See also: ‘Grunt Padre’ could be patron saint of Memorial Day at https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2017/05/29/grunt-padre-patron-saint-memorial-day/.
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
IRON BOTTOM BAY
(By Capt. Walter Mahler, Chaplain on USS Astoria sunk August 9, 1942 in The Battle of Savo Island with 219 men killed)
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I stood on a wide and desolate shore
And the night was dismal and cold.
I watched the weary rise,
And the moon was a riband of gold.
Far off I heard the trumpet sound,
Calling the quick and the dead,
The long and rumbling roll of drums,
And the moon was a riband of red.
Dead sailors rose from out of the deep,
Nor looked not left or right,
But shoreward marched upon the sea,
And the moon was a riband of white.
A hundred ghosts stood on the shore
At the turn of the midnight flood,
They beckoned me with spectral hands,
And the moon was a riband of blood.
Slowly I walked to the waters edge,
And never once looked back
Till the waters swirled about my feet,
And the moon was a riband of black.
I woke alone on a desolate shore
From a dream not sound or sweet,
For there in the sands in the moonlight
Were the marks of phantom feet.
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2 NYPD officers promoted posthumously; Ramos also made honorary chaplain
Military Punishes Chaplain for Referring to the Bible in Suicide-Prevention Seminar
I knew a pastor who landed on one of the beaches on D Day (I am sorry I forgot what beach).
He never spoke of it and I only found out shortly before he passed away.
His son told me that was the only time as a chaplain he was issued a firearm.