The above photograph is a still from a memorial held in Iraq in 2007. Below are the notifications we have received over the last year. We join in the collective mourning for the loss of too many.
Dignified Transfer 10/21/2016
Dignified Transfer 11/7/2016
Dignified Transfer 11/15/2016
11/27/2016
Dignified Transfer 1/11/2016
Dignified Transfer 3/21/2017
Dignified Transfer 3/31/2017
Dignified Transfer 4/10/2017
Dignified Transfer 5/3/2017
Filed under Uncategorized
We are delighted and honored to be part of “Hope for Our Veterans,” a three-part series organized by Crossroads Cultural Center
April 24th at 7:30 pm at The Catholic University of America
(McGivney Hall, Keane Auditorium)
The event is free and open to the public — join us and spread the word!
Crossroads Cultural Center in Washington, DC, is hosting a three-part event that explores “Hope for Our Veterans.” The first (on March 21st) focused on the difficulties facing too many of our veterans upon their return and it featured Nancy Albin, co-founder of a valuable resource and source of hope: the Los Angeles Habilitation House, which helps returning veterans suffering from PTSD tackle the sometimes seemingly unsurmountable challenges to reentering the workforce.
The second event will take place April 24th and will explore the role of military chaplains with excerpts from “Chaplains Under Fire” and a discussion with Chaplain Ken Bolin (who was an infantryman before he became a chaplain) as well as documentary’s editor, Andrea Hull, and director Lee Lawrence. The evening will be moderated by Suzanne Tanzi, managing editor of Traces magazine.
Part three of the series, “The Arts and Military Healing,” will be presented by Smithsonian curator Jane Milosch on Veteran’s Day. We’ll keep you posted about the time and location.
Filed under chaplains, documentary
On view for another month at the Brooklyn Museum, WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath is an amazingly effective show. It groups some 400 images taken over the last 166 years thematically — from training to deployment to combat, injuries, death, and the 1000-mile stare of returning troops. By organizing the show this way, it drives home the constants of war. The equipment and circumstances change, the realities of sending people into combat doesn’t. There are acts of bravery, tenacity, loyalty and love on the battlefield, in hospital tents, by gravestones. There is also unspeakable brutality, suffering, and devastation both individual and collective, military and civilian.
This was our take on it. If you have seen the show in Brooklyn or any of its previous venues (Museum Fine Arts, Houston; Corcoran, Washington, DC; Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles), please share your thoughts.
Filed under military
Although the Humanity Explored film festival is over, there still seems to be a live link through another site: http://learni.st/learnings/86739-chaplains-under-fire
So if you want to stream the doc, you’ve got another chance (and, of course, there is always the DVD you can buy).
Filed under chaplains, Church-State, documentary
Thank you Off The Base for this and your many other helpful blogs —
They’re called “responders” – the folks at the other end of the Veterans Crisis Line. But they aren’t the only ones serving on the front-line of suicide prevention.
As a society, as colleagues, as friends, as family, we cannot leave the work of suicide prevention to the “responders” alone.
It is up to all of us to act or at least “ask” if we see someone unduly stressed according to psychologist, Dr. Caitlin Thompson, deputy director of suicide prevention at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“If worried – asking people straight out saying, ‘I’m so concerned about how you seem to be, have you been thinking about suicide at all?'” Thompson advised. “It’s just that simple really to just ask the question that can be a very scary question.”
It’s time to stop being “scared” and start becoming informed.
Here are tips from the Defense Suicide Prevention Office website:
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Media Representatives:
The Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Public Affairs Office has received
confirmation of consent from the primary next of kin to authorize media
coverage of their fallen military loved one’s return:
Thus begin the notices that go out to the media. These are the names we have received since Memorial Day 2012 — we honor them and all the other men and women who have died wearing the uniform (click to enlarge).
