Associate Pastor Bill Graham is very familiar with suicide in the military, and just recently, he saw an example of intervention that helped a soldier “on the brink of making a bad choice.”

Graham, a retired Army chaplain of 25 years, is an associate pastor of missions and ministries at First Baptist Church in downtown Clarksville.

“One of our ministries is the military,” he said, explaining that the church has an ongoing weekly program for soldiers and family members called, “Combat Trauma: Bridges to Solutions.”

A soldier in the small group recognized some alarming symptoms in another soldier, who “was not making good choices in dealing with issues,” which he brought to the attention of those who could help.

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Sixty-seven days after brain surgery, Staff Sgt. Dave Love was out on the Potomac, fishing for bass on a beautiful afternoon.

He and more than 90 other wounded warriors participated in the Army vs. Marines Spring Bass Challenge yesterday at Smallwood State Park in Marbury. The event was a welcome change of scene for men whose days can be a blur of doctor visits and who are often tormented at night by post-traumatic stress.

“This day is worth living,” said Love, a 32-year Army National Guard veteran who suffered brain trauma from roadside bombs during four years in Iraq. “This is what life is about.”

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FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — Regular duties are suspended for three days at Fort Campbell, which leads the Army in suicides this year, so commanders can identify and help soldiers who are struggling with the stress of war and most at risk for killing themselves.

The post began a stand-down Wednesday so soldiers can focus on suicide prevention training in the wake of 11 confirmed suicides by Campbell soldiers this year. More deaths are being investigated as possible suicides.

“This is not a place where Fort Campbell and the 101st Airborne Division want to be,” said Brig. Gen. Stephen Townsend. “We don’t want to lead the Army in this statistic.”

From January to March, the installation averaged one suicide per week, Townsend said. After an Army-wide suicide prevention campaign in started in March, there were no suicides for six weeks, he said.

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In the D.C. area, as across the nation, a small cadre of women help one another mourn the loss of a deceased spouse. Nancy Jackson, coordinator for the widow-to-widow network, part of the Army Community Service’s Survivors Outreach Program, has six “callers” who help her contact the newly bereaved affiliated with the Army in Northern Virginia, the District and part of Southern Maryland.

The widow-to-widow program is just one of many community services provided by the Department of Defense to active and retired military members and their families.

Mrs. Jackson receives the names of those who have passed on, along with the addresses and phone numbers of their family members from the post casualty office. She then writes a letter to each widow or widower, expressing condolences and advising each that he or she will receive a personal call in the near future.

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On Memorial Day, we recall with reverence the courage and sacrifice of our forbearers and honor those now in harm’s way. What follows is the true story of four men whose “last full measure of devotion” to God and country should never be forgotten.

Two days out of St. Johns, Newfoundland, fog, sleet and the buildup of ice, slowed the tiny Greenland-bound convoy of two merchant ships, an Army transport — the USAT Dorchester and three escorting Coast Guard cutters, to 10 knots. At 3:55 a.m. on Feb. 3, 1943, the Dorchester, with 751 soldiers aboard, was struck amidships by a single torpedo from a lurking German U-boat, taking out the engine room and leaving the ship and two thirds of those on board with but 20 minutes to live.

Due to panic and inexperience, only two life boats were successfully lowered. Soldiers struggled to find life preservers in anticipation of going into the frigid 34-degree water of the Labrador Sea, aware that 10 minutes in the water would result in death by hypothermia.

Amid the chaos, four Army Chaplains, handed out life jackets and attempted to calm the terrified young soldiers. When the last jackets had been handed out, the chaplains unhesitatingly gave their own life jackets and the chance to live to four others.

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TUCSON, Ariz. – Chaplain Joshua Ingertson has been protecting his country for nearly half his life – first as a soldier, then as a Border Patrol agent and now also as a chaplain.

He has a profound sense of duty to his country and an equally abiding faith. And working as a patrol agent along the Mexican border on Memorial Day gave him an opportunity to dwell on those countless American soldiers who have paid with their lives to maintain the nation’s freedoms.

Ingertson said he told his supervisor chaplain last week that he probably would not be thinking of anyone specifically on Monday, but would reflect on “those who we lost out there, whose memorials we put together, soldiers who gave it all, who put it all out there for all of us.”

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(CNN) — Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.

The unsolicited Bibles sent by a church in the United States were confiscated about a year ago at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan because military rules forbid troops of any religion from proselytizing while deployed there, Lt. Col. Mark Wright said.

Such religious outreach can endanger American troops and civilians in the devoutly Muslim nation, Wright said.

“The decision was made that it was a ‘force protection’ measure to throw them away, because, if they did get out, it could be perceived by Afghans that the U.S. government or the U.S. military was trying to convert Muslims,” Wright told CNN on Tuesday.

Troops at posts in war zones are required to burn their trash, Wright said.

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BANGOR – As a chaplain in the US Army’s First Cavalry Division, Captain Edward Tolliver just spent nearly a year in Iraq as the guy to whom soldiers came for advice, comfort, or just a welcome face. But on a recent May evening in Bangor International Airport, Tolliver was the one receiving the comforting embrace.

Moments after the chaplain had landed on American soil for the first time in 11 months, Kay Lebowitz, 93, spotted Tolliver tucking into a Maine lobster roll. She rushed over, wrapped him in her firm hug, told him she was proud of him, and added, as she has been saying to troops in this airport almost every day for the past six years: “Welcome to Bangor!”

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WASHINGTON (Catholic Online) – I’m a veteran. Not just a military veteran (which I am) but a Memorial Day Parade veteran. My career began in Cub Scouts, marching what felt like 50 miles through downtown. As I grew older I graduated in assignments from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts and then Marching Band. When I returned from Vietnam, I again marched on Memorial Day in my naval uniform complete with campaign ribbons.

The parade always ended at the cemetery where wreaths were placed around the war memorial and flowers decorated the stone monoliths marking the graves of departed soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen.

The markers meant a lot more to me on the other side of serving. I knew friends who had fallen and watched plenty of tracer bullets from the deck of my destroyer whose targets could have ended in death.

Often, for many of our military who died in action, a chaplain was the final person in charge of their soul. In harm’s way, these faithful servants of Christ’s Church don’t just stand beside the men and women in various branches of the service, they wear the uniform.

The work of our chaplains extends much farther than the post chapel. They labor on land, at sea and in the air. There are 1.4 million Catholics in the military; wherever they are stationed, the chaplain is there

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