Shall We Light One, Father?

But how does one become an army padre? For example if he applies to a seminary but is drafted into a mechanized infantry regiment in Lenti for 18 months before he could begin his studies. So it happened in 1984 that LTC Tamás Takács had to don the uniform before the cassock. In 2000, after ten years of service in his diocese, he combined the two professions and became an army chaplain in the Hungarian Defence Forces. For him, organizational socialization was not difficult at all, because, as he says, he already had inside knowledge of another hierarchical institution. What is more, soldiering suits his personality, and he has kept fit, jogging regularly since he became a parish priest. At first, people wondered what he was doing, but after six months, a few joined him. As an army padre, first he was assigned to Szolnok and served in that typical garrison town for nine years. There he had the opportunity to try out a number of activities which he would not otherwise have thought of, either as a civilian or as a priest – for instance, parachuting. Before long he had obtained the necessary permits, and having passed the medical aptitude test, did his first parachute jump six months later, a feat he has so far repeated eighty-two times. These days he does not have the opportunity to do more jumps, since he is Chaplain General at the HDF Joint Force Command in Székesfehérvár.

Moving on from domestic to foreign issues: a priest and a soldier both know what it takes to go on a mission, and an army padre knows that all the more so. LTC Tamás Takács has completed two six-month tours of duty in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)in Afghanistan with the first and the fifth troop rotations of the HDF Provincial Reconstruction Team (HUN PRT) – there are few who can boast a similar track record. The first rotation was very important for him because at that time, the ISAF mission in Afghanistan was something new for the entire personnel of the Hungarian Defence Forces. He was assigned to a PRT Mission Team that regularly took to the road in Baghlan Province to visit the villages in the region, and he had a chance to spend much more time with the personnel of the HUN PRT. In the fifth troop rotation he met several people he had deployed with before, so they could work together in almost a family atmosphere. In Afghanistan he also took an ISAF Counter Improvised Explosive Device (C-IED) course, only because there was ‘place for one more’ and he felt he might benefit from this new –found knowledge…

In his opinion, an army chaplain who is not in contact with the troops while at home – those with whom and for whom he deploys to a given area of operations – will have a very hard time doing his job in a mission. On the other hand, if a padre joins the troops to participate in their training program, they will feel that he is also “made to sweat" like them, and will accept him more easily. According to the lieutenant-colonel, in ISAF, Afghanistan it is mainly the potential problems with relatives and family members at home that may have a negative psychological impact on the soldiers. This is because learning about those problems confronts the personnel with the fact that they cannot help their relatives personally while they are away on missions abroad.

Unfortunately, tragedies can also happen in missions… During his first tour of duty, Tamás Takács was serving in the same contingent with EOD technician (posthumously commissioned 2nd Lt.) Gyula Kovács who was to be killed in action in the summer of 2008. By the time the army padre returned with the fifth rotation, the HUN PRT personnel had erected a wooden memorial headboard in Afghanistan for the second lieutenant. Every evening he went with one of his comrades to the memorial to light a candle.
“The same question was asked every evening: "Shall we light one, Father?" So we lit a candle and stood by the memorial for a few minutes. People were talking while coming and going around us, but some days later they walked by in silence and sometimes stopped for a couple of moments. This was not a religious but “only" a human part of our life…

Photo: Tünde Rácz and archiv