Habbaniyah, Iraq – Under a sun-blanched desert sky, Navy Chaplain
Michael Baker and Marine Sgt. Bill Hudson Gross bounce in the back of a
truck as it rumbles across Camp Habbaniyah. Clad in helmets and body
armor in the 110-degree F. June heat, they’re on a mission: to baptize
Sergeant Gross.

“I am going to try to talk him out of it,” confesses Chaplain Baker,
a tall, lanky Methodist minister whose formal Mississippi-tinged speech
and posture mask an often goofy sense of humor.

It’s not the baptism itself; it’s just the part where Gross wants
Baker to immerse him in the Euphrates, one of four rivers that the
Bible describes as flowing from the Garden of Eden. For Gross, an
infantry platoon leader who just weeks before saw two of his men
wounded by shrapnel, the river has a personal connection. Two years ago
he deployed to a small base on the river, where he turned his back on
religion after learning of his father’s death back home. Now that he
has rediscovered his faith, he feels it fitting to be baptized in a
river where, he says, “a lot of people gave up hope.”

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