Navy Chaplain Recalls His Career

As part of a trauma-awareness event at Hillside Community CRC in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Nov. 5, Roger Bouma shared from some of his experiences as a CRC chaplain for more than 20 years in the United States Navy.

Bouma also explained later that during his two decades in chaplaincy he had a chance to ride along in fighter jets, distribute aid to homeless people and hurting AIDS patients in India and Thailand, and serve sailors on the ship that launched Tomahawk missiles at the start of the Iraq war in 2003.

Now retired and living in Grand Rapids, Mich., the Christian Reformed Church chaplain also officiated at funerals held at sea for sailors and pilots who died while performing their duties.

But at the core of his work was the role of being available to military personnel and their families at times of struggle and loss.

“As a chaplain, I was involved in a lot of crisis situations,” said Bouma, who retired about two years ago. “When you do that, the conversation is normally only a couple sentences away from spiritual matters. In my role, I learned to engage people during those times and offer prayer and ask them what they wanted from God.”

A mild-mannered man, and ready to smile as well as to proceed thoughtfully, depending on the topic or memory, Bouma now, among other things, spends time volunteering for a downtown Grand Rapids outreach program and helping to build a ministry that seeks to help military veterans deal with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Dealing with the disorder himself, Bouma helped to coordinate the Nov. 5 event at Hillside Community CRC, at which a specialist in addressing PTSD spoke and then veterans who are coping with the disorder took part in a panel discussion.

Bouma, who is also a member at Hillside, said he at first had no idea he had PTSD — a condition in which you repeatedly relive a traumatic event and often suffer from symptoms such as anxiety, fear, and anger.

But while undergoing his physical before being released from the Navy, the doctor told him he had PTSD, Bouma said. Many of the symptoms were there and could be traced to a time several years earlier when Bouma was serving at the U.S. Marine Corps boot camp on Parris Island, S.C. in the late 1990s.

One day, he said, he and a Marine officer were walking into the headquarters building, where the medical aid station was located, when they learned a young recruit had attempted suicide.

“He had hung himself with his belt, and the officer had to get him down. He did mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while I did chest compressions,” recalled Bouma. “We brought him back, but he died five days later. It was a pretty tough situation.”

The memory of that suicide remains sharp and painful, Bouma said, especially when he comes across a hard-to-describe odor that makes him think of the recruit’s breath escaping his mouth during the resuscitation. “Something about the smell brings it all back,” said Bouma.

He has shared that experience in a PTSD support group he attends — it also has played a role in encouraging him to reach out to other veterans and offer hope in dealing with PTSD.

Sarah Roelofs, director of the CRC’s Chaplaincy & Care ministry, strongly supports Bouma and others who are looking to help veterans with PTSD.

“Often the church has failed to understand our veterans' sacrifice  for our country and the invisible scars that are imprinted on their hearts and minds,” she said. “Our veterans have sacrificed their autonomy and spent many sleepless nights away from their loved ones and creature comforts. Thanking veterans for their service is not enough for our church. As the church, we are called to journey alongside our veterans and all those that God claimed as his beloved.”

As for Roger Bouma, she said, “his  passion for providing PTSD and veteran support in his retirement is truly a blessing for his community. I hope that churches continue to seek out ways to invite and care for veterans throughout the year.”

His Role as a CRC Chaplain

Wearing a cross on the collar of his uniform while on active duty, he was always a representative of Jesus and Christianity, and yet he also spoke with people of other faiths and people who had no faith at all. Regardless of their faith leanings, these could be sailors or soldiers who were involved in either going to war or returning from fighting in various places around the world.

“I never fired weapons, but instead I was able to offer God’s presence to people who were often in dangerous situations,” said Bouma. These were people who had seen a lot of tragedy and brokenness and wanted to know what they could do about it. Did God have a role to play, one way or another, in their experiences? they wondered.

Besides the suicide of the recruit on Paris Island, Bouma holds other memories as well, such as a time when he served on a resupply ship off the coast of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. One day, Bouma said, a helicopter carrying supplies from the ship into Dubai crashed, killing two pilots and two crew members.

