wfn.org | Returning chaplain "finds comfort in family, churchthanks God for his life"

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Nov. 5, 2003 News media contact: Kathy Gilbert7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
 7   E-mail: newsdesk@umcom.org 7 ALL {528}

NOTE: The following story may be used as a sidebar to UMNS #527. Photos are
available.

A UMNS Feature
By Kathy L. Gilbert*

HINESVILLE, Ga.--Sheri Lewis remembers clearly the day her husband, United
Methodist Chaplain Maj. Mitchell Lewis, left for the pending war in Iraq.

She stayed by his side until the bus pulled away. "A lot of people chose not
to go. They said goodbye at home but I didn't want to have a second that my
eyes weren't on him," she says.

The fact that chaplains don't carry weapons into war really hit her hard that
day.

"I went to the battery range and everyone else is picking up their weapons,
everyone except my husband. Guys were standing there with their M-16s and
their 9mms. I turned to him and said, 'I would feel a lot better if you had
one of those.'"

"He just laughed and said he probably end up shooting himself if he had one.
He had the confidence that he was going to be taken care of," she said.

That is just what chaplains do, Mitchell says. Chaplains don't fight, they
minister.

That meant when he and his unit were going into battle, Mitchell was driving
the truck so his chaplain assistant could provide protection.

"I started to drive more or less permanently in the middle of the night
without any headlights-with night vision goggles," he says. "My first time in
these night vision goggles was while we were in a hostile firing zone. It was
kind of a bizarre experience."

Mitchell said in some ways the whole war experience was very surreal, "kind
of like listening to a radio that is not quite tuned in."

"One of the things I was afraid of was that I would be so afraid I won't be
able to do my job. That never happened to me," he says.

"We got in a couple of sticky situations where we had to keep our heads to
get out of them. I thank God that I was able to keep my head with the rest of
the soldiers."

When a large missile hit the second brigade headquarters, Mitchell was sent
to minister to the wounded.

"I was the chaplain where the wounded were being treated. That may have been
the whole reason I was meant to be there (in the war) because several were
seriously wounded, burns as well as traumatic injuries."

He knelt and prayed with each soldier.

"One thing that impressed me the most was how brave all these people were who
were hurt. There wasn't a whole of screaming or a whole lot of panic; just
everybody was doing their job."

Another important part of Mitchell's job was to minister to the other
chaplains under his command. 

Memorial services are hard on chaplains, he says. After a death, chaplains
work non-stop visiting the surviving soldiers and planning the memorial
service.

"My advice was always take a break, take a nap, eat a meal, get out a Bible
and read it for an hour alone, not to minister to anyone else. They need to
decompress."

When he returned home in at the end of August he took a month off to just be
with his family. His daughter Audrey, 19, is a sophomore at Georgia Institute
of Technology; his son Drew, 15, is a sophomore at Bradwell Institute, the
public high school in Hinesville.

"The living conditions and the violence of the whole thing made it a lot
harder," he says. It was tough not being able to talk to his wife and
children for extended periods of time, he adds.

"I became very aware of my own mortality while I was gone, not so much in the
sense that I thought I was going to die, but that I might not see my family
again."

Laughing, he says a moment in the war reminded him of a scene from the movie
"Joe vs. the Volcano."

"There is this scene when Tom Hanks is floating on his luggage out in the
ocean and he sees this big moon coming over the water and he says 'O God,
whose name I do not know, I thank you for my life.'"

"It was the middle of March, war was only a few days away and this big huge
moon comes up over the desert. I can just remember thinking, 'O God whose
name I DO know, I thank you for my life.' That's my big memory of what my
state of mind was right before war began."

Since coming back on duty, he says his counseling caseload is higher than
normal. Although the war has touched everyone, it is not the only problem the
soldiers face. They find it difficult to deal with some aspects of everyday
life because their families can't really understand what they have been
through.

"It is hard to say it is all due to the conflict," Mitchell says. "It is sort
of like a knot of yarn; you can't really unknot it." 

As far as his future, Mitchell says: "I am not anxious to go back but it is
what I signed up for. My family is definitely not anxious for me to go back
but who knows what the future holds?" 
# # #
*Gilbert is a United Methodist News Service news writer.

 
 

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United Methodist News Service
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