Paul Linzey

First draft completed. This was my thesis for the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Tampa. I hope to prepare it for submission to a publisher in early 2016. -- While deployed to a small Forward Operating Base as a chaplain in the spring and summer of 2007, I experienced the danger of war, the loneliness of being away from home, and the exhilaration of watching up close as God answered prayer, changed lives, and performed miracles. Assigned to Camp Echo, which hadn’t had a chaplain in over three years, “heat, danger, dust, and death formed the context for the ministry I was sent to do. My job was to establish a religious program, get it up and running, and ‘do whatever chaplains are supposed to do.’ There was no chapel, no office, no phone, and no internet connection designated for a Religious Support Team. There were no Bibles, literature, or supplies.” Operating from the philosophy that “ministry follows friendship,” I built relationships among the men and women, military and civilian, American and Coalition. This opened the door for me to be there when people were at their best and at their worst, their strongest and weakest moments. This is the story of what happened in our lives. Drawing from personal experience as well as from the news media covering the events in Iraq, the book provides a narrative of war that is different than you’ve ever heard or read.