Filed under casualties, military
Hard to imagine a more inspiring story than that of Chaplain Emil Kapaun who served in World War 2 and then in the Korean war. Here is a particularly moving excerpt from a two-part series by Jaqueline Hames published in Soldiers Magazine (here are links to part 1 and part 2):
Then-Sgt. 1st Class Herbert Miller was badly injured leading his platoon across the river. His ankle was broken when grenade shrapnel slammed into it, sending him tumbling into a ditch, where he hid beneath the body of an enemy Soldier as the Chinese and Koreans advanced.
The enemy came into the ditch to conduct a search and found Miller. After he was captured, a Chinese Soldier noticed Miller was wounded, and prepared to shoot him.
“He had the gun pointed at my head, and about that time, I looked and this American come across the road and it was Father Kapaun,” Miller said. “He pushed the man aside — why that Soldier never shot him, I’ll never know.”
“And they were still shooting and firing at us, they wasn’t just setting there looking at one another, war was going on!” he said. “And he walked across that road, standing up, never got hit or anything.”
Kapaun knew it was common enemy practice to execute men too injured to walk, the Rev. John Hotze, judicial vicar for the Wichita Diocese, explained, so Kapaun picked Miller up and carried him.
“I kept telling him to put me down, you can’t carry me like this. He said, ‘If I put you down, they’ll shoot ya,'” Miller said.
As the prisoners marched, Miller would alternate between leaning on Kapaun and being carried by Kapaun – this went on for 30 miles. They were separated upon arrival at the Pyoktong prison camp, Kapaun was sent to the officer’s compound and Miller to the enlisted.
Later in the prison camp, Kapaun was put in with the officers since he was both chaplain and Captain.
Kapaun would gather the officers every night at dusk and sing with them, Hotze explained. They would sing the “Lord’s Prayer,” “God Save the Queen” and “God Bless America.”
“He wanted to make sure the enlisted men knew the officers were still there so that they would not lose hope, and would not feel abandoned,” Hotze said.
Once all the officers were settled in their huts, Kapaun would sneak out and head to the enlisted compound, where he would go from hut to hut speaking with the men and providing spiritual guidance.
“We were housed in mud shacks,” then-1st Lt. William Funchess said. “The shacks had straw roofs, and the sliding doors and one small window were covered in paper. It was very primitive conditions, and I was extremely hungry.”
The enemy had lost Funchess’ paperwork and didn’t realize he was an officer, so he was placed in the enlisted compound. One night, as he was out walking around, Funchess came across a man crouching near a fire who “looked real old” and dirty, with a big beard.
“I walked over to him, toward the fire and this old gentleman, and anyway, as soon as I got near, he spoke up and welcomed me and he said, ‘I am Chaplain Emil Kapaun, and I am melting snow,'” Funchess recalled. “He asked, ‘Would you like a cup of hot water?’ And I said, ‘Yes sir.'”
They struck up a conversation and Kapaun described how he would slip through the barbed wire between the compounds, dodging armed guards, to come and care for the enlisted men.
Kapaun would scrounge around the camp and raid enemy warehouses for millet seed, corn and sometimes soybeans, Funchess said, filling his pockets and distributing the food among the prisoners.
Kapaun fell ill and died in what his captors called a hospital and what the prisoners dubbed the “Death House” on May 6, 1951.
Filed under casualties, chaplains, chaplains, military
Humanity Explored Film Festival is up and running, and you can watch Chaplains Under Fire on-line as well as a number of other great documentaries and feature films. And, please, give the festival your feedback and spread the word. Thanks.
Filed under chaplains, documentary, military
For all of you who ask us where you can watch “Chaplains Under Fire”– well, we are proud to announce that the documentary will be part of the next Humanity Explored film festival whose organizers, Culture Unplugged, make it easy for everyone to attend: it is on-line, free, and runs for a year. 
The 2013 festival will launch later this month and, in the meantime, you can still check out the 2012 films.
Filed under chaplains, Church-State, documentary, First Amendment, military, religion
The portraits of wounded warriors at the Joe Bonham project are all about the power inherent — and unleashed — in the act of seeing and being seen. Currently on view at the Pepco Gallery in Washington, DC.
Filed under military, wounded warriors
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