U.S. military chaplain in Iraq seeks help for wounded troops

Published: 2004-12-03

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Father Robert Cannon, a U.S. military chaplain stationed in Iraq, recalled being summoned to a military hospital to tend to a wounded soldier. The priest was handed a note written by the soldier, who could not speak: "Please send for a Catholic priest, and please tell my mother that she is my best friend in the whole world." Father Cannon recalled that encounter as "one of the most precious moments" of his current tour of duty. The priest, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, is seeking donations for wounded U.S. troops and for school and medical supplies for Iraq's children and impoverished citizens. He said he was seeking emergency clothing for recently wounded troops arriving at the U.S. military hospital in Baghdad. When soldiers arrive at the hospital, "they arrive just with the clothing that they are wearing, since often they are away from their gear and base when they are wounded or injured," he told Catholic News Service via e-mail. Father Cannon said clothing donations would help augment the clothing the hospital already has in stock. He said that often the soldiers are in and out of the hospital so quickly and sent to medical facilities in Europe or the United States that they do not have time to retrieve their belongings.

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