LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 1

      Chaplain Darren Turner arrives at the entrance to Ward 45-C at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, fumbling in his pocket for a special coin he wants to give a soldier he has come to see. A verse from Ephesians is etched on one side: “Put on the whole armor of God. Pray always.”

      The last time Turner saw Spc. David Battle was several months ago in Baghdad. He was not unlike any other soldier then, enduring a 15-month tour of Iraq.

      But now Battle is a trophy of war. That’s how Turner describes the nation’s wounded.

      Battle arrived at Walter Reed on Christmas Day 2007 without three of his limbs. His legs and right arm were blown off in a roadside bombing. Five weeks later, on this dreary day in February, doctors still are not certain he will survive.

      Home on leave from Iraq, Turner did not have to visit Walter Reed. He wanted to.

      The Georgia chaplain requested a few extra days off so he could travel to Washington from his home in Richmond Hill, near Savannah, to see the wounded soldiers from his unit, 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, based at Fort Stewart, the largest Army installation east of the Mississippi River. He knew it would be his most important assignment to date.

      Still a novice in the Army’s chaplain corps, Turner was anxious about the trip, perhaps because here, amid the landscape of suburban America and the normal rhythms of life, the ugliness of war hits hardest.

      He stands in the hospital hallway, the drab linoleum floor patched with tiles that don’t quite match. He takes a breath and opens the door to the “warrior care” ward, his heart brimming with trepidation.

      Not even his spiritual armor can fully protect him.

      ”Hi, David,” Turner says.

      Painkillers pulse through Battle’s veins. He stares at Turner from a hospital bed, his eyes vacant, his broken body covered in white sheets from the neck down. His two-year-old son, Ahmarion, sleeps at the foot of his father’s bed. Battle’s wife, Lakesia, hovers over a mess of plastic tubes snaking out from her husband’s body. Turner can tell she is Jell-O wobbly under the steel veneer she’s erected for outsiders.

      He dreads these moments. But this is why he became an Army chaplain. He wanted to be where the suffering was greatest.

      Jesus ran to crises. Turner wanted to do the same.

      He has visited the injured before—at Baghdad’s combat hospital. Some guys are numb. Some put their trembling hands in Turner’s and want him to take away their suffering. The wounded are always wanting something that can’t be explained.

      Walter Reed is difficult for yet another reason. Turner has never faced the loved ones of the wounded. In Iraq, he counsels soldiers but not their families. What do you say to a mother? A wife? To a boy who will not remember the father who went to war, only the one who has come back?

      The chaplain tells Battle and his wife that he feels privileged to stand in their presence.

      A soft-spoken man from the nearby Maryland town of La Plata, Battle served in a small tank company. The guys were all close.

      ”We were all holding our breath as you were trying to catch yours,” Turner says. ”Even though you didn’t plan this, you served your country. Anything you want me to tell the

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