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Preston closes in prayer: "Thank you for these men who care about your Word more than for their own lives."

An old kitchen next to the medics' building has no phone or air conditioning, but a new sign announces it's the office of Chaplain Covey. Covey shares the kitchen with assistant Sergeant Renada Rozier, a 22-year-old single mom.

This office, with a view of the back of Army buildings, is a world away from posh digs in San Antonio and Tyler, Texas, where "I spent my life organizing my Day-Timer," Covey says. He's quick to say he loves the Southern Baptist Convention and the churches he pastored for eight years, but not the big emphasis on baptisms, budgets, and buildings. "I'm happy as a lark. The tradeoff is going to Iraq for a year."

But that's part of his calling. "It's the best ministry you'll ever do," he says. "The saying 'There aren't atheists in foxholes' is true. Everybody wants to talk about God. It opens the door to talk about Christ." Covey doesn't offer numbers, but he and Walker both report seeing many come to faith or deepen their relationships with God while in Iraq.

For a year in the Sunni Triangle city of Baquba (pop. 300,000), 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, Walker led six battalion chaplains, new best friend Covey among them, in Task Force Ironhorse, composed of the 12,000-soldier Fourth Infantry plus support attachments. This team met the spiritual needs of thousands of soldiers of the Fourth Infantry Division, famed for its December capture of the ace of spades, Saddam Hussein. The six chaplains included three who enlisted post-9/11 and a Roman Catholic priest named Captain Kirk.

Covey shows me photos from his deployment: leading soldiers in the doxology, strumming guitars with Walker in a worship service, burning the day's output from an outhouse. When troops were about to leave Baquba, their cameras flashing in the worship service looked like paparazzi shooting a celebrity event. "It's like the last day of camp, except it's Camp Hell."

Start with the heat. For most of the Fourth Infantry Division's time in Iraq, soldiers had no air conditioning. The highest temperature his unit recorded was 158 degrees. And the obvious: "Nobody's trying to shoot you in summer camp," he says. "It's life and death." At least 400 mortar shells hit Covey's camp. In all, 79 Ironhorse soldiers died. Covey spoke at two memorial services in Iraq; Walker preached three and oversaw twenty-nine. Ubiquitous death causes people to ponder things they likely wouldn't otherwise. "Everybody I dealt with was spiritually receptive," he says.

A patriotic sense of duty pervades today's all-volunteer force, from chaplain to soldier. According to retired Rear Admiral Darold Bigger, a Seventh-day Adventist who was a Naval Reserve chaplain from 1974 and head of chaplains for the Naval Reserve until August, most soldiers are not torn with doubts about what they are doing in Iraq.

"They asked to join," Bigger says. "They want to serve the country. So you don't have the internal resistance you had in the Vietnam War because you had a lot of people who didn't want to be there."

Sergeant Livier Lázaro ran the Second Battalion's aid station and trauma center in Iraq, where everywhere is the battlefront. They gauged the enemy's proximity by the thoomp of a mortar shell leaving the launch tube. Few soldiers killed in Iraq have open-casket funerals. "We saw people blown up. We carried body parts," Lázaro says. "Nothing really prepares you for that." Chaplains provided comfort to medics, morticians, and the wounded. "They were like angels."

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December 2004, Vol. 48, No. 12