Easter at Camp Striker

I woke up late in the morning and it was Easter. Jack said he wanted to interview the chaplain at that chapel about being a chaplain in a war. We are told to come back later which we do. So Jack gets a pretty good interview and had just finished putting away his tape recorder. This chaplain, a lieutenant colonel in the regular Army, precedes to pick up a photograph of he and his wife and his two young twins. He precedes to tell us he just returned from emergency leave because one of the twins had died (she was only 20 months old). We are both taken back with this news. We leave the chapel enroute to the dining facility for Easter dinner. We discuss this chain of events during the dinner that was nothing more than all of the week;s meals put together in one. The dressing was the worst I’ve ever tasted. Anyway, Jack is going back and forth if he should go back and see if the chaplain would talk more about his family. He finally decides to return to the chapel and talk to the chaplain to see if he would be OK if he included his daughter’s death in his story. When we arrive at the chapel, we are told to come back later. So we decide to go to the MWR internet cafe. At a small shack a few feet from the cafe, two soldiers who are checking IDs tell us the internet and phone lines are blacked out because of the death of three soldiers. Marines always do this but this is the first time I’ve known the Army to do this. This prevents the soldiers’ families from learning about their deaths before they are appropriately notified by the respective services. I was suppose to call my wife for Easter later that day too so I was a little worried that she would be concerned. So we returned to the chapel and the chaplain agreed. What a sad story. We also noticed that he had a large Kabar knife on his body armor. Jack asked him about this. He said the knife’s purpose was to cut his seat belt in his Humvee. Later we returned to the dining facility for Easter dinner. A few hours later, Jack received some bad news from his family too. In other words, he didn’t sleep much that night with his wife calling him several times.