Fifteen feet away, someone, now thought to be a suicide bomber, detonated an explosion that killed 22 people -- 12 of them U.S. soldiers -- and wounded 69. Sivret, rector of two small congregations in Washington County -- Christ Church, Eastport, and St. Anne’s, Calais -- was chaplain to the outfit that arrived in Iraq last March.

In the explosion, he was thrown from his bench and knocked unconscious.  A soldier from Virginia, who was sitting beside him, lay dead nearby. Another soldier, Chris Bean, a member of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in the southern Maine town of Waterboro, had missed joining Sivret for lunch by minutes.

“I woke up on the floor about 10 feet from where I had been sitting. I looked around, keeping my head down. Then I realized that I couldn't hear,” Sivret said the following day in an e-mail message to the people of the Diocese of Maine.

“I got up and started doing what God has given me to do: minister to soldiers and civilians alike. There were many soldiers and civilians hurt, dying and dead. I prayed with the injured as best I could.

“The medics took a look at me and found that my left ear would be all right in a day or so, but my right eardrum had ruptured. I also found a very, very small piece of metal sticking through my pants into my right knee. My assistant, Greg Raychard, a wonderful missionary kid who grew up in Kenya, and I went to the hospital.

“We had two soldiers missing, and I wanted to see if they were in the hospital. We checked all the wards, but they were nowhere to be found. Finally we found them where we didn't want to find them -- in the morgue.

“This is always difficult, but this was even more so because I was the chaplain who officiated at one’s wedding, and the other soldier was a son of one of my high school classmates.”

Celebrating Easter under fire

While the attack at Camp Marez was the deadliest single attack on American troops, Sivret and the members of the 133rd were no strangers to mortar attacks.  They had been in Iraq only a few weeks when they experienced their first barrage.

“Easter was one I won't forget for a long time,” Sivret said. “Services were going well when a mortar round hit 50 yards from the chapel.  Later, a round hit the mess hall and sent 600 of us under the tables and into bunkers.”

The 500 Mainers who are serving in Iraq come from all walks of life.  When they arrived in Mosul in March, their orders were clear: to build and rebuild.  By the time their tour of duty is up next month, they will have constructed or renovated eight schools, nine community centers and 10 medical clinics;  installed generators to power 38 remote villages; and completed 17 municipal road projects in the predominately Kurdish Dohuk and Irbil provinces.

An outpouring of nearly 1,500 boxes of school supplies, clothing, sneakers, household goods and 48 pallets of medical supplies from people back in Maine, including many Episcopal congregations, allowed Sivret and members of the 133rd to assist more than two dozen villages and the families of 100 Iraqi National Guardsmen stationed nearby.
Sivret has said that he hoped that God would use him as a witness to his love in this part of the world where the apostle Thomas once walked.

“These attacks have shown us how precious life is and that we need to live life to the fullest. We’re reminded that we need to remember all the blessings that we have and be thankful. A simple thing like remembering to tell your family how much you love them or to seek reconciliation in a family or a relationship is so important. God’s grace certainly abides with us, wherever we are.”

He continued, “When you put on a clerical collar, or in my case the cross on my left collar, you have a ministry to serve the Lord wherever you are to remind the soldiers that God is present for and with them.”