Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Now in my sixth month of deployment, I have many reasons to be thankful.

I am thankful to God for letting me be here, conducting priestly ministry that otherwise would not be able to be done. I try to keep that in mind on my visits when the number of practicing Catholics on any given base might be small.

I am thankful for the support of family and friends. There are soldiers here with no family whatsoever and others whose only friends are their “battle buddies” here in-country.

I am thankful for interacting with so many great soldiers. Some of the heroics out here will never make the press back home but are as inspiring as tales told from our fighting ancestors in the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. There have been a number of times I have had a casual conversation with a soldier and then found out later that he had earned the Purple Heart for being wounded-in-action and is up for other awards for heroism under fire.

I am thankful to the U.S. Army for making an effort here in this very primitive land to make life bearable for its soldiers. No matter how remote the base, I find that there is some level of creature comforts that surprises me. Most soldiers have access to electronic means of contacting the States. Most bases have at least one hot meal per day and the majority of the soldiers live on bases with multiple hot meals daily. Generally speaking, the food here is of decent quality. Everybody tells me that nobody does Thanksgiving like the Army, so I look forward to the upcoming feast .

As an extension of making life bearable, the Army should also be commended for going well beyond a minimal attempt at religious accommodation. For example, since I’ve been in Afghanistan I have made 44 trips to outlying bases, either by riding helicopters or road convoys. The costs of fuel, along with my salary and that of my chaplain assistant, must be immense, in the tens of thousands of dollars. I know that the total number of practicing Catholics I have served on these trips is less than a single large Sunday Mass at St. Victor’s. I have also seen the Army send Jewish and Muslim soldiers from their outlying bases to larger bases so that they could celebrate their holy days with chaplains of their own faith group.

I am thankful for the American public, which supports its troops, regardless of political position on the war. A few parishioners have been surprised at my minimal requests for items for the troops. The truth is that there is so much material sent out that much of it is unused. I know of a battalion that has 3,000 boxes sitting in Colorado awaiting shipment. They literally have no room on their bases in Afghanistan to store such a quantity. Sometimes the care packages overwhelm the mail system and hinder the delivery of families’ packages to their loved ones, so I try not to unduly add to the crush. My requests have been for specific items for the unique needs I have encountered and I am appreciative of those persons and groups of the St. Victor community who have answered these requests. More will no doubt be forthcoming.

I am thankful to St. Victor’s parishioners and other friends who have been faithfully emailing me over the past six months. I can’t say that I’ve already responded to your emails in a prompt manner but I do read all of them. And special kudos to the students of St. Victor School who brightened up my day and that of my fellow chaplains with letters and a great video.

OK, there have been a number of requests that I write what I actually do in Afghanistan. A fair enough question!

I basically have three kinds of days: days at my home base, day trips, and overnight trips. Days at my home base of FOB Fenty are generally slow. We have daily Mass twice per week, one Saturday evening Mass, and one Sunday morning Mass. The two priests here are responsible for covering these. We also have an RCIA program which meets after the Saturday Mass. Unless there has been a battle, that’s the extent of my Catholic responsibilities.

The brigade chaplains’ office consists of two chaplains, who are also the only two priests in the Jalalabad area. I work for the other priest, who is the brigade chaplain. While at Fenty I serve as office manager ensuring the two chaplain assistants (one soldier and one sailor) carry out the orders of our boss and keeping tabs on the other chaplains scattered throughout our Area of Operation. Generally speaking, this gives me three hours of work I have to spread out over a ten hour workday. So I often walk around visiting random offices and workspaces, visit the MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) building, pray in the chapel, and get in some time at PlayStation 3. This is when I read my emails from home and write these update letters. The office does get occasional drop-in visits by soldiers looking for a chaplain to speak to. These always take priority over our other work.

I earn my pay traveling and usually travel 3-6 days per week. The majority of my trips are daytrips. Because chaplains are unarmed, they travel in the company of chaplain assistants who serve to set up for services, serve as bodyguard, and otherwise act as extra eyes and ears for the morale of the base. Most daytrips are by helicopter rides, provided by a civilian helicopter company under contract from the Department of Defense. If it weren’t for them, personnel travel in our mountainous area would crawl to a standstill, as the Army helicopters are hard-pressed just to meet their battlefield and supply responsibilities.

Our little two-man team arrives at a base in the morning, checks in with the base first sergeant (senior enlisted soldier) and perhaps the Commanding Officer, and jointly we figure out a time for Mass based on the unit’s schedule. Generally we have our breakfast and then start roaming around visiting the soldiers on the base until it’s time for lunch or Mass, whichever comes first. On most bases, my rank (Navy Lieutenant) is equal to the Commanding Officer’s (Army Captain) and senior to everybody else on the base, so the conversations with the soldiers can be a little formal. Now that I’ve made multiple trips to each base, I’m more of a known quantity and the soldiers are less inhibited, but my first round of trips was difficult. This is where the chaplain assistant, an enlisted man himself, helps to extend the chaplain’s reach by interacting with the soldiers as a peer, not as a superior.

After a day of this, we return back to Jalalabad on an afternoon flight.

Overnight trips are similar: Mass, eating, and visiting. These trips allow me to go out on mission “outside the wire” with the soldiers. Depending on the base, that might be in a MRAP (large heavily armored mine-resistant trucks) or on foot. Not only are these trips interesting in their own right as they allow for interaction with Afghanis, but they are an ideal way for a chaplain to learn about the infantrymen doing what they do best: establishing American presence in the countryside and, if necessary, prevailing in combat against the Taliban and other hostile forces.

These overnight trips always have a large amount of the dreaded “white space” I wrote about at Fort Jackson: extended periods of time where there is nothing to do. For me, it’s a time to go into “monk mode,” providing extra time to sleep, pray, read, and listen to my iPod. Overnight trips might be a single night or might be a week, depending on the base’s location and activities.

As you can see, it’s generally not the busy life as that of a parish priest at a place like St. Victor’s, but it needs to be done by somebody and now it is my turn. God bless! Fr. Michael