“My primary objective in going out into the field was to communicate to the soldiers their part in the big scheme of what America was doing in Iraq,” explained Multinational Force-Iraq Command Chaplain Hoyt.
Hoyt traveled throughout Iraq several times a week. His mission was to encourage the force spiritually and deliver the theater commander’s message to the troops by telling them what they were up against. Hoyt traveled anyway he could: by helicopter or by Humvee; it didn’t matter. After having traveled in two hundred convoys, he stopped counting the number he’d been in.
“I’d travel out and talk with chaplains first. I would lay out for them the role of Multinational Force-Iraq and show them all the different players that were involved in making this great effort work,” he explained. “I would build that backwards down to their level, where they were at and where their division was their brigade and battalion. Sometimes I would consider what their company was doing. I’d try to work that all the way back up and how that affected the strategic outcomes of the country.”
Hoyt went as the direct representative of the theater commander. People would notice his patches, the cross on his right and the colonel’s eagle in middle. His visits were well received.
People were always willing to be engaged at a spiritual level. And that’s not a tribute just to Hoyt, but that’s a tribute to all the fine chaplains out there who are and were authentic in their faith.
Sometimes Hoyt arrived after a catastrophe occurred, even one affecting the convoy he was in.
“As mad as the guys were about the losses they’d sustained and as confused as they were about whether or not it was worth it, they were always willing for a chaplain to be with them. It was okay not to have the answer. It was okay not to know, and it was okay to be mad at the time. And to be all that in front of the chaplain, that was okay and, in fact, sometimes it was welcomed,” he said.
“Then when the body bag was zipped up and the dust was gone, stuff would get back to whatever was normal in an abnormal environment, then we’d work out the details,” Hoyt reflected. “I came across that a lot. That always was a sacred time for me, being able to be a minister in the mess of the moment.”
You are the great host, the one who welcomes all who come to you with over-flowing kindness even under challenging circumstances.
“The islanders showed us unusual kindness. They built a fire and welcomed us all because it was raining and cold.” (Acts 28:2)