IRAQ Ex-Green Beret, combat vet becomes chaplain

Dan Knight tries to help troops reconcile killing with their religious faith.
WASHINGTON POST
VOLTURNO BASE, Iraq -- By day, this military camp is a self-contained American bubble. Off-duty soldiers listen to country music, watch big-screen basketball, eat grilled steaks, read e-mail from home and jog around an artificial lake built at a resort for Saddam Hussein's cronies and loyalists.
By night, the base becomes a launching pad for forays into the nearby city of Fallujah, where troops creep through deserted streets, searching houses for enemies and weapons.
On most missions, the raiders of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment are accompanied by Dan Knight, a strapping captain with an awesome r & eacute;sum & eacute;: 12-year Green Beret, Persian Gulf War combat veteran, Special Forces company commander, demolitions expert, high-altitude jumper and deep-sea scuba diver.
Knight is banned from carrying a gun under Geneva Convention rules. Instead, he carries a book covered in camouflage canvas that says "Army of the Lord."
Midcareer change
Knight is the regimental chaplain, a soldier's soldier who switched gears in midcareer, spent two years at a Louisiana seminary and reappeared in Afghanistan and Iraq carrying a military-issue Bible.
"Being a noncombatant is not exactly my cup of tea, but if it's what God wants me to do, I'll abide," said Knight, 37, whose duties are to nurture the living, comfort the wounded and honor the dead.
"I don't crave combat, but I fight to get on every mission I can. There's nothing more rewarding to me than being on the battlefield, praying with a wounded man."
Knight spends little time in his quarters, a makeshift wooden chapel with an attached bunk room.
On Sunday mornings he leads a simple Protestant service, but attendance is usually sparse. A recent service drew fewer than a dozen of the 800 troops at Volturno, about one-third of whom wear dog tags stamped "no religious preference." Knight said it's hard to drum up enthusiasm among men who are often out on raids until 3 a.m.
Out in the field, though, the soldiers' appreciation for his presence is clear. When the chaplain jumps into an armored Humvee bound for Fallujah, the nervous jokes stop and a sense of calm seems to pervade the soldiers gripping their rifles in the back of the vulnerable, open vehicle.
"With Dan, there's a bit of an awe factor at work," said 1st Sgt. Chris Dunn, a close friend and fellow Army Ranger who is also with the 82nd Airborne Division. "He can relate to any soldier because he's done everything, and he automatically commands their respect. He's just got an extra chain of command than the rest of us do."
Knight, a native of Star, Miss., was reticent about what motivated his extraordinary leap from Special Forces to seminarian. He hinted at a hell-raising, extreme-sports past that nearly cost him his marriage. Later, he mentioned the autobiography of James D. Johnson, a combat chaplain in the Vietnam War, as a source of inspiration.
But Johnson's book, which Knight has heavily highlighted, is hardly the portrayal of a gung-ho patriot-priest. Instead, the author describes confronting the moral dilemmas of war: wishing he could comfort the screaming children of a man shot by U.S. troops and having to lie to a frightened patient whose leg would have to be amputated.
Death of commander
Knight's mission in Iraq has involved similarly difficult moments, especially after the regiment's most painful episode. On Oct. 20, as a team from Volturno was heading into Fallujah, unseen hands detonated a powerful explosive. Eight soldiers were wounded, and the squad's popular commander, Staff Sgt. Paul Johnson, 29, was killed.
Afterward, Johnson's men were wracked with conflicting emotions: anger, grief, guilt that they had survived, and worry that they had contributed to Johnson's death. According to several squad members, Knight helped them accept what had happened, both through private counseling and at a formal memorial service.
"We were all in shock," said Sgt. Michael Clay, 35. "I kept wondering if I had done everything I could have, if we had taken every precaution." Knight "helped us see the bigger picture" and "mend as a group," Clay said.
In some ways, his main function is to help inexperienced troops reconcile their duty to kill with their respect for human life, and to help them cling to a sense of a liberating mission in a country where many people are hostile to the U.S. military.
"I'm not a missionary looking for battlefield conversions," Knight said. "I'm here to let the men know I care about them, and that God does, too."
Andrew Jones, 26, a specialist from West Virginia who joined the Army just weeks before he was deployed, said he arrived in the war zone psychologically unprepared and morally torn.
"I've been a Christian all my life, but this is the first time I've been a Christian with a machine gun," Jones said. "This can be an ungodly profession at times, and you need to hold onto your inner values and still do your job."
After spending some time under Knight's wing, he said, "I was able to call my parents and tell them I'd be OK."