ATLANTA (ABP) — “How do you plan to stay in touch with your family while you’re deployed?” Army chaplain James “Jim” Kirkendall frequently asks young soldiers.
It’s one of the many topics Kirkendall addresses during personal visits with military personnel of the Army’s 95th Division, based in Oklahoma City, in preparing them for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.
 CBF-endorsed Army chaplain Jim Kirkendall |
Soldiers are required to attend mandatory briefings by many Army departments — from the judge advocate general to family readiness. During these sessions, Kirkendall addresses the emotional impact of deployment and suicide prevention. He shares experiences from his own year-long deployment in Iraq.
From 2006 to 2007, Kirkendall was attached to the Logistics Support Area (LSA) Anaconda, in Balad, Iraq, where he counseled soldiers and visited the wounded and workers at the Air Force Theater Hospital and the Contingency Aeromedical Staging Facility.
Kirkendall saw suffering among both civilian and military personnel. While visiting soldiers and chaplains at the Air Force Theater Hospital, he heard, “Trauma code ER, trauma code ER.” He and another chaplain arrived in the emergency room as medics rushed into the facility a 10-year-old boy who had been shot in the head.
“So there he was, a small 10-year-old with no family around him but with two Christian military chaplains, each holding onto his hands and praying as he died,” Kirkendall said.
While in Iraq, he ministered to a mixture of American, Filipino, Indian, Pakistani, Turkish, Russian and Iraqi civilians and to soldiers from all branches of the U.S. military. He also conducted training sessions for 25 junior chaplains.
“At LSA Anaconda, suffering was demonstrated by being absent from our loved ones for a very long time, death of a comrade, frustration in the office due to overbearing supervisors, lack of communication with family, spouse deciding to start a relationship with someone else and leave the soldier in Iraq, injured soldiers with limbs violently removed from their bodies, civilians caught in the middle between scratching out a living and having a war exploding around them, to interpreters using false names so their identity would be concealed,” he said. “And the list goes on. The bottom line is, God is still there.”
Now, Kirkendall talks with Oklahoma-based soldiers about the challenges they are likely to face. He also serves as chaplian for the Oklahoma Office of Juvenile Affairs.
“I love being a chaplain because I have a unique ministry of going where others cannot go,” said Kirkendall.
“The average pastor doesn’t get to go behind the fence of the medium- and maximum-secured areas … with 12- to 18-year-old adjudicated juvenile delinquents,” he said, or “to serve in a combat zone and serve soldiers where life-and-death issues are addressed every day.”
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