Baghdad — On Good Friday, the day Jesus was nailed to the cross, Chaplain Darren Turner frantically saws off the top of an empty 3,000-gallon plastic water barrel and fills it with water.

He thought it would be "way cool" to baptize soldiers in a biblical river and had planned to dunk them in the muddy Tigris that snakes through the farmlands of Arab Jabour south to the Persian Gulf.

Curtis Compton/AJC (ENLARGE)

Darren Turner baptizes Spc. Zacheriah Taylor, 24, at Patrol Base Murray. The chaplain had to use a plastic water barrel after his dream of dunking soldiers in the Tigris was nixed for security reasons.

Curtis Compton/AJC (ENLARGE)

Turner watches medics he has mentored treat an Iraqi teenager who lost his hand in a bomb blast. From left are Pfc. Andrew Vanmeter, Sgt. Daniel Woods and Spc. Steven Goodwin.

Curtis Compton/AJC (ENLARGE)

Darren Turner finds a quiet interlude in the midst of war at a service led by his friend and fellow chaplain, Johnnie Elder, whom Turner met at seminary.

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.

But the chaplain's routine request to satisfy his soldiers' spiritual needs met an insurmountable challenge.

Turner's battalion commander vetoed the river baptisms, not just because the medical staff feared infection from parasites in the water, but because of security.

What if someone opened fire from the opposite bank?

This is Turner's only chance to baptize soldiers at the patrol bases. He's determined to make it happen, and after 10 hard months at war, he has learned how to improvise.

He sets up his barrel in front of an old water wheel on the grounds of Patrol Base Murray. The elaborate feature is a reminder of what the base once was — a vacation villa belonging to Saddam Hussein's sons.

Turner steps down into the tank and tells the small crowd gathered to witness the baptisms that this day is a milestone in the lives of two young soldiers. It's a first, too, for the 35-year-old chaplain from Canton. He has never baptized a soldier before.

Spc. Zacheriah Taylor, the tank company soldier who just a week earlier sought out Turner to help save a dissolving marriage, wades into the water beside him.

"I've had some rough times in the past few months and realized the Lord is going to help me," Taylor tells the gathering, the afternoon sun glinting off the Army logo on his shorts. "I'm showing him today that I am handing my life over to him."

Turner holds his right hand up in the air and places his left on Taylor's shoulder.

"Bless him this day, Lord," Turner says. "Taylor brother, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."

Taylor goes in head first. There's no room to fall backward.

"That's fresh. Hooah," shout the soldiers.

Refreshed from spiritual nurturing on such a holy day, Turner gathers his gear to return to his tent at Forward Operating Base Falcon. He will baptize other followers at the chapel there on Easter.

He feels honored to be part of a pronouncement that a soldier has found his soul at war. More often, he knows, the opposite is true.

Cute bunnies and pastel daisies decorate the walls of the dining facility at Falcon. Some clever cook has even carved an ice sculpture next to the menu board.

But the long rows of tables are empty.

The troops are no longer allowed to congregate in one place in large numbers. They would make too tempting a target for the mortar-lobbing, rocket-launching enemy.

The heavily guarded base is under attack.

Turner hears despairing news: On Good Friday, while Turner was baptizing soldiers at a patrol base, Pfc. Tyler Smith, who served in another 3rd Infantry Division battalion, was killed by an incoming round, not far from Turner's tent at Falcon.

Base commanders have ordered everyone to wear full gear — body armor with ballistic plates and Kevlar helmets — when not in the protection of a "hard" building.

The Americans think the uptick in violence is related to rising anger within the ranks of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Just a few miles away, the heavily fortified Green Zone in the heart of Baghdad is also under steady fire.

On Easter morning, Turner finds relief in the chapel, a plaster building in which he can take off his body armor. He takes a front-row seat at the 11 a.m. contemporary Protestant service, next to his chaplain friends, Capt. Johnnie Elder and Capt. Jeff Sheets.

Turner attended seminary with Elder, who serves in a 3rd Infantry Division cavalry squadron. In Iraq, the two are each other's salvation.

Chaplains are expected to be steely strong. But just as armored mine-resistant trucks are vulnerable, chaplains can't always escape the damage from emotional bombs. Around Elder, Turner can step down off the pastoral pedestal, unburden his own heart.

Sheets is a newer acquaintance of Turner's. He is also with a Fort Stewart unit, the 4th Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment. Turner jokes that the lanky chaplain ought to be dribbling a basketball instead of pastoring soldiers.

This morning, as the chaplains watch uniformed men and women file in with their body armor and automatic rifles, the sanctuary looks more like an arms room than a place of peace.

"He is risen!" they say in greeting each other, settling down for a sermon on the resurrection of Christ.

Toward the end of the service, Turner stands with two medics he has mentored: Sgt. Daniel Woods, who had a "foxhole conversion" on his first tour of Iraq in 2005, and Spc. Steven Goodwin, one of Turner's most ardent followers.

With each, Turner climbs into the chapel's baptismal tank, framed by two paintings depicting scenes of a Christian heaven.

"Thank you for this resurrection day, Lord, regardless of what's going on around us, behind us, before us, besides us — even inside of us," Turner says.

Then he introduces his soldiers.

"This is Specialist Goodwin."

By his own admission, Goodwin was "not a nice person" when he arrived here last May. The 24-year-old from Circleville, Ohio, spent his childhood being dished from home to home by parents who divorced multiple times.

As a teenager, he picked fights on the street, then joined the Army and went to war hating Iraqi people. They all deserved to die, he thought — payback for Sept. 11.

But after he treated Iraqi children, dying on a gurney, he began to question the war, and himself. Just a few days earlier, he had bandaged what was left of a 17-year-old Iraqi boy's hand, blown off by an improvised explosive device. The nerve endings were still intact. The boy howled in pain.

It bothers Goodwin that Iraqi children are getting hurt from things he believes America has "indirectly done." The roadside bombs, he says, "weren't here before we arrived."

He thinks all Americans should experience combat once, see the children growing up with Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles instead of Matchbox and Hot Wheels.

In Iraq, the people he thought he hated helped bring Goodwin back to God — and to the chaplain.

Knee-deep in water, Turner tells the military congregation he is proud of the new Goodwin. "He and I have had a good journey together."

Goodwin has asked Turner to be the minister at his wedding when the battalion returns to South Georgia this summer.

"God has brought him a long ways," Turner says. "I know this is special for him."

Goodwin confesses to his fellow soldiers that he was baptized when he was 9, then fell away from the church.

"After meeting Chaplain Turner, I've realized how much [God] has continued to bless me even though I had fallen so far."

Goodwin emerges from the water wearing a smile.

After the baptisms, Turner walks to the back offices of the chapel. The Easter services and rituals crown his time in Iraq, spiritual highlights that have kept him motivated since he returned from leave in Georgia.

He spent weeks honing his message to the soldiers on Christianity's holiest day, wanting it to be a crescendo of sorts for those who share his faith.

Exhausted by a whirlwind tour of the bases his battalion occupies, Turner is looking forward to a few days of solitude and prayer.

But war stops for no one.

On Easter evening, horrific news awaits Turner. Four soldiers in Chaplain Sheets' battalion died after a shaped charge hit them in the nearby neighborhood of Saidiyah. They burned alive in their Bradley.

This joyous day of Christ's resurrection is tainted with blood.