq, the Georgia chaplain did not have to visit Battle. He wanted to. He wanted to make this difficult journey before he must make another.

In four days, the war-weary chaplain, 35, will return to southeast Baghdad to shepherd his flock of almost a thousand soldiers in a Fort Stewart-based infantry battalion. He has already mourned with them the deaths of 14 men. He has comforted many of the 100 who have been injured. Some, like Battle, face uncertain futures with traumatic injuries.

Yet Turner feels unprepared when he visits the wounded — a near-death experience can mess with a soldier's head. Not even the chaplain's spiritual armor can fully protect him.

He takes a breath and opens the door to the "warrior care" ward.

click post title for more