Faith Under Fire

Army Chaplain Roger Benimoff heard the IED blast and saw the smoke rising. From his vantage point at a forward-aid station on the morning of June 7, 2005, he peered through a fog of dust as .50-caliber machine-gun fire erupted in the distance. Then the guns went silent. Benimoff helped medics get stretchers ready for the wounded. But when the soldiers of Fox Troop returned to station near Tall Afar, all they had was the bloodied corpse of one of their men. Benimoff began a familiar death ritual. The heat was closing in on 100 degrees; a smell of diesel fumes filled the air. Benimoff gathered the medics around the corpse of their comrade in the shade of an armored personnel carrier. Ignoring the din of rumbling engines and radio chatter, he began to pray in a strong and reassuring voice, quoting Psalm 121: I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He prayed for the soldier's family. He prayed for the medics who had wanted so much to help. He prayed that God would look down upon their small circle and surround them with his love.

Yet at times in the Iraq War zone—and after coming home—Benimoff began to question that love. His experience, detailed in a daily journal and voluminous e-mails from Iraq shared with NEWSWEEK, is a tale of a devout young man who begins his time in Iraq brimming with faith and a sense of devotion that carries him into a second tour. "My heart is filled with prayer and God is giving me a discerning spirit," he writes at the start of that later deployment. "The spiritual battle I am engaged in is a minute-by-minute war." He is "on fire for God." But the start of a full-blown crisis of faith—one he grapples with as a chaplain at Walter Reed Army Medical Center today—is seen in his journal entry from that night near Tall Afar: "Can [I] keep doing this? Is the pain & the heartache worth it? ... God, please let me look to you and no other."

Benimoff's journal is written in a scribble of printed letters on 126 unlined pages. It's a tale of helicopter crashes, suicides, improvised explosive device blasts—and the professional, spiritual and marital troubles of soldiers seeking comfort. A mixture of adrenaline and devotion keeps Benimoff focused in the theater of war. Yet over time, his spiritual foundation is shaken by the carnage. The demons surface in full once he finds more time for reflection. After joining Walter Reed last June, Benimoff was plagued by questions. "I am not sleeping well and I am still scared," he wrote. "I was reading my Bible and I found myself getting violently mad at God." For a brief period early this year, he came to "hate" God, and wanted nothing to do with religion.

God can be found or lost in a foxhole, but rarely does war leave someone's faith untouched. In some ways, Benimoff's story is common to people of all walks of life and all beliefs. It is the story of spiritual struggle—and of trying to accept a world of both good and evil, where pain and loss seem unconnected to faith and justice. Such tensions are magnified on the battlefield. Countless soldiers—not just chaplains—have struggled with how to reconcile a God of love with a God who allows the terror of conflict. For centuries theologians and philosophers have grappled with ideas of "just war": thou shalt not kill, but under certain conditions—to prevent wider bloodshed and suffering—slaughter by armies is acceptable.

Many American soldiers in Iraq wear crosses; some carry a pocket-size, camouflage New Testament with an index that lists topics such as Fear, Loneliness and Duty. U.S. troops have conducted baptisms in the Tigris. They often huddle in prayer before they go on patrol. Not everyone is comfortable with this. About 80 percent of soldiers polled in a 2006 Military Times survey said they felt free to practice their religion within the military. But the same poll found that 36 percent of troops found themselves at official gatherings at least once a month that were supposed to be secular but started with a prayer.

The survey didn't ask soldiers whether they suffered doubt or loss of faith. National Guard Specialist George Schmidt, 30, who was raised as a Methodist in Titusville, Pa., and became a Wiccan before deploying to Iraq in June 2006, says he saw fellow soldiers driven in different directions. "Either you're running to God, grasping to hold on to the guy you were before you came to Iraq, or you're running right away from him because of what you're seeing," he says. Schmidt is now being treated for posttraumatic stress disorder and anxiety at Walter Reed. Army Specialist Joe Schaffel, 24, who is also being treated for PTSD, went to Roman Catholic school in Sleepy Hollow, Ill. "I had faith until I got to Iraq," says Schaffel, who returned from his second deployment last September. "I haven't gotten it back since. Once you get there, you wonder how God could allow anyone to go through that."