Chaplain's New Book Describes Miraculous Marine Battle in Iraq
by Chad Groening
April 15, 2004
(AgapePress) - An active-duty Navy chaplain hopes his new book will convince readers that God performed miracles in Iraq during the momentous days leading to the fall of Baghdad.Lieutenant Carey Cash was assigned to the First Battalion of the Fifth Marine Regiment, a unit that was ordered to take one of Saddam Hussein's palaces. In his recently released book, A Table in the Presence: The Dramatic Account of How a U.S. Marine Battalion Experienced God's Presence Amidst the Chaos of the War
(W Publishing, 2004), the Navy chaplain chronicles the events of April 10, 2003, when the American regiment's First Battalion came under attack.The book recounts how, during a fierce surprise attack by Iraqi dissidents, the U.S. fighting unit experienced God's protection. "In that 9-hour ambush, we estimate that somewhere between a thousand and fifteen hundred rocket-propelled grenades were shot at the lead elements of our convoy. One company alone in our battalion sustained 33 direct impacts from rocket-propelled grenades."
According to Cash, many members of the First Battalion later said they felt what happened was a case of divine intervention. "When you look at just the sheer volume of fire that was launched at us from such close quarters, by all measurements, countless Marines should have died," he says, "and yet, at the end of the day, one Marine had been killed. He was a 22-year veteran."
The author says that firefight alone should have claimed countless lives, with casualties "in the hundreds, we believe, just because of the volume of fire and where the enemy was, all around us." To lose only one soldier was amazing enough, he notes, but perhaps even more amazing was the effect that coming through the experience had on the survivors.
"When I began to go around and visit and talk with those Marines, it was like I had stumbled upon a group of men who had just walked through the Red Sea. It was one after the other -- these stories began to emerge -- the Marines began to share with me how they believed God had protected them," Cash says.
A Table In The Presence describes how, on that day, as at other times of war, God proved to be a far more powerful resource than even the most advanced weapons in the U.S. arsenal.
