At South Carolina school, chaplains learn to bring God to battlefield

Published: 2007-04-11

FORT JACKSON, S.C. (CNS) -- As dusk fell on a crisp night in late March, soldiers gathered in a pine clearing at Fort Jackson near Columbia. They stood around a "sand table," a map of combat zones drawn out in the dirt, and received briefings on a fictional anti-insurgent mission in Iraq. Some of the details had a distinctly biblical tone. The mission's name? "Operation Preacher." Terrorist command bases were "Jezebel" and "Beelzebub." A main supply line was "Hezekiah." Welcome to combat training at the U.S. Army Chaplain School and Center, where men and women who want to bring the comfort of God to soldiers around the world learn how to be chaplains. The chaplain school has been at Fort Jackson since 1995, when it moved from Fort Monmouth, N.J. At any given time, the chaplain school serves more than 100 students studying to become chaplains or completing more extensive officer training. The school also trains chaplain assistants, nonordained soldiers who serve with chaplains on Unit Ministry Teams in combat and in peacetime.

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