'In the Hands of God'

Smith thought for a moment. "I've seen ideation and gestures, people who are thinking about it or make half-hearted attempts," he said. "Cries for help. But that's really not much different from back home."

The lieutenant nodded. Then he asked, "Do a lot of guys worry about their wives cheating on them? I'm engaged myself."

The other two soldiers chimed in; they all knew someone who'd cheated or been cheated on. For Smith, whose days sometimes seem filled with meetings and report-writing, this was what he joined the chaplain corps for. "You need a good foundation of trust to get through a deployment," he told them. As he talked about how to communicate and stay connected with a woman on the other side of the world, the soldiers gazed thoughtfully out at the night.

Now the Humvee rattles and creaks past flat-roofed houses, misty behind walls with closed gates. The convoy rounds the corner onto Mosul's Sugarbeet Road and the soldiers can finally see the walls of home: FOB Diamondback. The soldiers here provide security in the Mosul area and help train the new Iraqi army. Nearing Diamondback's gate, the Humvee weaves slowly through the barricades, past a flaming barrel hedged by U.S. soldiers and Peshmerga guards, all fat with warm layers of camouflage and body armor. From the turret, Razz calls out a hello.

Some of the soldiers who guard convoys night after night looked surprised when Smith first started riding along. Once, as they drove back in through the gate, a soldier turned to Smith and said, "When you're around, somehow I feel like I'm in the hands of God."

"The Weight of the Free World"

FOB Diamondback is home to four Army chaplains: Smith at the battalion, another at the chapel, and a third at the combat support hospital. The fourth is stationed in the special forces compound; no one sees him much. The other three chaplains and their assistants meet every week to coordinate their efforts. Of the U.S. Army's 1200 chaplains, around 300 are currently deployed to Iraq.

Chaplains have served in all the military's branches since the Revolutionary War. Yet if it weren't for M*A*S*H's Father Mulcahy, many Americans would have no idea that military chaplains even exist, much less what they do. This is because the chaplain's role is, by definition, a supporting one -- to "provide religious support," according the Army Chaplain Corps' mission statement, to ensure "the right to free exercise of religion," even in a combat zone where it can be hard to practice one's religion without help. So chaplains work mostly in the background -- behind closed doors where officers struggle with the ethics of command decisions, in quiet corners where soldiers wrestle with fear and anger, and worry about their families.

Chaplains can come from any faith group that has established a relationship with the Department of Defense. But statistics from the Defense Manpower Data Center indicate that while Christian fundamentalist and evangelical service members make up less than 20 percent of the military, more than a third of military chaplains come from such denominations. As a result, for every Southern Baptist chaplain, there are only 40 Southern Baptist service members. By comparison, Roman Catholics, who constitute the military's single biggest religious group, make do with one priest for every 800 Catholic service members.

Captain Edward Grimenstein, a Lutheran who has been an Army chaplain for only two years, explains the large number of evangelical chaplains in his class this way: "It's in their theological doctrine -- very pro-nation, pro-government, pro-country. You don't find that in a lot of mainline Protestant denominations."

Pentagon policy acknowledges that these days Americans practice a wider variety of religions than ever before. Prior to becoming an Army chaplain, a candidate must certify that he or she is "sensitive to religious pluralism and able to provide for the free exercise of religion by all military personnel, their family members, and civilians who work for the Army." Chaplains don't lead worship services outside their own faith group, but they do have to make sure that every other recognized faith group has the supplies and space they need to practice their religion. Officially, proselytizing is forbidden, but recent headlines indicate that commandment isn't always obeyed.

Chaplains don't do this work alone. Though they're military officers, the Geneva Conventions classify chaplains as noncombatants, which means they aren't allowed to carry weapons. So each chaplain is accompanied by an enlisted service member who acts as both assistant and bodyguard. That's why, in the sky above Mosul, on board a hulking C-130 plane inbound from Kuwait, Private First Class James Bailey is strapped into a jumpseat. He's wearing a camouflage ballistic vest and Kevlar helmet. He's carrying his M-16.

PFC Bailey has been preparing for this ever since he finished training four months ago and arrived at the 1st Battalion of the 321 Field Artillery Regiment on Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Bailey dropped out of college to enlist, hoping to make a difference. He spent eight weeks learning how to be a soldier and seven weeks learning how to be a chaplain assistant, his chosen specialty -- how to arrange religious activities, keep confidential information confidential, and, in a combat zone, keep an unarmed chaplain alive.