In January, reporter Moni Basu and photographer Curtis Compton began documenting life at war with Darren Turner, chaplain for the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, part of the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart.
They traveled with him to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington while he was home on leave, then caught up with him in Iraq, where they spent five weeks reporting this story.
They shadowed the chaplain as he counseled soldiers, baptized them and dealt with war’s hardships. They also went on foot patrol with a platoon that lost six men last summer.
Every soldier in this story gave the journalists permission to document their interactions with the chaplain. All except one of the scenes were witnessed firsthand. The one reconstructed scene — the events of last summer — appears in Chapter 3 and was pieced together through interviews with soldiers who were there.
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