WHEN SIX Canadian soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan on Easter Sunday, Canada’s four military chaplains in that country were prepared to help the victims’ colleagues. Three of them were also present at the ‘ramp ceremony,’ when the soldiers’ bodies were loaded onto a plane for transport back to Canada.

In a pilot project earlier this year, the four chaplains were sent for a week of intensive training at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. The training took place just weeks before the four were deployed to Afghanistan.

Pam McCarroll, who coordinated the training session, said the chaplains “observed autopsies, open heart surgery and several other traumatic injuries being treated.”

The Chaplain Trauma Resilience Program, she said, was designed to expose military chaplains to some of the “harsh realities” they will encounter overseas.

Father Todd Meaker, a major in the Canadian Forces, told BCCN the chaplains did not take the course to learn new clinical skills – because they already had extensive pastoral and theological training. What they lacked, he said, was experience with “the three-dimensional realities.”

The purpose of the program, he said, “was to increase the chaplains’ personal comfort, self-awareness and confidence within the context of traumatic events, by using the controlled setting of the hospital.” This would prepare them to handle trauma in the uncontrolled environment of Afghanistan.

Meaker said the program achieved what it was designed to do “beyond our expectations.” It gave the chaplains “a sense of who they were in the midst of trauma,” and “took away the ‘what if’ questions.” Would they faint at the sight of mangled bodies, for instance?

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Having already seen these things increased the chaplains’ awareness and resiliency. This way, said Meaker, they will “not be overwhelmed by trauma, so they can focus on ministering to others.” As the chaplains learn how to handle their own emotional, physical and spiritual responses to such realities, they are better able to help those in crisis.

Meaker said the chaplains are assigned to the main army units in Afghanistan, and go wherever the troops go. They do casualty care work at the bases, but also go on patrol when large numbers of troops go out.

As a senior military chaplain with the Army in Halifax, Meaker was responsible for the military chaplains recently deployed to Kandahar and also for arranging their training beforehand.

Meaker said the partnership with Sunnyside was ideal because Sunnyside is a leader in trauma training, and the chaplains contribute their own extensive experience.

The program included debriefing sessions, a tour of the Sunnybrook critical care unit, a meeting with an injured soldier recuperating from injuries sustained in Afghanistan, and a meeting with Sunnybrook trauma surgeon Dr. Homer Tien.

Tien, a major in the Canadian military, has worked in the Canadian military field hospital in Kandahar.

McCarroll said the chaplains reported “great alleviation of anxiety by the end of the program, having more confidence in themselves and their abilities, and less anxiety and fear about what was to come.”

The four chaplains have recommended that the military chaplains who will go with the next deployment of troops to Afghanistan take the same training before they go.

 ­– Jim Coggins

May 2007