An Extraordinary Opportunity to Serve

As I watched the news about the conflict in Iraq, I wondered if I would get a phone call. Sure enough, it came in January 2004: "Colonel Morsch, sir, we've received orders on you, and you're being sent to Iraq." I met with my co-workers to prepare for my deployment.

I serve as president of Heart to Heart International, a medical relief agency, and I make my living as a doctor with the medical group I founded, Docs Who Care. Getting two weeks' notice that I was going to Iraq for four months certainly helped me get my priorities in order! I headed for Iraq with mixed emotions.

In 2000, I had been an Army Reserve doctor to Kosovo, but that was after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) interventions had calmed the hostilities between the Albanians and the Serbs. The situation had been tense at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, but the war had not been raging as it was when I learned I was headed for Iraq. When I joined the U.S. Army Reserves in 1993, I didn't do it because I was pro-war or because I thought war was noble. I joined because of my opportunity as a doctor to ease the suffering war causes.

As an Army doctor, I not only get to care for soldiers, but I can also help civilians and those we call the "enemy," the prisoners of war (POW). Preparing to go to Iraq, I felt a sense of excitement. I believe everything in our lives is part of God's story. My going to Iraq was part of that story. I cried as I said good-bye to my wonderful wife and children, my family and friends, my church and the terrific people with whom I work. But my heavy heart was also full of love and life, peace and purpose.

I knew my time in Iraq would not escape God's attention.

I felt that my deployment was more than just another opportunity to serve-it was an honor and privilege.

The night before our departure, I drove around a nearby town and heard bells ringing from a small Catholic church. I went in, sat in the back row, and listened to the priest as he read 1 Corinthians 13, the well-known chapter on love. It ends with these words: "We have three things to do . . . Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love." (TM) As I heard those words, I knew my mission in Iraq would be to love every person I met, whether a wounded American soldier, an Iraqi POW, or a civilian.

The next day a chaplain held a communion service for several dozen of us before we boarded the plane. About 24 hours later, we arrived in the blazing sunlight of Kuwait. Then I rode a C-130 cargo plane to Baghdad, accompanied by pharmaceuticals and medical supplies that Heart to Heart was donating to Iraqi clinics and hospitals.

I was assigned to be the field doctor for a battalion that had set up its Forward Operating Base near the Iranian border. A physician's assistant, eight combat medics, and I were the medical team for the soldiers. My normal duties included taking care of soldiers in the medical tent, providing supervision and training for the medics, and visiting two detainee camps to care for POWs. My shifts lasted 12 to 15 hours per day, seven days a week.

Every day was different from the next. We were kept busy treating soldiers who were wounded in firefights, from attacks on their convoys, and from other violent exchanges. Many were wounded, and far too many died. Occasionally I joined soldiers on a mission to provide medical back-up. One such mission was a surprise sweep in the middle of the night. A group of tanks, mortar platoons, and assault soldiers went to a village suspected of harboring men who had attacked American soldiers.

When we neared the village, we turned out our lights and used night vision goggles. Our plan was so detailed that each team of soldiers knew which houses to search and in which order. It all happened very quickly, quietly, and smoothly. Within two hours the sweep was complete, and the soldiers apprehended two men hiding an enormous cache of weapons. That ended the attacks in the area.

One day I was assigned to join a convoy and accompany a prisoner with a severe abdominal infection to the military hospital in Baghdad. The mission was postponed after a convoy returning to our camp the night before was bombed. That was the third time in five days that one of our convoys had been hit, so we waited until a nearby combat unit could beef up security. A day later we headed out. As I sat in the back of a Humvee with this sick POW, I asked myself: Why are we doing this for someone we consider our enemy? It seemed unfair. I could see risking my life and the lives of American soldiers for another American. But risking all this for an enemy POW? Besides the anxiety I felt along the dangerous road to Baghdad, I was also homesick. And when I realized it was Sunday and I would miss chapel, I became even more discouraged.

So there I was in an armored vehicle wearing the full "battle rattle"-about 50 pounds of body armor and weapons. Next to me, the gunner stood, his head sticking through the roof of the Humvee, constantly spinning one way, then another-aiming his machine gun at anything that moved, looking for snipers, motioning for cars to stop or move, and calling directions to drivers. We drove down the highway as fast as we could, trying to make ourselves a more difficult target to attack, tailgating the Humvee in front of us so a suicide car bomber couldn't get between us, and being tailgated by another Humvee.

