'In the Hands of God'

Bailey and his chaplain are beginning to realize that, on FOB Diamondback at least, Iraq is not the combat zone they were expecting. In the days that follow, Bailey assists with his chaplain's services, projecting hymn lyrics on the wall beside the altar. In the front office, he schedules all the services, Bible studies, briefings, and choir rehearsals. He listens as a lanky soldier sprawled in the chair next to his desk talks about feeling depressed; Bailey arranges for the soldier to see the chaplain. He inventories supplies. He sweeps the chapel into a cloud of dust.

The chaplain assistant whom Bailey is replacing is a 31-year-old reservist from Tucson. Staff Sergeant Joel Larson spent his year here working mostly alone inside this chapel. He went outside the wire with his chaplain only a few times, twice to check on a military police unit that was training Iraqi police at a primitive compound in the city. The MPs had expected to be there only three or four days; they wound up stuck there for a month. Larson and his chaplain handed out hygiene products and mostly just listened. The frustrated MPs gave them an earful.

Larson remembers telling another soldier who assumed chaplain assistants have it easy: "Not only do I have to deal with my problems and my wife's problems, but I have to deal with your problems, and his problems . . . " He gazes into the distance. "These kids are carrying the weight of the free world on their shoulders."

For the past year Larson has listened to the troubles of soldiers who came in looking for a chaplain. He hunkered down during mortar attacks. He handed out toys and shoes to Iraqi children. He missed the first six months of his own child's life.

Before Larson goes home a few days after Bailey's arrival, Bailey watches as Larson prints a new sign for the office door. It names Bailey as the person in charge of the chapel. Larson takes down the old sign with his own name on it. He lays it on the front stoop. He sets it on fire. Then he stomps on it.

"Dude!" Bailey says, laughing. "That's my chapel! I have to clean that up!"

Larson just smiles.

PFC Bailey's tour of duty has just begun.

Lying near the ruins of the Biblical city of Nineveh, Mosul has a long history of testing the faith of outsiders. In the Bible, God told Jonah to go warn the people of Nineveh to either repent or face God's wrath. Jonah ran away instead and wound up in the belly of a whale. When he finally did as God said and went to Nineveh, the city repented and God was merciful.

Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq, home to half a million Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomans. Just off Mosul's Sugarbeet Road, the second-story windows of a dust-colored neighborhood peek over a rough new concrete blast wall topped with razor wire. Inside the walls are what used to be Mosul's international airport and a Republican Guard base. It's now FOB Diamondback. An Iraqi army compound nestles between the road and Diamondback, alongside a public swimming pool and a soccer field. In the summer, soldiers inside Diamondback's walls can hear the splashes and laughter of children.

The streets on the FOB are sprayed down at night, trading dust for mud. They churn with small pickups, delivery trucks, Humvees, and big armored Strykers. Warrens of old flat-topped buildings huddle beneath tall eucaplyptus trees, housing offices, barracks, and shops. Inside, Turks and local Iraqis sell leather jackets, phone cards, rugs, and pirated CDs and videos. Nearby, new rows of containers make instant living quarters, shower rooms, and more shops. Concrete blast walls that look like extra tall jersey walls are going up around all these buildings, gradually sealing them off from the streets on base. The ugly concrete and constant mud give the FOB the makeshift feeling of a construction site.

Directly across Sugarbeet Road, which is a public highway, lies FOB Marez. To get to Marez from Diamondback, everyone puts on Kevlar helmets and rides in vehicles for the one-minute trip. The Black Hawk helicopters and C-130s that take off and land on Diamondback's air field fly low and fast to reduce their exposure to potential groundfire. Last year, snipers were a problem. From time to time, mortar rounds fall out of the sky and randomly explode. Just before Christmas in 2004, a suicide bomber walked into the chow hall on FOB Marez and blew himself up, killing twenty-two. As Bailey and Chaplain Deason arrived in the run-up to the December elections, however, Mosul was quiet.