Chaplain Brian Kane
About 45 days after we arrived . . .the
senior priest at Al Asad . . .had to be evacuated from theater.
And that left Chaplain Kane, Brian Kane, as the senior Catholic
chaplain in western Iraq . . . he was given the responsibility
of coordinating all Catholic chaplain support in western Iraq.
He did an outstanding job; he flew out on Christmas Eve and Christmas
Day . . . [and did] an absolutely astonishing number of services
. . . in eight or nine different Forwarding Operating Bases.
I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of about 30 different
services. He and his chaplain's assistant didn't sleep for nearly
72 hours, as they moved from FOB to FOB to provide religious
services at Christmas . . . . He did just a phenomenal thing,
he was probably exposed to the real elements of war more than
virtually the rest of us, because he was called out frequently
to provide the last rites for soldiers and marines that were
brought into the hospitals and was also at one of the Forwarding
Operating Bases when they suffered a mass casualty incident .
. . . [H]e was one of those people you could always go to and,
probably, if there was a popularity contest in the unit he was
the winner . . . I cannot think of anybody that did not like
Father Kane, he was just terrific.
--Colonel Kenneth Hassler, commander, 67th Area Support
Group.
Father
Brian Kane, captain and chaplain
of the 67th Area Support Group, stands in front of a small chapel
at Marine Forward Operating Base Korean Village before hearing
confessions and celebrating Catholic mass for Marines stationed
there.
Father Brian Kane of Morse Bluff was deployed with the 67th Area
Support Group to the Al Asad Air
Base in west central Iraq from September 2005 until September
2006. The 67th Area Support Group was in charge of garrison headquarters
and base infrastructure. The unit also provided judge advocate
general (legal) services on base, coordinated Catholic chaplain
support in western Iraq, and operated a poll workers camp before
and after the 2005 Iraq elections.
Source: All
objects were loaned by Brian Kane
 |
Medallions given as informal
awards by commanders to soldiers for doing an exemplary job. |
Chaplain
Brian Kane conducts outdoor Christmas Eve Mass at a small
Forward Operating Base in the Al Anbar province of Iraq.
Chaplain
Kane conducts Mass at Camp Rawah,
a small Forward Operating Base in the Al Anbar province of Iraq.
