NOTE: Photographs are available with this story. Chaplain Daniel Nigolian was one of several deployed UMC.org military correspondents who shared their experiences from the field. See "Letters from Home" at http://umc.org/headlines/military_outreach/letters_home.htm.
A UMNS Feature by Kathy Gilbert
When there is a war, God doesn't sit on the sidelines, says Chaplain Daniel Nigolian.
God sends in the chaplains.
From Jan. 19 to May 21, Lt. Colonel Nigolian was in "an undisclosed location, in a nameless desert, someplace on God's Earth." As a Wing Chaplain of the 78th Air Base Wing, Robbins Air Force Base, Warner Robbins, Ga., he was answering his country's call to service.
"The church cannot be absent from those critical places in a kid's life. I mean, what's more critical than going to war? The church needed to be there, and there we were," he said.
Nigolian and his wife Kathy recently attended a United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry spiritual retreat in Nashville, Tenn. He spoke to United Methodist News Service about his time as senior installation chaplain with an Air Force Special Operations team on a classified mission.
Ministry to Special Operations people must be flexible, he said, because they can't talk about what they do, they often work late at night, and their mission is always dangerous.
"They come back with some pretty heavy burdens."
It was Nigolian's job to provide for the religious needs of anyone on the mission.
"At its peak, that included about 6,700 people from all the major services and from several coalition nations," he said. "Our job was to allow religious accommodation for all those people, regardless of where they came from, their worship style, whatever. When we first landed there were about 16 tents. By the time we left there were 600."
Nigolian has great admiration for the job "your sons, your daughters, your nieces and nephews" are doing.
"I saw people do things that would be totally unlike the behavior of a 19-, 20-, 21-year-old here in the States. I would walk into the chow tent, for example, and easily two-thirds of the kids were praying before they ate, and you don't normally see that in a restaurant in the States."
Nigolian says the Air Force does an outstanding job of training these men and women and when they get into a combat situation they bond quickly and their maturity level goes up.
It takes a lot of maturity to face Iraqi soldiers who come out holding women in front of them, shooting at you, around the women, he says.
"What . . . does the typical 19-, 20-, 21-year-old kid do? Well, in this case, they possess themselves and they turn around and walk away. That was a no-win situation. They weren't going to kill the innocent. They were taking fire; they were certainly protecting themselves, but they withdrew. Gain the objective another way."
Beside the stress of being in a country where Americans were not suppose to be, doing missions they can not talk about, these young people were also missing births of their children, anniversaries, and serious illnesses in their families from literally multiple thousands of miles away.
Once phone connection was made on base, the soldiers were only allowed five-minute calls home. However, as a chaplain, Nigolian was able to make allowances when he felt the need was urgent.
For example, "One man's wife miscarried and we weren't going to limit him to a five-minute phone call once a week. Every night for several nights he called home and talked to his wife.
"They worked through it," he said.
Nigolian also remembered the time a soldier called home and then asked him, "Chaplain, when I go home, are they going to spit on me?"
"The only news we got for a long time was the news of the protests," he said. "We saw pictures of protesters and signs and just terrible anger. And this young man had gotten the impression that his country was not behind him."
That call inspired Nigolian to call his wife and ask her to send him pictures of ways people were supporting the soldiers.
"No soldier ought to go into combat without knowing the country is behind them," he said. "No one ought to put themselves on the line for America without knowing that America is behind them."
The photos his wife sent helped boost morale on the base and soon more positive news starting filtering in.
"Morale is terribly important in war--very, very important. You need to know that people are behind you. You need to know that what you're doing is something that needs to be done, that what you're doing is something that's important and can't be done any other way."
Nigolian says his best memories are of the people he encountered.
"In a circumstance like that, sharing danger as it were, you get close, you develop relationships quickly and they tend to be meaningful relationships, not just passing relationships."
Another good memory is something they were able to leave behind.
As the war was winding down, Nigolian and the commander of the American Civil Engineering (CE) Squadron and the Services Squadron came up with the idea to do something for the children of their host nation.
"We had been instructed by command to leave this place 'better than when we got here.' We could think of no more satisfying way to do that than to do something good for the children."
Hard work and money collected from the soldiers built Friendship Park.
The soldiers shared goodies from home. When the park was complete, a party was held for the children with nearly 200 cases of candy and cookies, ice cream, sodas and bottled water.
"It was wonderful to see them (the children) come dressed up in what we would call Sunday-best clothes, all these cute little kids and their parents and nobody much speaking any English," he says. "But when you're handing candy to a child you don't need a lot of English."
The soldiers played soccer, basketball and football with the children.
"It was a ministry to the people of the camp as much as it was a gift to our host nation," he says. "It was a break from the war."
At 53, Nigolian says he is not sure he would have the energy to go into combat again.
"Yet I would not have missed it. Not for anything. The richness, the depth, the intensity, just the marvelous blessing of that sort of ministry is not something to be missed (and) it's wonderful. Anyone who has a chance to participate in that sort of ministry is just terribly fortunate."
When asked what local churches could do to support the troops, he said, "pray."
"Prayer is essential, absolutely essential. The church needs to know that. The church needs to know that prayer is effective."
As a chaplain, he is always aware of being God's representative.
"I'm not God, but when I walk into a room, people think about God, people are reminded of God," he says.
When people are a long way from home, sleeping on cots in tents without any of the comforts of home, they need to know God is still God, he says.
Chaplains are also a calming presence, he says.
"It's funny, regardless of age or rank, they take comfort in that, from the youngest airman to the oldest grizzled commander.
"They'll look over at you and say, 'Chaplain, how about a prayer?'
"And that's the reason for us to be there."
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*Gilbert is newswriter for United Methodist News Service.
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