I have been an Army chaplain for four years. I have had two duty stations in those four years as a chaplain. I am often asked what is it like to be a chaplain. I am asked this question by a variety of people, including the soldiers to whom I minister. The first step in becoming a chaplain is to graduate from the Chaplain Basic Officer Leadership Course (CHBOLC). CHBOLC consists of 64 training days, excluding weekends and federal holidays. The course teaches you the basics of how to be a soldier and how to be a chaplain. Soldiering skills include, but are not limited to, how to march, how to do formations, proper courtesies to superiors, and proper wear of uniforms. Concerning chaplaincy, the course teaches you how to write reports, how to help soldiers in a religiously diverse Army, and the chaplain’s role in staff meetings, advising commanders, and conducting military funerals and memorials. The course builds a foundation for new chaplains to stand on once they graduate and are placed with their new unit after graduation. However, like any foundation, a building must also be constructed on it. Chaplains will continue to build on the foundation at each duty station to which they are assigned. And each duty station will mold the chaplains in very different ways.

            Chaplains are like snowflakes. No two chaplains are alike. Every chaplain has their own way of ministering to their units. This is because God has made every person different. Additionally, his or her situations and leaders at each duty station develop each chaplain differently. As for me, I have an additional layer, which makes me unique. I am a mustang officer. A mustang officer is an officer who was previously enlisted. Typically, mustang officers have about four to six years, one tour, of enlisted experience. In my case, God allowed me to have a little over eighteen years of enlisted experience prior to becoming a chaplain.

            As stated earlier, my experience as a chaplain began with attending CHBOLC, which was a challenging experience for me. The experience was not hard physically or mentally. Because of my prior enlisted experience, I knew a lot of what was taught before taking the course. CHBOLC was hard for me because I had to work with people I didn’t understand. Additionally, I had to work with people who completely frustrated me personally. For the first time in my career, I had to work with people who saw the world completely differently than me. For the record, I still struggle with this difference of worldviews.

            After CHBOLC, I was stationed at Fort Benning and assigned to the 2-15 Calvary Scouts unit (2-15 CAV). The 2-15 CAV is a Basic Training unit that trains new recruits for the Army and the Cavalry. Like you see in movies when someone first joins the military, I worked within an environment of scared young people with newly shaved heads and drill sergeants yelling at them. Therefore, my experience as a chaplain at Fort Benning was mainly shaped by my interactions with Basic Trainees. The biggest challenge I faced with 2-15 CAV was sympathy fatigue. Sympathy fatigue is a lack of sympathy for suffering due to continuous exposure to those in need.

            At Basic Training, chaplains deal with two significant issues. First, chaplains are asked how the “real” Army is and what advice we have for when the trainees reach their duty station. This is a valid concern considering the trainees just left everything they know behind and are now going through one of the most challenging times of their lives. They want to know whether the experience is worth it and how to succeed where they are going. I loved answering these questions. Who wouldn’t love teaching others from their own successes and failures? I passed on everything I could to these trainees.

            The second issue chaplains face are trainees who, as the Army says, “fail to adapt.” These trainees have never been taught how to cope with stress. It is essential to clarify how I am using the word stress. Stress in this sense is anything that challenged them, and I mean anything. These trainees had it made at home and failed to realize it until they reached Basic Training. After eighteen years of military service and several deployments under my belt, I found it extremely difficult to minister to these trainees, especially after dealing with them a year and a half in the unit. One concern with these trainees that really bugged me was when I would get an “emergency” call from a Drill Sergeant saying a trainee stated they needed to see me immediately. I would rush to see the trainee. When I got there and began talking to the trainee, I would discover that he was distraught because his girlfriend had broken up with him in a letter. The first time I heard this, I was very compassionate and understanding. However, over time, I would discover, for example, that the trainee had been dating the woman for only one, two, or maybe three months. After three months of dating, this trainee’s life was now completely over? After a while, I began to tell my trainees this, “Hey man, look. This is a good thing. If she can’t stay with you through Basic Training, she was never going to stay with you through your deployments and many other pieces of training. I suggest the next time you get a chance to go to the store, buy a thank you card, put forty bucks in it, and write, ‘Thank you for breaking up with me. Here is forty bucks for your next date. Hope it goes well.’ Send it to her and move on with your life. Trust me man, you have a lot more stuff to do and a whole life to live. You will find someone who loves you and will stick with you through all the hard times.” Believe it or not, it worked very well. (Perhaps, however, we could have been a bit more sensitive to the young lady on the receiving end. Sympathy fatigue was a major battle for me at Fort Benning.)

            After Fort Benning, the Army stationed me at Camp Humphreys, South Korea, with the 4-2 Attack Battalion (4-2AB). I am currently still in this unit. The 4-2AB is an Apache Attack helicopter unit. The soldiers here have graduated from Basic Training and are no longer trainees. Their experience ranges from this being their first duty station to having over twenty tears of military experience. At this point, I now have more than twenty-two years of military experience. I have one constant issue here with the soldiers at 4-2AB; people miss their families. It does not matter if this is their first duty station or their tenth; being thousands of miles away and not being able to talk with loved ones when they want takes a toll on them. Add the isolation of COVID, and people begin to get incredibly lonely. The loneliness leads people to make poor decisions like engaging in excessive drinking and exercising poor money management. These actions incur severe consequences.

            So, what does a typical day look like as a chaplain in the Army? I have no idea. There is not a “typical” day as a chaplain. I can plan as much as possible, but plans rarely pan out. I get counseling calls at all hours of the night and day. Some days I will get no counseling requests, and some days I will have ten counseling sessions. On other days, I will be supporting a unit with a suicide or planning a memorial for a fallen soldier in my unit. If I am lucky, I will get one thing I planned completed. This is true no matter where I am stationed. All chaplains know that the only thing certain is uncertainty. Do you remember me saying that I like a challenge? Do you think I enjoy the constant change and uncertainty? YOU BET I DO! Add that I get to minister to some of the best people in the world. I would not change anything. I thank God for every day He allows me to be an Army Chaplain.

