Line of Duty?

 

Line of Duty?

While serving as a U. S. Army chaplain at Ft. Riley, Kansas, I had additional duties at Morris Hill Chapel.  Of the ten chapels on post, Morris Hill was the largest one and had a very active program for troops and their families.

My primary duty was to serve as Assistant Brigade Chaplain of the First Infantry Brigade (“The Devil Brigade”) of the Big Red One Regiment  and cover the 1/18 Infantry Battalion.  As with most chaplains, however, we also had assignments in the various chapels on post.  Since my Brigade Chaplain, MAJ Tom Deal, was the pastor-chaplain of the Morris Hill Chapel, I was also assigned to help him there.

My assignment at the chapel was to be in charge of the Sunday school program and work closely with the Sunday school superintendent to make sure all classes had properly trained teachers, sufficient supplies, meet with the Sunday school cabinet, etc.  One of my duties was to make sure a military bus was properly drawn from the motor pool each Saturday for use on Sunday.  We ran the bus through the housing areas to pick up children for Sunday school.

I was fortunate that we had a young Puerto Rican sergeant, E5 Luis Ramos, who volunteered to get the bus each Saturday and drive it on Sunday mornings.  His Puerto Rican wife was also active in the chapel.  They both seemed to be very dependable people.

One Sunday morning, not long after beginning my duties, I was at the chapel early as I usually was to assure things were going well.  When it came time for the bus to arrive from its rounds there was no bus.  I waited about fifteen minutes thinking the bus would arrive at any moment.  When it failed to show up I found a telephone in the office and called Mrs. Ramos who answered sleepily.  I told her the bus had not arrived and I was checking on Luis.

She did not speak English as well as Luis, but in her broken English she said, “I am sorry, chaplain, for not calling you.  I just woke up.  I was at the hospital most of the night.  Luis was in an accident.”  I imagined the worst so I quickly asked her about his condition and the accident.  Her exact words were, “He got runned over by a tricycle.”

She went on to explain that the night before with the weather being so hot that they and the neighbors were out in the yard.  (It was early June and the official date had not yet come for the post to turn on the air conditioning in the housing areas.  The post had an official date for turning on the heat in the fall and the air conditioning in the summer, irrespective of the actual temperature).  Luis and his neighbor decided to have a race down the hill.  Luis was on his son’s skateboard, and his neighbor was on his daughter’s tricycle (hands on handlebars with one foot on the back).  As they were racing down the hill, Luis on the skateboard was in the lead but fell off and was run over by the tricycle.  He ended up in the post hospital with cuts and bruises.  They kept him overnight for tests to see if there were any broken bones.

 

As soon as chapel was over I went to the post hospital to check on Luis.  His wife was there doing the paperwork to check him out.  We all joked about his getting runned over by a tricycle.  Nearly as funny was the fact that the hospital filled out an LOD, which is a “Line of Duty” injury form.  This allowed Luis to be absent from his unit for a few days of recovery and to not have any personal liability for the treatment.

In other words, his injuries were on par with someone injured on the battlefield.