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Carrying God's Word in a war zone

Jan-10-2005 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

Thanks to Pat for sending the following article from her local paper.

Link to Full Article
By DEAN BAKER, Columbian staff writer

It's a long trek from a job managing delivery routes for The Columbian to carrying religious services to troops in the mountains of Iraq, but that's where Army Capt. Edward Willis has gone.

Willis, 41, a 1981 Hudson's Bay High School graduate and a U.S. Army chaplain, spent Christmas ministering to troops at a Muslim shrine on a mountaintop outpost near Sinjar, Iraq. He flew in by helicopter along with a Christmas meal for the troops.

Willis narrowly missed being in the mess tent in Mosul on Dec. 22 when a suicide bomber killed 22 people: 14 U.S. soldiers (six of them based at Fort Lewis), four U.S. civilian contractors, three Iraqi security men and an unidentified non-American. Sixty-nine people were wounded, including 44 soldiers.

One of the wounded was a 1999 graduate of Camas High School, Army Spc. Don Larson, 24, who suffered burns and is recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. His parents, Jim and Marsha Larson, live in Chehalis.

Luckily, Willis flew to other parts of Iraq that day, ministering to troops.

"He had been in Mosul for the first month he was there, and the tent that was bombed was his dining tent," said his wife, Leanne, 34. "He was away at the time of the bombing at Tal Afar."

While Willis is at war, Leanne and the couple's three children celebrated Christmas and New Year's at the home of his parents, Ed and Mardelle Willis of Vancouver. They also celebrated the 7th birthday of the couple's oldest child, Lindsey. Leanne, Lindsey and the little girl's two brothers, Thomas, 3, and Connor, 18 months, returned Tuesday to their home, a duplex at Fort Lewis.


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