Personal Introduction

Greetings! I hope you are well. I am Chaplain Underhill, founder of Fire Teams men’s ministry at Camp Humphreys, South Korea. Fire Teams is a men’s ministry geared towards soldiers between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. I assume, since you are reading this blog post in particular, you would like to know about me, so let’s get started. I am forty-five years old. I have been married to my wonderful wife, Megan, for thirteen years. We have three daughters: Bella (11), Chloe (9), and Delia (7). I am currently a Chaplain in the U.S. Army. I have served in the military for over twenty-two years in three different branches (U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Army) and in six different MOSs (jobs). My civilian jobs are too numerous to account for in this forum. You are probably wondering how I have managed to have this much change and transition throughout my life. Fun story! Let’s start with my childhood.

            I was born and raised in North Carolina. I would say we were lower middle class. We lived in a rural area with tobacco, cotton, and sweet potato fields. At the time, the nearest town was about a thirty-minute drive. The closest city was about an hour’s drive. So we were rural, but we did venture to the malls and big department stores every now and then, even if we were just window-shopping. However, until we could drive, my friends and I spent most of our time scouring the countryside looking for adventure and anything that posed a challenge. NOTHING was too big, scary, or dangerous for us to take on. Except for snakes, bats, big dogs… and the old man in the white house on the hilltop who was weird, always watching us, asking what we were doing, and telling us to stay away from his apple trees. However, I had one main issue that overwhelmed me for years, which I will address later.

            My best friends were Wesley and James. I had other friends, but most of my time was spent with Wesley and James. We loved taking on challenges together, whether it was building a treehouse, building rope swings for the creek, or digging trenches to combat a pretend invasion from some imaginary enemy force. As we grew older, we began to move on to building go-carts, four-wheelers, dirt bikes, and, of course, cars. Throughout our childhood, we would overcome challenge after challenge. We thoroughly enjoyed learning and progressing to new things.

            My childhood played an essential role in my military career. The principles and attitudes I developed prepared me for the challenges of the military. In fact, my childhood is why I thrive in the military. The military offers new challenges every day and new places to see! The military is the perfect place for my conquering, adventurous spirit. Of course, it has had its downs, but no one wants to talk about the downs. As stated previously, I have served in three different branches and had six different jobs. It’s amazing what you can do if you don’t think about the difficulties and just say yes to every opportunity! As I haven’t stated what my six jobs were, here they are. I have been a: C-130 Mechanic (Air Force); C-9 Loadmaster (Navy); C-130 Loadmaster (Air Force); C-130 Crash and Recovery (Air Force); Chaplain Assistant (Air Force); and presently, Chaplain (Army). Yes, I enjoy a challenge! I have traveled the world three times over and had extensive training. In fact, I would say that over half of my career has been in training. However, I had one main issue that overwhelmed me for years. Remember the issue I spoke of earlier? It stayed with me until about five years before leaving the Air Force. The issue was that I knew something was missing from my life. Specifically, Jesus Christ was not a part of it. I knew that God wanted me to give up my life of sin and follow Him. Yet, I refused to.

            So, how did I get to where I am today? It was a long journey with many people involved. Throughout my childhood, my parents attended church. I received a biblical understanding and foundation during those years. As I grew up, I abandoned the church for two main reasons. First, although my parents went to church, they did not live a Christian life. I didn’t understand why they bothered to attend church if they didn’t really believe what was preached. After all, they should live it if they believed it, right? Second, many church people hurt me in my teen years. The hurt caused me to have a highly negative view of religion. Yet, I still had a longing and a deep burden to follow God and accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

            The long journey started while I was a child attending church with my parents. However, the journey got interesting when I began attending a church in Fuquay-Varina, NC, named Fellowship Bible Church. When I first started attending Fellowship, it seemed like a typical church. In many aspects, it was. However, there was and still is one main difference. The men in the church were very spiritually mature and exceptionally willing to teach and mentor other men. I will mention a few of them: Donald Dickens, Ken Doss, Glenn Vonk, Mike Evans, Terry Manahan, John McClamroch, John Park, and Vince Grassi. From the first time I began attending Fellowship Bible Church, these men started to mentor me and help me understand what it meant to be a godly man. Donald Dickens, in particular, helped me the most. The more I attended church, the more I observed Donald and his interaction with his family and others. I was amazed at how he led with humility and strength. He had what I wanted.

            Over time, Donald graciously accepted to be my formal mentor, and he began mentoring me one-on-one. Neither one knew what we were getting into with this agreement. Remember, I like challenges. One reason I love challenges is that I am incredibly bullheaded. When I was young, you would have better luck getting a pork chop from a pit bull than getting me to change my mind or do something I didn’t want to do. Additionally, if I did want something, it would take an army to stop me from obtaining it. Donald had his hands full. So did I, for that matter. For the first time in my life, I had met someone just as stubborn. Add that he was brutally honest, and I had a contender! Over several years, Donald mentored and helped me through some of my most challenging times. After twenty-some odd years, he is still my mentor today. Yes, although we are both almost equally stubborn, God has honed us down some, thankfully.

            My life experiences and spiritual journey are far too extensive to put in this post. I can honestly say that my spiritual journey has been unique in many ways, yet extraordinarily ordinary in many others. I have only given you the beginning of my journey and just the most significant highlights. If you want to know more about me, feel free to contact me. I would love to schedule a time to chat with you about my life and how God led me to accept him completely. We can talk about my struggles, how I became a Chaplain, or anything else you would like to know.