US Military Count on Pipe Smoking as Essential Therapy While Serving in the Middle East

Ch. A.P.Sholtes is the hospital Chaplain at the Marine Base. So I crafted an email to Ch. A.P.Sholtes to let him know that I saw the article (yes, I read it first) and he informs me that they not only are customers but they created a pipe club in the desert complete with t-Shirts and patches.

To paraphrase the article it speaks of the daily activities of the Chaplains, the news they have to deliver to families back home, the services they give to our troops and a myriad of other duties and responsibilities.

For all their conversations and near constant interaction with the troops, chaplains can have a lonely job, expected to always be the one with answers, never with questions or doubts, never in need of support themselves. They often turn to other chaplains for counsel and seek out their own ways of coping. Sholtes finds refuge a short walk away, on the Kandahar Airfield flight line. As the day stretches into late afternoon and the temperature drops to somewhere near comfortable, he settles into a folding chair and slips a pipe and a pouch of tobacco from his pocket. “This is not recreation, ” Sholtes says of the pipe. “This is therapy. This is essential.”

Even with the occasional earsplitting noise, the flight line is peaceful. Sholtes watches the constant motion, takeoffs, and landings. Jet fighters scream overhead, and attack helicopters cruise by, rotors beating the air. Sholtes lights his pipe, exhales a rich, white puff of smoke, and leans back in his chair. “I consider the tobacco I put in my pipe all the grief and suffering,” he says. “And I will burn it.”

I have never looked at it that way, but I will now.