The story so far: Last summer, Spc. John Figueroa saw his roommate blown to pieces, then lost five more buddies. The soldier from Puerto Rico turned to Chaplain Darren Turner to save his sanity. Now Turner tries to help Bravo Company soldiers understand their experience in spiritual terms on the eve of Easter.

CURTIS COMPTON/AJC (ENLARGE)

A dusty tent at Patrol Base Hawkes serves as church for Chaplain Darren Turner as he delivers his Easter sermon on Christ's sacrifice. 'He soothed the wrath of God. He took the bullet that was headed for us.'

CURTIS COMPTON/AJC (ENLARGE)

Bravo soldiers take cover as explosives found on patrol of suspected insurgent safe houses are destroyed. It was in the same district, in Arab Jabour, that the company lost six men last summer.

CURTIS COMPTON/AJC (ENLARGE)

'Seen any al-Qaida? Any IEDs?' the soldiers ask at the homes of Iraqis in Arab Jabour. 'La, la,' comes the answer. No, in Arabic. The women and children watch as the soldiers search anyway.

CHAPLAIN TURNER'S WAR Chapter 1: Comfort in toughest of places Chapter 2: The invisible war Chapter 3: Summer of death Chapter 4: Formidable enemy Chapter 5: Nightmare revisited Chapter 6: Easter baptisms Chapter 7: Tragedies test the armor of God Chapter 8: A dangerous mission, a devastating night Series home page About the series: In January, reporter Moni Basu and photographer Curtis Compton began documenting life at war with Darren Turner, chaplain for the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, part of the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart. They traveled with him to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington while he was home on leave, then caught up with him in Iraq, where they spent five weeks reporting this story. They shadowed the chaplain as he counseled soldiers, baptized them and dealt with war's hardships. They also went on foot patrol with a platoon that lost six men last summer. Every soldier in this story gave the journalists permission to document their interactions with the chaplain. All except one of the scenes were witnessed firsthand. The one reconstructed scene — the events of last summer — appears in Chapter 3 and was pieced together through interviews with soldiers who were there.

ARAB JABOUR, IRAQ — Who killed Jesus?"

Chaplain Darren Turner points to himself.

"This guy," he says. "Why did Christ die? He was the Lamb that forever took away the wrath of God."

On the Thursday evening before Easter, Turner delivers his sermon of the Crucifixion to a dozen soldiers sitting on cots doubling as pews.

The smell of barbecued ribs from afternoon chow lingers in the air. The noise of weights clanging in the gym next door can't be filtered out. Neither can obscenities flying from the mouths of infantrymen as they go about their daily chores.

Church can be many things in a place of war.

Here, at Patrol Base Hawkes, a small outpost in the heart of Arab Jabour, it is a no-frills Army tent that almost blew away in a dust storm a few days before.

Nothing is sacred here except Turner's words.

In a matter of hours, these soldiers will head out on a critical mission to clear al-Qaida safe houses. The chaplain tells them that wrath is a word they should readily understand.

It is, after all, what they felt last summer when six of their own died in grisly fashion and the enemy escaped unseen. It is an all-consuming fury that still seethes within, and threatens to haunt them after they return to Georgia.

The soldiers take small wafers from a pewter container. They put their lips to thumb-size vials of wine. It's Vendange, white — the kind you get on an airplane. Turner keeps a stash locked up at the chapel at Forward Operating Base Falcon because alcohol is prohibited for American troops on combat tours.

This is how soldiers come to redemption here.

Hours after the service, they meander back to the same tent. Now a medic is preaching safety tips to the Bravo Company's 2nd platoon preparing for patrol.

Spc. John Figueroa, 24, has learned to smile again, even tell a joke or two. But when he goes "out there," in the villages of Arab Jabour, he becomes a different man, someone he can't even recognize.

He listens intently to the medic. Where the chaplain laid out the sacraments, "Doc" places his own lifesaving tools: multipurpose Israeli bandages, packets of oral rehydration salts and tourniquets.

Lost brothers

Figueroa switches off his headlamp. At 4 in the morning, a full March moon blankets Arab Jabour with a diaphanous glow. "Fig" squeezes into the troop compartment of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle as it joins a parade of trucks rolling out the main gate, kicking up clouds of Iraqi moondust.

