These men, the survivors, still had no idea of the extent of the damage. They still thought that perhaps they’d been in the one area of the building hit by a rocket or mortar. We would wait until later to sit with these men and tell them the truth, to share with them the magnitude of the tragedy. After the living were taken out there was much more work to be done. With the wounded, with those who had survived, there was the strange job of trying to ease a gnawing feeling of guilt that would slowly surface, guilt that was felt by the men who were alive; the guilt that they had somehow let down their comrades by not dying with them. That is something that happens a great deal in combat.
So, our job was to tell them how every life saved was important to us; how their survival was important to our faith and our hope. They had to give thanks with us that they still had the gift and the responsibility of life which would go on. With others, the marines who stayed behind to continue the job of digging—a terrible, horrifying job of collecting human parts for identification and for eventual burial—there was the job of comforting them as they mourned.
Thankfully, the self-defense mechanism within us took over from time to time and we were able to work without reacting to each and every horror that we would encounter. But suddenly something would trigger our emotions, something would touch our humanity in a way impossible to avoid. For some it would be the finding of a friend’s body, someone filled with life only days before. For others, it would be a scrap of paper or a simple belonging, a birthday card or a picture of someone’s children which would remind them that this was no abstract body count of 240 military casualties. This was a tragedy of people where each was unique and each had a story. Each had a past and each had been cheated of a future. As the Mishnah puts it, ‘Each was a world.’ We were not digging up 240. We were digging up one plus one plus one.
I have a personal memory of two things which brought to my mind images of life, images which haunt me still. One was a packet of three envelopes tied together with a rubber band. On top, under the band, was a note which read, ‘To be mailed in case of death.’ The other was a Red Cross message delivered the next morning. The American Red Cross is the agency used by many Navy families to communicate medical news from home. This message was a birth announcement. A baby had been born, and we were to deliver the good news. Only now, there was no father whom we could congratulate, no father to whom the news could be conveyed. That message stayed on the chaplains’ desk for days. Somehow we couldn’t throw it away, so it stayed on the desk and without mentioning it, we all seemed to avoid that desk.
I stayed in Beirut for four more days before finally returning to Italy and to my family. During those days, as the work went on, a marine here or there would send a silent signal that he wanted me, that is, a chaplain, near. Sometimes it was to talk. Sometimes it was so that he could shrug his shoulders or lift his eyes in despair. Sometimes it was just to feel that I was near. For despite the struggles I might be feeling on a personal level, I was a chaplain and, therefore, a symbol that there was room for hope and for dreams, even at the worst of times.
In our tradition, of course, when we visit the home of a mourner during Shiva, the first week following the death of a loved one, visitors follow a simple rule: If the mourner initiates the conversation, the visitor responds. Otherwise, you sit in silence, communicating concern through your very presence, even without words. Somehow I applied those rules during those days of digging. When a soldier or sailor said something, I responded. Otherwise, I stood by.
During all of my visits to Beirut, I, along with the other chaplains, spent much time simply speaking with the men. Informal discussions, whether going on while crouched in a foxhole or strolling toward the tents set up for chow, were just as important as anything formal we might set up.
I remember the first time I jumped in a foxhole, the first time the shells actually fell within the U.S. area. Looking around at the others in there with me, I made the remark that we probably had the only interfaith foxholes in Beirut. The Druze, the Muslims, Christians, all had theirs. The Jewish forces in the Israeli Army had theirs. But we were together. I made the comment then that perhaps if the world had more interfaith foxholes, there might be less of a need for foxholes altogether.
To understand the role of the chaplain—Jewish, Catholic, or Protestant—is to understand that we try to remind others, and perhaps ourselves as well, to cling to our humanity even in the worst of times. We bring with us the wisdom of men and women whose faith has kept alive their dreams in ages past. We bring with us the images of what the world could be, of what we ourselves might be, drawn from the visions of prophets and the promises of our holy books. We bring with us the truth that faith not only reminds us of the holy in heaven, but also of the holiness we can create here on Earth. It brings not only a message of what is divine, but also of what it means to be truly human.
It’s too easy to give in to despair in a world sometimes seemingly filled with cruelty and brutality. But we must remember not just the depths to which humans might sink, but also the heights to which they may aspire.
