Capt. Nicholas Green worked a night shift Christmas Eve. He had managed to talk briefly to his wife by phone, never a sure thing from a U.S. Army base eight time zones away. At home, it was his first child’s first Christmas, and it was hard not being there. Although he attended Mass faithfully, on that Christmas Day in 2005, he simply went back to his room at Camp Phoenix in Kabul, Afghanistan. He opened the presents that had been sent to him from his wife and family. Then he went to sleep.
Army Chaplain Jim Fogle-Miller spent that same day traveling. He flew on a chopper with senior military officers from Camp Phoenix to a few forward operating bases – FOBs in military lingo ó remote mission outposts run by U.S. and coalition troops. At each stop there was no time to conduct a worship service, just to talk to the soldiers, maybe say a prayer or two. At Sarkani, a lonely, mountainous spot in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, on a table in a makeshift kitchen surrounded by cooking utensils and prepared rations, the troops had set up a Christmas tree. Underneath, Fogle-Miller saw a nativity set and a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
