Fr. Kenehan conducting General Meyer’s funeral.
This Saturday is Veterans’ Day. In 1991, I found myself with thousands of other soldiers/veterans in Iraq for Desert Shield/Storm. I kept a journal and wrote faithfully in it every day. In 2002-2003, I was a student at the United States Army Senior Service College in Carlisle, PA, where from that journal I wrote a personal experience monograph entitled, “Battalion Chaplain Desert Shield/ Storm.”
Here I share with you a paragraph from that journal/monograph:
Fr. Kenehan escorting General Meyer to his resting place in Arlington National Cemetery.
On one particularly quiet morning as the sun rose gently, a magnificent blue sky was streaked with streams of red and white. It looked like our flag was being raised over the entire horizon. I was moved emotionally and spiritually. But where I most often saw the flag was in the faces of those young enlisted soldiers standing watch. They were America’s best: all races from every state and territory in the union. They proudly and faithfully represented our Republic on those bitterly cold desert mornings.
My chaplain assistant and I, who was also my bodyguard since chaplains do not carry a weapon, would rise early every morning and take hot coffee to those young soldiers on guard duty surrounding the perimeter of our battalion. These young men (we were an Armor Battalion so we had no women at that time), were not warmongers or soldiers of fortune. They enlisted in the Army for the G.I.Bill, for the college fund, to escape a challenging home environment, to improve their lot in life, or simply because they were patriots. The motto of the United States Army Chaplaincy is “Pro Deo et Patria,” For God & Country. The majority of the soldiers with whom I served were doing it for God and Country and most of them were men of prayer.
Fr. Kenehan conducting a service in Iraq for soldiers who had faced combat.
As St. Francis de Sales wrote in The Introduction to the Devout Life: “It is an error, or rather a heresy, to say devotion is incompatible with the life of a soldier, a tradesman, a prince, or a married woman…” I recall a senior Non-Commissioned Officer, the First Sergeant of a Company, coming to me before we went into battle and asking me to conduct a communion service for his unit. He was a devout Lutheran. After the service, you could see the joy in his eyes and the weight lifted from his shoulders. We lost one soldier during the fight and, even though he was not Catholic, I anointed him and sent a note to his family in Colorado. They were most grateful that a priest was there for their son. All of these young soldiers were, in the words of St. Francis, striving to “be who you are and be that well.”
As we crossed into Iraq from Saudi Arabia, we encountered hundreds of young Iraqi men in the desert, sent there by Saddam without training. They were trying to surrender to the Americans and I am proud to report that our soldiers treated them with the utmost respect and kindness. Again, it reminded me of St. Francis's words: “Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.”
On this Veterans’ Day please pray for all those who have served in uniform and for their families.
Fr. David Kenehan, OSFS
Chaplain (Colonel)
United States Army (Retired)
