Many Soldiers Have Their Own Terrors to Deal With

I read a lot of articles about faith and war. This one I really want you to read if you have been struggling with your faith.

Coming Home From the War on Terror, Many Soldiers Have Their Own Terrors to Deal With
One Special Forces major recommends ways civilians can help veterans readjust to American life after Iraq, Afghanistan.
Share by JUSTIN BELL 01/25/2012

Major Stephen C. Flanagan of the U.S. Army Special Forces served four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Tewksbury, Mass., native is in the mid-career Master in Public Administration program at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The previous year, he had completed courses in the human development and psychology program in Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

His next stop will be teaching at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in the behavioral sciences and leadership department.

Flanagan, 32, recently met with Register correspondent Justin Bell at the Harvard Catholic Student Center at St. Paul’s Parish in Cambridge, Mass., to discuss how he felt God’s protection in combat and the struggles soldiers have returning to American society.

Could you speak to a specific time when you felt God really taking care of you?


God whispers to you through your successes and screams at you through your pains ... fears and dangers. ... So I really felt that; my faith has probably [been as] strong as it’s ever been in some of those times in combat. I was reading the Bible and praying a lot. I was almost never in any place where I could have regular religious services or anything.

One time, in Iraq in 2007 on my third combat tour ... we’re driving through the center of town, and all of a sudden we got ambushed from two sides. All the terrain and everything were to the enemy’s advantage. We couldn’t get the vehicles out of the road, and they had pushed a burning vehicle in … in front of us.

We’re sitting there in the open: The “kill zone” is what it’s actually called. … I had to [try to move the truck, and so I ran] through a big open area, getting shot at from both sides. …

I was saying an Our Father just subconsciously … running between a hail of bullets. I remembered looking to the side, and I saw fire coming out of windows; and I was shooting to the side as I was running. And all of a sudden a guy started charging down the hill at me; he looked like he was shooting his AK [AK-47 assault rifle]. ... Luckily, I think one of our Iraqi soldiers actually shot the guy and killed him.

I got up there and was able to work with the Iraqis to get them to push the vehicle out of the way. … I think we captured 14 more terrorists that day, and they didn’t have a single American or an Iraqi army soldier killed.

That just really seemed like a miracle to me … It wasn’t just us on that battlefield; there were angels and demons there with us having their own battle. … I reflect back, and I thank God for sending a small legion to our support.
read more here