The Price of Freedom: A Chaplain’s Experience
It happened on Thursday, July 4th, 2002, on that antiquated, post-Civil War Cavalry post—Camp Sturgis, built in 1878, east of Sturgis, South Dakota. It ceased to be an active-duty post in 1944.
It was like a ghost town. The ancient parade fields were still there just as they looked in 1878, lined with the original antiquated officers housing. They were mansions, mostly empty, but well maintained.
Fort Meade, South Dakota, as it appeared in 1888. Bear Butte is in background.
Now called Fort Meade, it is used occasionally by the South Dakota National Guard as a training site. I was the chaplain, with the rank of Captain, for the Officers’ Candidate School there that summer for the western region of the United States Army National Guard. The officer candidates were Second Lieutenant university students, preparing to be Army officers. All strangers, we converged for a mission to make officers out of them. They numbered at about 100.
When the Fourth of July came, they displayed their mettle. They could have gone to Mount Rushmore or even to Rapid City to go drinking without getting caught. Interestingly, they all re-enacted a deadly Civil War battle on the parade field to get a feel for what war was like during the Civil War (1861-1865). It was sobering. I facilitated with my role as a Civil War chaplain. They knelt on the ground, bayonets in hand, as I conducted a worship service on the field before the battle ensued.
In those days, when soldiers came to your house to conscript you for battle, it was a death warrant. You did not return. There were rare exceptions. For the most part, it was a departure forever from your family. If you refused, they killed you on the spot. National security was at stake for the North and the South.
Because rifles were not accurate in the 1800s, soldiers were not to shoot until they saw the whites of the eyes of those they shot. Or else, they wasted bullets, and while it could take a minute to reload, they could be shot while the other side encroached upon them. Timing was everything. They looked into the eyes of those they killed. Sometimes it was one’s friend, brother, uncle, or worse, one’s father, or grandfather.
When each battle was over, hundreds or thousands would cover the fields, wounded, moaning for days until they died. Doctors were scarce, but saved who they could. It did not take much to die in battle during the Civil War. A mere gunshot wound in the leg is all it took in many cases. If you could not walk off the battlefield at the end of the battle, you died. You were left lying on the ground, suffering for days perhaps, until you died, if no soldiers were available to assist you.
Officers and chaplains walked the fields speaking to the wounded and praying with them as they died in unbearable pain. Listening to the choruses of deep groans of hundreds of soldiers lying across vast fields was horrifying. Officers and chaplains relayed soldiers’ messages to their mothers, wives, and next of kin if they could.
Today, we kill people whom we never see, who could be miles away. Then we get in our vehicles and drive away or fly away. For me, the re-enactment was a spiritual experience. I was honored to minister to the candidates on the field when we taught them that the price of freedom is usually separation, pain, and death.
Category: Living the Faith, Spring 2025
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