“The deaths affected all of the sailors and the morale on the ship,” said Bouma. “I had to organize memorial services and find other pilots and crew members to share their memories about the ones who died and about the work they do. . . . I needed to help them in handling their grief.”

Another time, in 1992, Typhoon Omar swept into the harbor at Guam where the boat on which he was stationed was being repaired and was ripped from its moorings. The winds from the typhoon, topping 180 m.p.h., sent the boat with sailors aboard crashing across the harbor, leaving everyone deeply rattled.

“I wasn’t on the boat at the time because I was in Guam helping people prepare for the typhoon,” said Bouma. “When I returned, it became obvious how low morale was. I visited with many of the sailors to see how they were doing and, along with the captain, we held events like talent shows and picnics on the landing pad to help sailors (get their minds off things they were facing).” He also spent time in prayer with many personnel who wanted to petition God for answers to tumultuous events.

After serving at the boot camp on Parris Island, Bouma was stationed at Beaufort Air Station, also in South Carolina, to work among pilots. “The pilots were tough. . . . They had a lot of bravado about them. But they liked playing foosball, and I was pretty good at that and could beat them,” he said.

That, of course, is often part of the ministry of a military chaplain, Bouma said. Sunday services, one-on-one counseling, or perhaps a Bible study may not grab some of the people you are trying to reach — but they’ll start to pay attention when you beat them at foosball.

Pilots from that air base were sent to take part in Operation Noble Anvil in 1999, which included the bombing in Yugoslavia to halt Serbian forces from their treacherous “ethnic cleansing” of Albanian Muslims in Kosovo.

“They flew many missions and made a difference in that war,” said Bouma, describing how the pilots spent hours in the air, dropped their bombs, and then went back again. They would often return tired and shaken, and he did his best to offer support.

Bouma said there were also times when he had to face some fear. For a period, he oversaw and had to conduct weekly worship services on a group of six ships he was serving. Not all of them were in one general location at a time, so he would need to ride in a helicopter, sometimes in tricky weather, to land aboard them on a Sunday, hopping from ship to ship as he had the time. Most Sundays, because of the distance between ships, he wasn't able to reach all of them.

Other times he had opportunities to visit parts of a country, such as Iraq, that many people will never see. While serving as a deputy corps chaplain in Iraq in 2010-11, for example, he was asked to escort the Christian singer Danny Byram, known as the “Combat Musician,” as he performed at military sites across the country. “I met and talked with chaplains and soldiers and saw places all over Iraq,” he said.

Also while in Iraq he had the task of meeting with members of religious groups to find out if they were being adequately represented in the government the U.S, was trying to set up.

A major challenge in serving as a military chaplain and being stationed on ships across the globe was that he had to spend long periods of time away from his family. For instance, when the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, took place, the ship on which he was serving had to go out to sea for more than 600 days.

But there were also some nice opportunities to share, he said, such as being able to climb Mount Fuji with one of his children while he was stationed in Japan.

Bouma wrapped up his time as a military chaplain working at the Naval Station in Great Lakes, Ill., north of Chicago. During his time there, he said, he helped to create a special animated training station — inspired by the work of Pixar Pictures — that all the sailor recruits need to navigate, facing many difficult simulated situations, before they can graduate from boot camp.

These days, Bouma said, he stays busy being with his family, doing volunteer work, and building the beginnings of a PTSD ministry. When he graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary more than 20 years ago, he knew he wanted to be a chaplain, he said, but had no idea it would be in the Navy. Yet he is grateful to have had that opportunity, seeing many parts of the world, working with people of other faiths, and being able, time and again, to step in and be with military personnel in their times of difficulty and pain.

Overall, he said, he is proud — particularly during this week marking Remembrance Day in Canada and Veteran’s Day in the U.S. which commemorates the day World War 1 ended — to have served among and helped men and women in uniform in various branches of the service come closer to God.

Now that Bouma has retired, there are 146 active Christian Reformed chaplains. To learn more, visit crcna.org/chaplaincy.