"Here we go again," he prays. "Please, God, protect me, protect my family."

Though far from safe, bucolic Arab Jabour, just a few miles southeast from the heart of Baghdad, is quieter now than it was in June 2007 when the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment arrived, fresh from Fort Stewart.

Once-shuttered shops have started to reopen. Children carrying red and green backpacks walk to school again.

If the successes of the troop surge were to be calculated, the 1-30th's gains here would be part of the math. The Georgia-based soldiers, combined with allied Sunni militiamen known as the Sons of Iraq, largely chased the insurgency out of the area.

But Arab Jabour's is a fragile peace forged with the blood of Bravo Company soldiers:

Pfc. Bruce Salazar Jr., 24, of Tracy, Calif., got baptized the Sunday before he shipped off to boot camp.

Spc. William Edwards, 23, of Houston, Eagle Scout and video game addict.

Staff Sgt. William Scates, 31, of Oklahoma City, abrasive on the outside, teddy bear inside.

Sgt. Scott Kirkpatrick, 26, of Reston, Va., actor, poet and expert on odd facts.

Sgt. Andrew Lancaster, 23, of Stockton, Ill., a golfer, fisherman and big eater.

Spc. Justin Penrod, 24, of Mahomet, Ill., caretaker of a quadriplegic brother.

When he lost those platoon mates last summer, Fig relied on the chaplain to regain sanity.

"Some people die here. Some people die there. But it's hard to die like that," he says.

Now, eight months later, as he gets ready to traipse into potentially unfriendly territory, he still wonders how he will look on the inside when his tour finally ends this July.

Sun has replaced moon by the time the ramp drops and Fig dismounts his Bradley. His platoon traverses dirt paths and farmland dissected by canals grown hairy with bamboo to reach what are believed to be al-Qaida safe houses.

"This doesn't even look like war," Fig says. He can hear sheep braying and frogs calling in the canals. "Until something happens."

At one moment, the scene is reminiscent of Vietnam — a platoon framed by a row of trees as helicopters whir overhead. But this is Iraq, land of improvised explosive devices.

The Bravo soldiers question families living in the first house they search.

"Seen any al-Qaida? Any IEDs?" they ask.

"La, la," comes the answer. No, in Arabic.

The Americans know villagers are reluctant to identify insurgents for fear of reprisal. They search the house anyway and keep going.

Three Sons of Iraq members, visible from afar in their orange reflective vests, lead the patrol along with a team of Navy explosives experts and a lone Marine with a bomb-sniffing dog named Dollar.

Fig gets angry out here when he thinks of how his roommate died. Pfc. Salazar was blown to bits along with an explosives team — like the one in today's patrol — in a booby-trapped house last July.

There were no bodies left to recover when Salazar died, no ceremonial Hero flight to the Baghdad airport for a final journey home. Fig never got to say goodbye to his friend.

"I still think, maybe, Salazar, he's just hiding somewhere," Fig says.

He scans the seemingly peaceful countryside before trudging through freshly irrigated fields, his boots squishing through mud as creamy as peanut butter.

"IED! IED!" screams one of the Iraqi militiamen. The explosives team runs to investigate. They radio the confirmation back down the dirt road to Fig's squad. Another controlled detonation coming up.

"That's awesome," Fig says. "We just walked by an IED. They are everywhere."

He makes the long trek back to his Bradley.

Fig just wants to return safely to his wife, Patricia, to be "normal." But he can't be certain he will ever be that again.

"I don't want to hurt anybody back home," he says.

No one called him crazy when he was on leave in November, but he thinks he may need the chaplain again someday.

So does Turner.

After the arrival celebrations at Fort Stewart, after the dizzying demobilization paperwork, after the 30 days of vacation, some of Turner's soldiers will still be in the thick of battle. Only the enemy will have morphed from thundering bombs to silent demons.

The chaplain envisions a busy fall of counseling sessions to help soothe the wrath of soldiers like Fig as they slip back into life in America. He's certain the ghosts of Iraq will be along for that ride.

Coming tomorrow: Baptizing soldiers at Easter is a challenge for the Georgia chaplain in a place where war stops for no one.