Sitting in front of me a solder monitored radio messages from the Humvees ahead of us and yelled this information to the gunner and me. Feeling sorry for myself, and a little scared, I took out my MP3 digital music player. I ran the earphones into my ears and turned the music on. The first song was by the Brooklyn Tabernacle choir, "Surely the Presence of the Lord Is in This Place." I had heard the song hundreds of times before, but on that day, in that place, the words were truer for me than they had ever been.

Echoing the sentiment expressed in the song, I could feel God's mighty power, and I felt His grace and glory. Speeding toward Baghdad, crammed into a Humvee, I felt enveloped by God's presence. Tears ran down my dusty cheeks as I peered through the thick, bullet-proof window at Iraqis in their flowing robes, at their mud houses, at children playing, and at the tall and stately palm trees. And just as surely as I felt God's presence in that Humvee, I sensed God's presence in all I was looking at-in that desert country, with the Shiites, the Sunnis, the Kurds. God was surely there. He loved Iraq. Quickly, my thoughts lurched back to the present and thinking of what the convoy was doing, Jesus' words echoed in my mind: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). I felt a deep sense of peace.

Although worried about the road ahead, I had a sense of contentment that everything would be fine, no matter what happened. I knew that God profoundly loved people on both sides of this conflict.

This sense of contentment lasted throughout my time in Iraq.

It had nothing to do with bravery, but had everything to do with my sense that God was with me and that many were praying for me.

I found joy in scripture from Philippians: "Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. I've learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances . . . Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am." (Philippians 4:6-7, 11-13, TM)

The Saturday before I left Iraq was one of the most amazing days of my life. I was scheduled to see patients and make rounds at the POW camp, and I asked the chaplain to join me. I wanted to say good-bye to the prisoners. Many of these Muslims had become Christians and had asked for a baptismal service. The chaplain spontaneously decided to conduct a simple service. The POWs gathered their water bottles, and we set a cot in the middle of the compound. One by one, the POWs sat on the cot and leaned back, while we poured water over their heads and baptized them in the name of Christ.

About a dozen were baptized that day. As we baptized each man, we asked if he wished to take a second name to emphasize his new life in Christ. One man asked me to write down each apostle's name so he could choose one. Another prisoner, Afshin, asked me to suggest a name for him. I suggested James, the brother of Jesus. I told him James was a popular name in my family. My last name was on my uniform, and the prisoner asked if he could also take the Morsch name. The chaplain asked me to baptize Afshin when it was his turn. I asked Afshin what name he wished to take. He said, "I wish to take the name James Afshin Morsch." With tears in my eyes, I poured water onto his head, baptizing my Muslim friend into the fellowship of Christ.

After our baptismal service, "James" pulled me aside and told me it was an Iraqi tradition to give a good friend a gift. He slowly slipped a ring off his hand. "This is my wedding ring," he said. "I haven't seen my wife in many years, and I probably will never see her again. I'd like to give it to you." I was stunned. "No, James, you must keep it," I eventually said. "Someday you will see your wife again." "No," he said. "I want you to have it," as he pressed the ring into my hand. We hugged and my tears surfaced as I walked out of the POW compound. My duties had ended. It was time to return home.

The next day, my last Sunday in Iraq, was Easter. I celebrated in a simple chapel service sitting among the soldiers with whom I'd lived and served. I had been given permission to invite several Muslims to chapel-it was their first time in a Christian service. How fitting that their first service was Easter. No doubt, Christ has indeed risen for all of us! The next day I was on a MEDEVAC flight for Germany. The C-141 cargo plane was loaded with injured soldiers for the first leg of our long flight home. The airstrip was under attack even as litters of wounded were loaded on the plane and we taxied for take-off. But I was at peace.

God had brought me to Iraq to serve soldiers, civilians, and the enemy. The time had now come to return home to continue the next chapter in my service to God and humankind.

Gary Morsch and Dean Nelson wrote Heart and Soul: Awakening Your Passion to Serve, published by Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City.

Holiness Today, March/April 2005

Please note: This article was originally published in 2005. All facts, figures, and titles were accurate to the best of our knowledge at that time but may have since changed.