c. 2005 Religion News Service

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. _ He speaks several languages, including Latin. But when the talkative Gerze Rzasowski, an Army chaplain and major, opens the pages of a book holding pictures of 870 soldiers who have died since last November in Iraq and Afghanistan, he runs out of words.

“Just looking at this,” says the man the troops call Father George.

He pauses as he opens the book.

He turns the pages, then stops to read for a moment. He tries again to speak.

“Just to open this and see the faces,” he says. “It’s kind of, yes, sobering.”

Rzasowski and Chaplain Maj. John Chun stand beside a memorial to fallen soldiers in one corner of Redstone Arsenal’s Bicentennial Chapel. Above a display of empty boots, soldiers’ belongings and scattered pebbles to signify the desert setting of the current campaigns, hangs a long banner printed with the names of the fallen.

The book, usually on a stand next to the display, was assembled by Bicentennial Chapel’s Catholic Parish Council. It includes every soldier who died training or fighting with the allied forces in the ongoing operations last year. What it does not include is any ranking based on whether the fallen soldier was an American or a Catholic.

“We didn’t look to see if they were baptized Catholic, Protestant or Buddhist,” Rzasowski says. “Right now, they’re with the Big Boss.”

The display works to accomplish two of the tasks chaplains are charged with: It nurtures the living by providing them with a way to grieve the losses of the last year, and it honors the fallen.

The third job of military chaplains is to care for the wounded.

Those wounds can be the obvious ones that Rzasowski and Chun have seen during their one-year rotations in Iraq, but they can also be hidden wounds.

“A soldier can present a very `hooah’ face to his chain of command,” Rzasowski said, using the military’s common term for enthusiastic assent. “But inside, he could have problems.”

The military has counselors whom soldiers can go to. But many prefer to talk with a chaplain.

“We can provide a different perspective in these extreme situations,” Rzasowski says. “We see the full humanity of the person _ with a perspective to the other world.

“Ninety percent of our time is spent counseling.”

Rzasowski, who grew up in communist Poland, and Chun, who grew up in South Korea, say they also can provide perspective to soldiers about how the United States has helped bring freedom to some parts of the world.

“Most likely, if the U.S. Army had not been on the ground in Germany, Russia would have crushed Solidarity,” Rzasowski says. “We provided peace in Europe and in the Balkans. We are not perfect, but there’s nobody better.”

Rzasowski and Chun agree that combat situations are ones in which young men and women find themselves thinking about other perspectives, including their ideas about God.

“The young are usually not the most fervent believers because they have so many other things to do,” Rzasowski says. “But when they see that life can be over very soon, they want to anchor their experience in something bigger, something lasting longer than this life.”

“When you go to a war zone,” Chun says, “you see full houses of worship.”

Soldiers have always wanted priests and religious leaders with them. George Washington urged the establishment of an official chaplaincy during the Revolutionary War, making the chaplains’ corps second in age only to the infantry.

The armed services in the last few years have confirmed the importance of the chaplains. The hazing problems that surfaced in some training units of the armed services did not occur in those units that had chaplains, Rzasowski says.

“Even the presence of the pope cannot make people be holy all the time,” he says. “But the presence of the chaplain can lessen the chance of not-proper behavior. And one of our main jobs is to help relieve stress.”

“It’s the `ministry of presence,”’ Chun says. “Whenever the soldiers go out, the chaplain is not too far behind. We go where the soldiers go, eat what they eat, sleep where they sleep.”

And sometimes, Rzasowski says, they suffer what the troops suffer.

His replacement in Iraq was wounded in an attack on his convoy, illustrating how chaplains are at special risk since they always drive their own vehicles, and attackers aim for the driver. That chaplain remains in a coma, Rzasowski says.

Their work alongside soldiers has deepened their own faith, the chaplains agree.

“It opened me to experience the greatness of humanity amid its misery,” Rzasowski says. “Because wherever you can go, you can find a remnant of people, you can find evidence that people can be more than animals. It’s reinforced my faith in God and also in humanity.”

Chun points to the inspiration the troops give him.

“I’ve seen so many brave soldiers willing to sacrifice themselves for the freedoms we have and in trying to bring peace in a troubled land,” Chun says. “I see that, and I feel proud of them.”

MO/JL END RNS

(Kay Campbell is the Faith & Values Editor for The Huntsville Times in Huntsville, Ala.)

Editors: To obtain a photo of chaplains Gerze Rzasowski and John Chunfor, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.