Free Mission at Nuremberg by Tim Townsend

campaigns.
    The imperial guard was stationed in Amiens, a city in Gaul near the Roman frontier. During a particularly cold Amiens winter, in 335, many of the city’s poor were freezing to death. One day, as Martin came through the city gates, he saw a beggar sitting on the ground, shivering. Martin had no money to give the man, so instead, he cut his cape in two with his sword and gave one half to the beggar. The white cape, lined with lambskin and fastened at the right shoulder with a broach, was distinct to the elite corps that protected the emperor.
    The cape, or chlamys, gave the men their name—the candidate —or men clothed in white. Those watching the scene between the soldier and the beggar laughed as Martin put the other half of the white cape back around his own shoulders. That night Martin, who was still not baptized, dreamed that he saw Christ wearing the half of his cape he’d given to the beggar.
    It was a scene straight out of the Gospels, when Matthew predicted that at the Second Coming, Christ will say, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
    Martin became a Christian, then a bishop, and he founded a monastery. After his death, he became France’s patron saint, and his cape became an object of veneration, preserved in the city of Tours. For centuries, French kings carried the cape into battle in a portable shrine called the capella . The priest who cared for the shrine was called the capellani, or chapelains in French. In English it became “chaplain.”
    The relationship between war and the divine is ancient, and chaplains—though called something else—have been around a lot longer than the cape of St. Martin of Tours. It is said that soldier-priests once carried maces into battle to avoid spilling blood. The priests of Amun-Ra worked among the ancient Egyptian armies, and the priests of Joshua’s forces carried the Ark of the Covenant, blowing rams’ horns before the assault on Jericho.
    In the United States, chaplains have been ministering for more than 230 years to the fifty-five million Americans who have served in the military. In the colonial period, civilian pastors simply volunteered their services to commanders in times of war. During the Pequot Wars, beginning in 1637, Samuel Stone of Hartford was the first military chaplain to begin his service in the New World. During King Philip’s War in 1675, seven chaplains served in military units fighting Native Americans.
    At the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which set off the Revolutionary War, four ministers were among the minutemen facing British general Thomas Gage’s British troops on Lexington Green. Other pastors went to the battlefield to support their flocks fighting the British. Two hundred and twenty army and navy chaplains served during the Revolutionary War, but they received no military training and had no uniforms. At regimental inspections, when other soldiers raised their muskets at “present arms,” chaplains often raised their Bibles.
    In northern colonies, where Congregationalists were accustomed to choosing their own ministers, militias held boisterous elections to choose a chaplain from among many choices in the community. Chaplains counseled soldiers, led daily prayer services and Sunday worship services, and visited the sick and wounded, helping doctors where they could.
    On July 29, 1775, the Continental Congress recognized chaplains as a distinct branch of the army and authorized one chaplain for every two regiments, setting pay at $20 per month, the same amount received by captains. On November 28, 1775, the Continental Navy adopted regulations allowing divine services on ships, and Congress appointed chaplains to serve in hospitals.
    In the field, chaplains often had their own quarters or bunked with the commanding officer. Unlike the way the Chaplain Corps sees itself