Bravo Company Days

Chapter 6: atheist in a foxhole

Sunday, like every other day, began with an accountability formation and a rushed breakfast at the dining facility. This time, however, instead of being whisked away to the next training event the soldiers formed a line in front of the duty desk to sign up for religious services.

I located the Latter-day Saint roster among a clutter of clipboards for several brands of Christianity and a few more exotic faiths. As I signed up for the 11:30 a.m. sacrament meeting, it did not escape my attention that while other rosters had collected pages of signatures, my name was only the second on the LDS sheet.

“So, Case, what church you goin’ to?” asked some soldier I barely knew after the drill sergeants had dismissed us.

“Mormon, actually,” I said, a bit annoyed that he was asking such a personal question.

“Really?” said the guy I barely knew, sounding impressed. “Is that were you, like, worship nature and smoke marijuana legally and shit?”

Before I could answer, Macintyre interjected: “It’s a form of Christianity founded by Joseph Smith, you ignorant fuck. Now get lost.”

The guy I barely knew did get lost, but a few eavesdroppers who I didn’t know any better hovered around to ask a barrage of theological questions.

“Hey Case, did that Brigham the younger guy really have like thirty wives?”

“I heard that you believe this guy found a better bible under a rock, is that true?”

“My pastor told me Mormons think God was once a man. You really believe that?”

“Well… I guess the answer’s ‘yes’ to all three questions.” I said, wishing I would have kept my anonymity.

Everyone spent the next forty five minutes vigorously cleaning the barracks. Then, at 8:30 a.m., services started for both Catholic and Protestant faiths and ninety five percent of the company, left the remaining spiritual freaks alone and bored in the vacated barracks. With nothing better to do, I slumped against my locker on the floor and scrawled in my black notebook. I would have lain on my bed, but that was prohibited before lights out. True, most of the drill sergeants had the day off and the two who were stuck at the duty desk and probably didn’t have any inclination to go out of their way and lay down the law, but I wasn’t taking any chances with an unexpected visit.

“You might as well lie down,” said Macintyre, who was reclined on his bunk. “If a drill sergeant sees one of us breaking the rules everyone in room is going to get smoked and I have no intention of getting up.”

“Aren’t you worried about getting caught?”

He shrugged. “If they don’t catch me I get to rest. If they do, I do a couple of hundred pushups and get stronger. Either way, I win.”
Deciding he had a point, I climbed onto my bunk.

“That’s the way,” Macintyre said. “You worry too much.”
“Are you going to any church today?”

“Yep. I signed up for the one with the least amount of signatures, which happens to be yours.”

“If it’s another adventure you want, sacrament meeting is not the place to look. Trust me on this,” I said.
“So why do you go?”

“Moral duty, I guess.”

“Moral duty,” Macintyre repeated, smiling as if it were the punch line to a joke. He reached into his pillow case and pulled out a pack of Lucky Strykes, and nonchalantly put one into his mouth.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“Dude, relax. I’m not lighting up. I just like to keep a cigarette between my teeth when I can’t smoke.”

“I’m sure the drill sergeants will recognize the distinction.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Seriously, man,” I insisted. “They’re not going to be
so forgiving next time.”

“Alright, Alright, Just chill out.” Macintyre put the cigarettes back under his pillow.

An hour before the service, two believers and Macintyre reported to the duty desk to sign out. The other churchgoer was Private Reavis. He was tall, appeared to be naturally bald, and introduced himself as “Elder Reavis.” In the LDS church, “elder” is the spiritual title used by men who go on two-year proselytizing missions, so I surmised that Reavis took religion very seriously.

Drill Sergeant A marched us to chow early. I felt kind of silly calling cadence in a formation of only four people, but I was happy to forgo the “kill without mercy” ritual before filing inside. We had consumed our lunches with the usual haste then marched again to a nearby bus stop, where Drill Sergeant A reminded us to promptly sign in at the duty desk upon returning before taking leave of us.

The bus came in ten minutes, and we boarded it. As it meandered across the base collecting and disgorging passengers, I noticed the troops segregated themselves according to headgear. The new recruits with their pile caps huddled together in the back; the troops who had completed basic training but were still doing their specialized training wore berets and grouped together in the middle; those who were completely finished with training wore berets adorned with shiny metal flashes of their unit insignia and sat in the front. How I envied the last group. Even though they were the bottom rung of the Army ladder, they seemed like an aristocracy to me.

