This is the first of a three-part article.
By Michael Pipkin
I never forget the date, partly because it was my dad’s birthday, which is always Groundhog Day, February 2nd – even though the year gets fuzzier as more time passes – but there are touchstones that help me to remember. It was 2006, which, as I say it, seems awfully close for something that seems like it happened so long ago.
The day began early with a knock on the plywood door of my hooch. My chaplain’s assistant was helping to roust me, because, as my wife could tell you, I’m not a morning person – especially not at 4 o’clock in the morning.
It was, of course, still dark, but bitterly cold. February in Iraq is a miserable month, with rain and coldness seeping into every nook and cranny, making your bones cold. I put on every layer that seemed practical and necessary before putting on my bulletproof flack jacket and heading over to the convoy briefing.
This was my third ground mission with my battalion that, among other things, was responsible for filling in the craters and repairing the roads damaged by IEDs on the major highway between Fallujah and Ramadi – 30 miles that made up the most dangerous roadway in the world. That morning we were to receive the intelligence briefing, the convoy code words, and the plan of the day for a mission that would take us only 10 miles or so in the direction of Ramadi.
The mission itself was simple: find craters on the highway and fill them with steel and concrete before the insurgents could fill them with bombs creating death traps for our convoys, which were mostly driven by civilians.
Imagine, if you would, a road a lot like any main street in America. Wide, yes, but built up on both sides for most of the way with homes and businesses. Our convoy would move slowly down that road, and upon finding a crater, stop. The trucks would circle around, giving some defense, and we would go to work digging it out, filling it with steel rebar, and then filling it with hand mixed concrete from 50lb bags.
The opportunity for disaster was high.
The first time one of our convoys went out along this road it was hit with nine rocket-propelled grenades. On another mission along this same stretch of road, an armored vehicle ran over mines that were “triple-stacked” – three mines, one atop the other, lifting the 17-ton truck off the ground completely. Nobody had been killed on any of these road repair missions, but still, a discerning person might ask, what the heck was I doing on that mission in the first place? Given the high likelihood of attack, what possible good could a chaplain accomplish on such a mission?
But that’s just it. The likelihood of an attack made it all the more probable that I might get a chance to live into the fullness of what I had been told and trained to believe that a chaplain was supposed to be, and in that regard, I was no different than any man or woman who has ever gone to battle. I was seeking meaning.
I am reminded of a book that was given to me by a colleague, just as I was entering the Navy, entitled War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by a man named Chris Hedges, a writer who spent his career as a war correspondent, covering every major conflict around the world, including five years in El Salvador, years in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Colombia. He witnessed the intifada in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, civil war in Sudan and Yemen, conflicts in Algeria and Punjab, Romania, the Gulf War, the Kurdish rebellion, and finally the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. He spent the majority of his life witnessing war in all of its forms, trying to account for its causes, name its victims, and report the facts of both victory and atrocity. As America began its march toward the war in Iraq, Hedges published this Pulitzer Prize-winning book. The title alone, War is a Force Which Gives Us Meaning, should be chilling enough, but Hedges’ theses, which says that, despite an awareness of its destructiveness and its questionable ethics, war can give us what we long for in life: purpose, meaning, a reason for living.
I spent nine years in the Navy, and the first thing that I should say is that I am very proud of my service and very proud of the men and women with whom I served. It is my intention to give honor and deep respect to my brothers and sisters by, hopefully, not trivializing our service, but recognizing the reality of what their service means to them and to me. But I am not speaking for them; I am speaking only for myself.
My choice to put on a uniform, to join the Navy, to serve with Marines, to go to Iraq, to join up with that mission on that fateful February 2, is as much a product of my own innocence as it is a product of what Chris Hedges calls the Myth of War.
On the one hand, I was born into a family and culture that valued military service. As a child, after seeing Top Gun almost 100 times, my dad and I attended air shows and I was mesmerized and seduced by the awesome power and speed of combat jets. I also grew up listening to my grandfather’s stories of his service in the Navy before and during World War II, and looking at his photo albums I always thought that those were the happiest days of his life. And as I grew up, I was always fascinated by one commercial in particular – that Marine Corps recruiting commercial with the young Marine in his dress blues vanquishing the dragon and then standing as a pillar of strength with his Marine Corps NCO Saber in front of his nose, saluting.
The myth of war is very much a part of our culture. It tells us that war is glamorous, that war is neat and tidy, that war produces heroes, that war is cool. And maybe worst of all, the myth of war tells us that war is necessary. I am steeped in this myth. From the earliest days of my life I can remember being dazzled by uniforms, impressed by medals and ribbons, and envious how every member of the military seemed to have some distinct purpose in their life. As Marines liberated Kuwait in the Gulf War, I was receiving, for the third consecutive year of my life, an Ollie North Haircut, which I still get almost every three weeks.
Besides the fact that men and women in our military get to fly jets, drive tanks, shoot guns, and wear impressive uniforms, they projected a power that intoxicated me. They seemed to have a singular purpose in life which gave them meaning and for which they received accolades and honor. But more importantly, they were doing something that seemed to matter. Wherever they went, the men and women of our armed forces seemed to make a difference in the lives of others – and indeed they do.
The Rev. Michael Pipkin is priest-in-charge of The Falls Church (Episcopal) in Falls Church, Va. He served in the Navy for nine years, including one tour of duty in Iraq. He also served as a Navy chaplain at Bethesda Naval Medical Center after returning from overseas. This reflection was delivered on Nov. 8, 2009, at Christ Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Va.