The Choice

Resource Center in Munich, where he was responsible for
administering clinical training to all of the U.S. Army chaplains and
chaplain’s assistants currently serving in Europe. e letter was an
invitation to address six hundred chaplains at a workshop Dave would
be leading in a month. In any other circumstance, I would have
accepted, would have been honored and humbled to be of use.
Because of my clinical experience at William Beaumont, and my
success in treating active-duty personnel and combat veterans, I had
been asked a number of times to speak to larger military audiences
and had always felt that it was not just an honor but also my moral
obligation—as a former prisoner of war, as a person liberated by U.S.
soldiers—to do so. But Dave’s workshop was scheduled to meet in
Germany. And not just anywhere in Germany. In Berchtesgaden.
Hitler’s former retreat in the mountains of Bavaria.