We got off the bus at a church that looked just like the one across the street from the barracks except that it was secluded from the road by the a hedge of bushes and had no free standing cross that I could see. Reavis, Macintyre and I joined the flow of people into the chapel where some amateur organist was butchering the first chords of “Redeemer of Israel.” The chapel looked like most other LDS chapels I had seen growing up—tidy but not ornate. It was strange to see the chapel filled mostly by uniformed troops instead of regular Sunday attire.

The three of us took seats at a bench halfway between the middle in the back where the fewest other troops were sitting. Reavis requested to switch seats with me in case “the investigator”—meaning Macintyre—had any questions. I complied with a twinge of irritation, feeling this was an implication that I was unable or unworthy to answer any of Macintyre’s questions myself.

The music hushed and someone gave the opening prayer. A genial-looking man of maybe forty five years came to the pulpit next.

“Good morning, brothers and sisters!” He said, bubbling over with enthusiasm that seemed genuine. “To all you new faces I see, I would like to welcome to the Fort Jackson Ward. I am Bishop Stewart Robertson. I would also like to introduce our chaplain, Major Rick Wilkinson. Brother Wilkinson, will you stand up for us please.”

A uniformed man with a cross on his collar seated in the back of the chapel stood up and for a moment, all heads turned from the pulpit to the chaplain. I turned, too, and observed a man with large hands, reddish hair, and a face that suggested a bantering sense of humor and intelligence.

“Thank you, Brother Wilkinson. If any of you in this congregation ever feels in need of spiritual counsel, either Brother—excuse me—Chaplain Wilkinson or myself would be happy to assist you.”

Once the chaplain was seated, the branch president said something that made me shift in my seat.
“Due to next week’s stake conference, fast and testimony meeting has been moved to today. For those of you who may be part of this denomination, we as Latter-day Saints put aside the first Sabbath of each month for members of the congregation to fast for two meals of the day and share their spiritual convictions during the sacrament meeting. I apologize to you new folks who didn’t get the word to start fasting, but we hope you will share your testimonies of Jesus Christ with the rest of us anyway.”

Over the course of hundreds of Sundays at church, fast and testimony meeting had become a painful subject. I had come to anticipate them first with detachment, then anxiety, and now, finally, a kind of overblown repulsion.

In my earliest years I was perplexed by the site of testimony bearers who would start sobbing and reach for the tissue box that was never far from the pulpit. I watched these queer people for as long as I could, but my attention would inevitably shift back to the Matchbox cars and Zip-Lock bag of Cheerios my mom brought. The meetings didn’t mean too much to me at then. They were just another part of the grown-up world I did not understand.

As I entered my teenage years I began seeing more and more of my peers frequent the pulpit to share their own testimonies. They spoke of feeling the Holy Ghost in the form of a “warm fuzzy feeling” and “a still, small voice.” I began to worry why, in all my heartfelt, though admittedly irregular scripture study, I felt no warm feeling and heard no voice.

The worry eventually spread to my very religiously involved parents when, at fifteen years old, I was the only adolescent in my ward who had never borne his or her testimony. My dad presided over our ward as bishop and his responsibilities included requesting speakers for sacrament meeting.

On one particular meeting, the speaker finished early and my dad, figuring simple stage fright was keeping me back, gave me a well-intentioned nudge forward. He told the congregation that he would like to fill the remaining time with testimonies from Brother Summers, Brother Watson… and me. For the first time in my life, I hoped that the people at the pulpit would speak for too long so there would be no time for me to speak. I had no such luck. Brother Watson had sat down and a painful hush came over the congregation. I never moved from the bench. I don’t know how long I sat there, ignoring the encouragements of my mother, before my father came to the pulpit. With a good natured smile he apologized for putting me on the spot. He bore his own testimony in my place, promising me that someday I would know the things he knew.

Reavis elbowed me and interrupted this meditation. He was holding the tray of sacrament bread that was supposed to represent the body of Jesus Christ. In a few minutes, the water, representing the blood of Christ, would come too. I put one piece of bread in my mouth and passed the tray back to the next person. My mind was supposed to be focused on Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for me as I did this, but I was thinking instead about how I associated the ordinance with growing up in my teen years.

