Michael Dubruiel Meditation (1)

  From Michael Dubruiel, 2003:

What are we willing to die for?

 

In the late 1970’s while serving in the United States Army I was stationed in an outpost in Turkey for one year. The base was a small camp of  a hundred servicemen. On Sundays I would go with several others on an hour trip into Isanbul where we would attend Mass at the Italian Consulate.  Everything though strange was pleasant those first five months that I was there.

Then one morning while waiting for an inspection, we were notified that the inspection had been called off. At first it was difficult to find out exactly why, after all we had been preparing for this inspection for almost a month. Then the news came, a group of terrorist had attacked about ten of our guys awaiting a bus near Istanbul. One of them had died, another who was a close friend of mine had been hit in the leg, the rest were okay. That Friday morning we were told that inteligence had learned that  several terrorist groups  in the area were making plans to attack other groups of American servicemen and that we shouldn’t travel off base until things had a chance to cool down.

The Chaplain on the base notified me on Saturday that the Sunday trip to the Italian Consulate was still on and would leave at the normal time on Sunday morning. I remember standing from a distance to see if anyone would actually venture out on the trip to go to Mass when things were so dangerous. I watched as the Colonel and another officer got into the military vehicle and then after waiting awhile (presumably for me) they left for Mass.

The next day it was necessary that a group of us go into Istanbul for supplies. Riding through the streets of the city it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t thought twice about doing what I was ordered to do but when given the choice to go to mass I had passed. It suddenly dawned on me that I  was willing to die for my country (by the mere fact of being in the Armed Forces) but that I wasn’t ready to die for my faith. The next Sunday I went into town with the others and went to Mass and obviously it didn’t cost me my life.