A Chaplain's Narrative from Mosul

It's the Holiday Season. Especially this year I'd be the last to try to take anything away from it. That being said I'm also a retired Navy Corpsman who has spent a few holidays eating nasty turkey loaf in a mess tent.
The troops don't pick the wars... you do that... you, through your elected representatives tell us that it's vital to our national interests that we pick up and travel halfway around the world to defend America... that's supposedly why they renamed the Department from the War Department to the Defense Department years back... because we're defending America. Again this year troops are engaged in advancing whatever national objectives took us to Afghanistan and to Iraq... and all the other places we're committed. It isn't politics so far as the troops are concerned... it's their lives.
This link is to the blog of a chaplain who attended to some of the casualties from the bombing of the mess hall near Mosul... 22 dead and 72 wounded. I found it to be a moving but not atypical narrative of a mass casualty evolution. it is real.
Let's try to work it into our Holiday to keep a good thought for the troops. We sent them there.