Good Book on the 2003 Iraq Invasion

WARNING:
If you have any loved ones or friends serving in Iraq or Afgahnistan or you have served yourself, I would recommend either not reading this post or having someone else preview it for you.



Last evening, I finished reading a book that I received on Friday as a gift. It is titled, "A Table in the Presence" by Carey Cash, military chaplain. His is the story of the first Marine Battalion to cross over from Kuwait to Iraq at the start of the ground invasion of 2003. The story does tell the usual details of those killed in action, of firefights with the enemy, of mass surrenders by conscripted Iraqi soldiers. It tells another side to this invasion as well.

We hear of Bible studies being held before and during the invasion as well as Baptisms being performed for those who had come to faith through the work of this chaplain. The most striking part of the book is to read the account he gives of an ambush of his battalion as they move to take a Presidential Palace located on the Tigris River.

Chaplain Cash and others who did not have armor on their vehicles are ordered to stay behind while the combat troops perform the mission. All goes well until they are ambushed by an equivilant number of mercinaries hiding in the abandoned buildings of downtown Bagdad. It is then that this book becomes a truly remarkable account of war. We read an entirely different version of a battle than we would anywhere else.

Chaplain Cash relates the spiritual reality of this battle for us. He tells of soldiers totally exposed passing through sheets of bullets for the number of enemy combatants. And coming out the other side completely uninjured. He tells of those who are fighting from within "ragtop" Humvees where the bullets have shredded the canvas except where the soldier was sitting. We hear of un-numbered Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG) being fired at point blank range being seen swatted away like so many flies. Finally, a company of these Marines are ordered to take a Mosque shortly after they capture the Presidential Palace. One of the Marines, now in the middle of a fire fight is totally exposed with only his M-16 for defense, instead of the roof mounted grenade launcher, and he sees a mercinary step out of a doorway in the outer wall of the Mosque with a RPG ready to shoot. Chaplain Cash tells us that to this day, the soldier does not know why the enemy did not shoot. He had time to shoot but this mercinary saw something. The soldier does not know what, but the man ran away down an ally as fast as he could, yelling for his comrade to join him all the way! The only explanation any of these soldiers and the chaplain could give for these many miraculous events was the hand of God. They took literally the words of Psalm 91:11, 7. 'For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. ... A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.' They clung to those words of God for dear life throughout this battle.

This is an incredible book, one I could not put down. I would urge whoever reads this to continue to pray for all our soldiers until the war is over. That is another point made by the author. He quotes from letter from home sent to these troops from time to time. He does this to make the point that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Christians on the homefront were praying these soldiers through every minute of the invasion. We cannot stop now. No matter what, all of us on the homefront need to lift our leaders and military, especially the soldiers up to our heavenly Father in prayer. And we cannot forget the P.O.W.s. They need our prayer more than anyone.