fr. eric albertson

Fr. Albertson Brings Soldiers’ Stories from Iraq

By Mary Ann Wyand
Catholic News Service
(From the Issue of 3/29/07)

INDIANAPOLIS -- "Dear Brave Soldier, I want to thank you for what you are doing for our country. I feel you are brave because you are serving our country and because you are fighting for justice."
The child's letter, decorated with hearts carefully colored with a red crayon, brought smiles to the faces of soldiers who read it while serving their country in Iraq.
Father Eric Albertson (pictured at right), a priest of the Diocese of Arlington working with the Archdiocese for the Military Services as a U.S. Army major, included a picture of that letter in his slide show of photographs aimed at sharing the true story of soldiers' lives in combat in Iraq.
Dressed in his Army uniform, Father Albertson recently narrated "Dear Brave Soldier: A Pictorial Account of a Chaplain's Experience in Iraq" at Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Parish in Indianapolis as part of the "Spaghetti and Spirituality" Lenten speaker series.
"Rather than get into the politics of the war, and there are many opinions on that, this (program) is just an expose of what's going on there," the priest said.
From the first slide to the last, the audience was caught up in his personal look at the courage, humor and grief of enlisted men and women serving in America's all-volunteer armed forces.
"While I was forward (deployed with troops in combat)," he said, "I decided that I would capture as much of this as I could with my camera in an attempt to tell the story from the angle of somebody that was there and was ... witnessing up close and personal what was going on."
Military chaplains do not carry or use weapons, he said, but are equipped with standard Army gear in addition to their Bible, a Sacramentary and a Mass kit.
Their ministry involves bringing the sacraments to the troops at base camps and providing spiritual support, Father Albertson said, which includes the anointing of the sick for wounded soldiers and presiding at memorial ceremonies for soldiers who died in the line of duty.
Father Albertson attended Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., and was ordained to the priesthood for the Arlington Diocese in 1986. He joined the Army in 1993.
An Army Ranger, he earned a Bronze Star, other meritorious service awards and senior parachute wings. He served with troops in Korea three times as well as in Haiti, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq, where he was deployed in 2004-05.
When his bishop asked him for an update on his ministry with the Army's 2nd Infantry Division, Father Albertson told him, "My congregation is really not much older than my (parish) youth group was. They're all pretty much right out of high school. Really the only difference is a lot of them smoke, a lot of them drink and every last one of them has a machine gun. The spirituality of the soldier is always impressive, but it's not what you would think it would normally be."
In light of the historical experience of chaplains going off to war, Father Albertson said, he expected to see large numbers of soldiers at the base chapels for Mass or a Protestant service. Instead, he often prayed with them beside tanks.
"There was this extraordinary receptivity (among the soldiers) to the presence of the chaplain and their openness to prayer," he said. "So although it didn't manifest itself in the way we might traditionally think it should, their spirituality was very much alive and their recognition of God's presence with them and the importance of being close to him ... was very much a part of their experience."
Father Albertson asked the Indiana parishioners to "pray for an increase in vocations to the priesthood and the religious life and for a generous response to the (ministry of military) chaplains. When I left Ramadi, there was a five-month lapse before a replacement priest came in. So in the most hostile area of Iraq, for five months there wasn't a priest in the entire area of operations, which was huge ... about 20,000 troops."