Posted on 12/24/2007, 2:32:34 PM by SandRat
CAMP VICTORY, Iraq — At the insistence of Sgt. Michael Oatis, Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Mark Zerger got up at 5:30 a.m. one October day and went jogging.
“I don’t like to jog early in the morning,” the 11th Signal Brigade chaplain said.
Later would have been better, but Zerger agreed to his chaplain assistant’s plea to go running earlier than normal.
As they were jogging they heard the siren warning of an impending attack.
Looking up they saw a rocket go overhead and then heard a loud boom.
The rocket had hit something.
“I wondered what was hit,” the chaplain said.
It turned out to be Zerger’s trailer, specifically a large pallet of material right outside it.
The trailer was hit by shrapnel and a fire had started inside, in the area he had initially used to sleep.
“Smoke was pouring out and several (brigade) soldiers were crying, thinking I was inside,” the chaplain said. “They thought I was wasted.”
When the soldiers saw him “they thought I was a ghost, an apparition. They touched me to see if I was real,” he said.
Oatis remarked he was shocked to see what had happened, saying “I’m so glad I convinced him to go jogging with me.”
To which Zerger added an amen.
“I didn’t experience any bit of panic,” he said.
The only thought that crossed his mind was the obvious: “My God, my trailer’s on fire.”
The fire department was on scene and had covered some of his items with a tarp before attacking the flames.
The pallet and the material on it were destroyed, Zerger said.
The chaplain had only moved into the trailer a week before, after arriving in Iraq from Kuwait.
A couple of days before the attack, he had moved his sleeping area
to another end of the trailer.“People back at home have to know this is a dangerous place,” he said.
Not long after the attack another explosion hit Dodge City North, an area where brigade soldiers sleep. Some GIs were wounded, none seriously, and none of them were 11th soldiers.
The firing of rockets and mortars are a hit and miss situation because no one knows where they are gong to land, Zerger said.
Even he has what he calls a “survival mentality that it’s not going to be me.”
In the end he looks at the incident as a blessing for it gives the Southern Baptist pastor more reason to say, “Thank you God, praise the Lord.”
Herald/Review senior reporter Bill Hess can be reached at 515-4615 or by e-mail at bill.hess@svherald.com.
FR WAR NEWS!
Further proof that jogging can extend your life.
Well....
What if he had gone jogging and the rocket had hit him there?
But it is a nice story.
Thanks. Amen and Merry CHRISTmas!!
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