At twelve years old, I received my ordination as a deacon and carried the sacrament bread and water to the congregation aisle by aisle in plastic trays. At fourteen, I advanced to a teacher and helped fill the trays with water before sacrament meeting started. At sixteen, I became a priest. I was one of three people who tore the sacramental bread before it was distributed and took turns kneeling in front of a microphone to give the blessings that had to be said verbatim. I never had a “testimony” to share, but I believed my parents that these things were meaningful.

High school came. Whenever the subject of religion came up in school I staunchly defended the views I was raised with. Only my close friends knew that insecurity from festering layers of doubt was the source of my adamancy. I was afraid I would never have a spiritual experience. I was afraid even if I did have such an experience I would have no way of knowing that it was not simply a product of my own brain. Worst of all, I felt increasingly alone in my doubt.

Shortly after my class’s graduation, my friends were embarking on their next spiritual step—spending two years as a missionary. Going on a mission was not the last spiritual progression one would make in a lifetime, but it was viewed as a sort of rite of passage, especially for men. I had grown up listening to missionary stories from my father and from other adults I respected in church. My favorite of my father’s anecdotes had been the one where he was “tracting” door-to-door in England and came across a superstitious old lady who claimed there was a tunnel between England and Salt Lake City that missionaries used to kidnap young virgins to marry Brigham Young. “Ma’am, that is not true,” my dad said. “We haven’t built that tunnel past Pittsburg yet.”

People called me on the phone to excitedly tell me they were going to go to Brazil, Venezuela, France, Spain, or Manhattan. Just about everyone was thrilled to be called wherever they were going, even if it was someplace incredibly mundane. At the end of the conversation with the person who had just received his or her call, I was usually asked “so what about you, have you put in your papers yet?” I would reply that I didn’t feel spiritually prepared just yet.

My parents were still holding out, too. They told me that if only I “took a leap of faith” and went on a mission, I would soon have knowledge of the Truth. I could not accept this. A good scientist would never proclaim the truth of his hypothesis before finding evidence to support it. How could I, in good conscience, volunteer to testify of beliefs I didn’t have?

When I visited a recruiter for the first time, I didn’t think that I was supplementing one rite of passage with another, but in retrospect it seemed obvious. Joining the military was similar to a mission in a number of ways—there was a strict uniform, a chain of command, and usually a good amount of time spent away from home. There was a strong sense of support for the military among the Mormon community, so it even had the same sort of honor attached to it. The less justified I felt in going on a mission, the more military service seemed to fill the void.

Throughout the testimony meeting I had been resting my head on the wooden part of the bench in front of me, staring at the floor. Every so often I would force myself to look at Macintyre to see his reaction. If he felt any bit of the repulsion I did, it did not register on his face.

I suddenly became conscious that the pulpit had gone unoccupied for about thirty seconds. I felt an instinctive fear that the bishop was going to call on me, though I knew this was irrational. Then I felt “Elder” Reavis stand up off the bench and scoot past me toward the aisle. Having detected a smidgeon of self-righteousness in his demeanor, the thought of him baring his testimony was more than I could bear.

I begged mentally for him to go to the restroom but he turned towards the pulpit and adjusted the microphone.
“Good morning, brothers and sisters of Zion,” he said with sickening enthusiasm. “I, like most of you, didn’t know it was fast and testimony meeting to day, but I just felt the spirit welling up in me and knew I had to say something about Jesus Christ. I think there are people here who need to hear it...”

I cringed at that statement. How arrogant for him to think of himself as our spiritual benefactors! He went on.

“…I know with every fiber of my being that Joseph Smith was a true prophet and that the Book of Mormon is the word of God…”

I felt more turned off with every word. What right did he have to believe so strongly? Had he sought answers to difficult questions like I had or was he content to mindlessly plod along with the LDS crowd and his family’s wishes? I squirmed in my seat, flipped through a hymnal, did everything and anything to distract me from the unbearable speech emanating from his mouth, but I heard it all the same.

Reavis eventually sat down and, to my relief, testimony meeting ended. The congregation sang a closing hymn, bowed heads for the final benediction, then divided into several smaller Sunday school classes. Macintyre opted to attend a class on modern revelation. Reavis and I went to a place outside where about fifteen people had assembled in foldable chairs to hear two suited missionaries speak. The weather was warm and the air smelled of freshly cut grass. Normally, this would have been a fine day to have a Sunday school lesson outside, but this day I was still feeling too irked by Reavis’s testimony to pay attention to the lesson. A bloody nose gave me the excuse I needed to leave.

