DENVER (AP) - A chaplain killed in Afghanistan this week was the first Army clergyman killed in action since the Vietnam War, the military said Thursday.
Capt. Dale Goetz of the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colo., was among five soldiers killed by an improvised bomb on Monday.
Before Goetz, the last Army chaplain to die in action was Phillip Nichols, who was killed by a concealed enemy explosive in Vietnam in October of 1970, said Chaplain Carleton Birch, a spokesman for the Army chief of chaplains.
Officials said Goetz had hitched a ride on a resupply convoy when he was killed.
Birch said chaplains are considered noncombatants and don't carry weapons, but they are accompanied by a chaplain's assistant, a soldier who is armed. A chaplain's assistant, Staff Sgt. Christopher Stout of Worthville, Ky., was killed in Afghanistan in July, Birch said.
Chaplains don't go on combat patrols but do go onto battlefields to conduct services and counsel soldiers, Birch said. "Many of those places where they travel are very dangerous," he said. |