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A soldier's prayer for peace on earth

Army chaplain Jeffrey Hawkins "up-armors" troops spiritually.

By LANE DeGREGORY, Times Staff Writer
Published December 25, 2007

Chaplain Maj. Jeffery D. Hawkins leads a prayer in Camp Taji in Iraq. The chaplain holds servicein warehouses, in bunkers, over the hoods of Humvees, in mess tents and at the front lines.
	[Special to the Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Special to the Times] Hawkins, a graduate of the University of South Florida, was a Green Beret before becoming a chaplain.

Maj. Jeffrey D. Hawkins will wake up this morning on a cot, shivering beneath Army-issue blankets in a 9-by-12 sandbagged hut outside Baghdad, 7,000 miles from where he wants to be.

He will miss his wife back home in Fort Bragg, N.C. He'll think of his teenage son and all the soccer games he couldn't get to. And he'll picture his daughter, who just graduated from college. How he wishes he could have seen that.

Then he will pray - for peace and protection, for the strength to help hundreds of soldiers survive their first Christmas so far away from home.

"It's my job to up-armor them spiritually," Hawkins, chaplain of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, said the other day from Iraq. "The holidays are the hardest time for soldiers to be away. I try to help them work through their war on the inside."

Hawkins, 45, an Illinois native, graduated from the University of South Florida, then joined the Army and became a Green Beret. As his tour was ending, he says, he was "ambushed by God." He went to seminary and rejoined the Army as a chaplain.

Just after Christmas last year, he and his unit were sent to Camp Taji for 15 months. He holds services in warehouses, in bunkers, over the hoods of Humvees. He ministers to troops in mess tents and on the front lines.

He has held memorials for soldiers shot in the streets and counseled their buddies who wail, "Why couldn't it have been me?" He has baptized more people than he's buried.

We asked him what Christmas would be like for the guy who has to raise everybody else's spirits. He said, "No one wants to see the chaplain down." Then an air raid signal went off and the line went dead. Later, he finished the thought in an e-mail, which we've edited slightly for space.

- - -

I'll get up on Christmas Day, push back the covers in a chilly "CHU" containerized housing unit, where my chaplain assistant and I live, stumble down a gravel path to a shower trailer and hope for hot water! After a shave and shower and a prayer of thanks for the privilege of being granted another Christmas, I'll head out to the mess hall early to visit our cooks as they gear up for Christmas dinner. They will have been working since 3 a.m. or so, trying to do the best they can with what they've got ...

Then it's off to the Operations and Intelligence Briefing that we receive daily. Then I'll grab my IBA (individual body armor), mount up, and get ready to take off with the brigade commander, brigade command sergeant major, staff sergeant and my chaplain assistant (who carries an M4 rifle and doubles as a bodyguard). We'll board our sleigh (a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter) and take flight over Baghdad to play Santa and pop in on each of our Battalion Task Forces dotted across the city ...

For me it's kind of like a progressive Christmas dinner...like visiting relatives around town... it's just that these relatives all wear body armor and smell bad! One site looks like something out of Mad Max, with a four-story gray fortress rising from the middle of 12-foot-high blast walls. I'll see hundreds of soldiers that I've seen many times before, some of whom I've prayed with and cried with, some of whom I'll simply high-five and slap on the back and wish, "Merry Christmas!"

Soon we'll be up and away and on to the next outpost, and the next outpost, and the next ... until all of our soldiers have had a few prayers, smiles and handshakes.

I'll head back to my CHU in the late evening. I'll take the half-dozen gifts collected around my 14-inch tree that sits on top of my clothes locker, put on Christmas Jazz, make a cup of coffee and add some eggnog syrup my sister gave me that I've been saving. Then I'll open gifts and see what Santa has brought. (Should take all of about seven minutes!)

Next, I'll try to do the impossible - get a "morale line" telephone call out to my family. I'll tell them I love them ... I'll tell them that I miss them ... I'll tell them that I can't wait to get back and hold them...Then I'll tell them it's going to be okay because even if we can't be with each other, God is with us ...

Then I'll make my way back to my bed and pray - in a way that only soldiers can pray - for peace on earth.

Lane DeGregory can be reached at degregory@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8825.

About the series

Encounters is dedicated to small but meaningful stories. Sometimes they will play out far from the tumult of the daily news; sometimes they may be part of the news. To comment or suggest an idea for a story, contact editor Mike Wilson at mike@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2924.

[Last modified December 24, 2007, 21:51:59]