After cleaning up in the restroom, I could not bring myself to go back to the class near Reavis. Just picturing his face in my head conjured pangs of disgust, anger, even hatred, then a little guilt for harboring such negative feelings. I wandered the halls of the chapel where the elders were singing an opening hymn. Chaplain Wilkinson was there in the same spot, seated with a few other soldiers. I approached him and said, “Sir, I would like to speak with you.”

He nodded and shut the hymnal immediately, indicating that he was used to this kind of request. After he led me to a small office and we were both seated, He said, “How can I help you, Private Case?”

I spent about ten minutes telling him about my troubles receiving a testimony, how I had begun to feel ostracized, and how I felt during the testimony meeting. I concluded by saying, “So I need you to convince me that the church is true.”

He through his head back and laughed at my candor. “Is that so? Well… I guess you could start by asking yourself why you want to believe it so badly, unless a part of you already knows that it’s true.”

“Maybe I just don’t like the thought of the world being out of God’s control. Maybe I just want to fit in with my family and friends in the church. There are a thousand different reasons I could want to believe without actually knowing.”

“I see, I see,” said the chaplain. “Well, I studied philosophy some years ago before I got my commission and I was convinced by the cosmological argument, which states—”

“—That a rational person has to believe that God created the universe because of the order of the natural world,” I interrupted. “Yes, that’s a good argument, but all it argues for is a God that created the world and left it like a bastard child. That doesn’t really provide much basis for religious worship, does it?”

“Hmm… I suppose not. There’s another argument I know of that does encourage belief. Have you heard of Pascal’s Wager?”

“No.”

“Well, Pascal once argued that if you believe in God and there is none, you loose nothing except probably a good deal of happiness in this life. If, however, God exists and you don’t believe in him, you are in trouble. So it is in your best interest to believe in God no matter what.”

I shook my head. “But that doesn’t argue that God’s existence is true. I might be happier if I believed there weren’t millions of people starving in the world, but I’d still rather know the truth.”
The chaplain chuckled again. “I think you’re being sincere about wanting to find the truth. If it’s the case and you’re not just rationalizing your way out of living a principled life, than I am confident that you will eventually find the light. But don’t give up on the church just yet. Belief takes time.”
Not this much time! flashed in my mind, but I nodded out of politeness.

“I can tell by the look on your face that you are not convinced, so let me give you one last piece of advice,” he said while we shook hands in parting. “Even if you do decide to give up on God—and I hope that you don’t—you don’t have to give up on goodness. You can still keep the good things in the church with you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Are you just saying that, or do you really

understand?”

I made a point of looking him in the eye. “No really. I understand.”

It took me a while to find Macintyre and Reavis. They were upset that they had missed the first bus back and wanted to know where I had been. I told them that after I cleaned up my bloody nose I started talking to the chaplain, with whom I shared a common interest in philosophy. I did not disclose the subject of our conversation.

When the bus dropped us off back at our area just past 2:00 p.m., the rest of Bravo Company had been put to work picking up sticks and trimming the grass and sweeping the sidewalk outside of the building. The three of us signed back in and joined them. Our being tardy did not cost us because the drill sergeants on duty did not know how long a normal LDS service was supposed to last and did not seem up to investigating.

The threat to make the loosing platoon clean while the others called home turned out to be empty. After chow, one platoon at a time lined up in front of five pay phones in a room near the duty desk. As a precaution against eavesdropping, the drill sergeants made those waiting sit behind a line of duck tape drawn through the middle of the floor and face the opposite wall.

“So what did you think of church?” I asked Macintyre.
He shrugged. “I was impressed by the sense of community everyone had there, but I think it’s lame that you’re not allowed to smoke.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

Our conversation ended abruptly when the person ahead of me hung up the phone and I rushed forward to place my call. I had been thinking constantly about all the things I wanted say to my family, but once I was actually on the phone, my mind was blank. My dad picked up the phone on the third ring and we carried out a very generic conversation as in ‘I’m doing fine how are you?’ and that sort of thing. He told me to keep my chin up and passed the phone to the rest of the family. I had just said ‘Hi’ to everyone when my five minutes had expired.

That evening I took off my dog tags to wash up in the sink. When I was going through processing a week earlier, I received two pairs of dog tags. One of them had been misprinted so that is said “No Religious Preference” when they should have said “Latter-day Saint.” I kept the misprinted ones in my left cargo pocket as a spare, but after I was finished washing that night, I switched them.