Immediate! - Part One
An Address to the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces December 9, 2003, Washington, D.C.

Lieutenant Carey H. Cash, CHC, United States Navy Reserve

For the past two and a half years I have served as Battalion Chaplain to the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment in Camp Pendleton, California. The “Fighting Fifth Marines,” as we are known, lays claim to being the most highly decorated regiment in the history of the Marine Corps. It is one of only two regiments that are allowed to wear the historic French Fourragere, symbolizing our heroic exploits at the Battle of Belleau Wood during World War I. Our battalion is a unit of nearly one thousand brave infantrymen...men whose courage, resolve, and faith were tested and refined on the battlefields of Iraq in the spring of 2003.

After forty days of training in the Northern Kuwaiti Desert, we were tired, restless, and wondering if the war was ever going to start. We decided that what we needed was a talent show...just to blow off a little steam and let our hair down. So the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, using the back of a seven-ton truck as a stage, under dim flickering lights, and armed with a very poor sound system, assembled what had to have been the finest array of talent ever seen in the Northern Kuwaiti Desert. There were skits, music, singing, and, of course, those unforgettable impersonations of a few Senior Staff NCOs and officers.

I have never seen a thousand men laugh so hard and for so long as I did that night. When it was over we felt like someone had just opened the windows and let all the anxiety, stress, and pent-up frustration of the past six weeks blow right out. We went peacefully to sleep at 2300.

That peace was short-lived. At 0200 our battalion’s executive officer came into our squad tent, hit the lights, and said, “This is it! You’ve got five hours to get your gear packed and in your vehicles. We’re heading north.” I can’t say I remember much of the next five hours or of that day, but by nightfall our battalion was positioned just a few thousand meters south of the border of Iraq, making ready to invade. Then, for two days, well within range of Iraqi Scud missiles and artillery, we waited.

Late on the afternoon of 20 March, our commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Fred Padilla, called a meeting of his entire command staff to discuss our scheme of maneuver for what we believed was going to be a next day’s attack. Midway through the meeting, a runner burst into the tent with a message and handed it to the colonel. I was standing right behind him, and as I looked over his shoulder, I could make out only one bold word: IMMEDIATE! He read the note, paused, looked at those assembled and said, “It’s now...We’re crossing the breach tonight!”

This would be the last time our battalion staff was together before the war and the last time all of our officers would still be alive. The commanding officer turned to me and said, “Chaplain, before we go, would you lead us in a word of prayer?” After all the planning, all the strategy sessions, all the conditioning hikes, all the live-fire ranges, it had come to this-a prayer, a group of men, warriors, standing in a circle, beseeching God for help, for strength, and for courage.

God was preparing a table before us in the presence of our enemies.

The servant of God, the warrior David, many thousands of years ago cried out unto the Lord, “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:4-6 KJV).

“A table…in the presence…” Even when surrounded by danger, when facing overwhelming odds, when confronted by enemies bent on our destruction, God is with us-providing for our every need, protecting us from evil, empowering us to be faithful. the table that David spoke about, the table that David longed for, was the table of God’s presence in the presence of his enemies. That table was set for the men of 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, before we ever set foot in Iraq, while still in Kuwait for forty days (a duration of strikingly biblical proportions).

God had drawn us into the desert-a harsh, desolate, wild place, but a place of spiritual preparation, where men hear the voice of God. during that time, forty-nine men were baptized, and 160 became rigorously involved in spiritual growth classes. We felt like God had literally reached down from the heavens and touched us in that awful place. The table of God’s presence was set in the hearts of many. we would come to need His presence as never before in the critical hours and days ahead.

Everywhere we went, snipers and guerilla-style gunmen were ambushing units around us; the casualty count in our regiment was mounting daily. Within the first ten hours of the ground invasion our battalion lost one of our own. Second Lieutenant Shane Childers became the first man of the entire war Killed In Action at the hands of enemy gunfire.

When I arrived where Shane had died, the feeling was surreal. The pain and the ache were unlike anything we’d ever known. In the days that followed, I began to notice something happening: our worship services began to take on a whole new meaning and significance. When I drove up to a platoon or a company the men would be waiting. Sometimes it was ten; more often it was 110. And they were hungry for the Lord. We all were!

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” And we were filled! We prayed, we heard God’s Word, we shared Communion together. The men came to receive Communion with hands lifted up, hands that were filthy, even bloody, but hearts that were pure. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” And we saw God move in our lives! One by one, men who hungered and thirsted for lasting peace were filled with that peace of God that surpasses all understanding. By the end of the war, the number baptized reached fifty-seven, one of whom I was privileged to baptize in the court room of Saddam’s presidential palace on Palm Sunday!

The story of how we ended up in that palace is one of incredible bravery in the face of determined opposition, extreme danger, horror, and, ultimately, of God’s miraculous provision.

I’ll tell that story next month…

Editor’s Note: Part Two of this article will be published in the June Command. Chaplain Cash’s book “A Table in the Presence” expands on his experiences and is available in bookstores and online at Amazon.com.