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Chaplain leaves behind horrors of Vietnam, alcohol abuse to find faith

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Melissa Phillips
  • 407th Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs
ALI BASE, Iraq (AFPN) --  When a rocket struck Charles Perry’s barracks one sunny day at Phan Rang Air Base, Vietnam, it had a profound impact on his life, but it did not cause him to rediscover his faith.

Instead, it opened up more questions.

“I used to ask God about all the painful things in my life, especially, ‘Why Vietnam?’” said Chaplain (Maj.) Charles Perry, a Protestant chaplain for the 407th Air Expeditionary Group.

Although no one he served with died, he knew several high-school friends who were killed or seriously wounded.

“I consider every servicemember (who) fought or died in Vietnam a close friend, whether I knew them or not, and it hurt when any one of them died in war,” said Chaplain Perry, who is stationed at Minneapolis-St. Paul Air Reserve Station, Minn.

It had been lunchtime when his base came under attack. His roommate had just shared some homemade cookies from a care package his mom sent him. Joking around, his friend blew up the bag the baked goods were packed in and popped it loudly.

Seconds later, everyone frantically dropped to the ground when a 122-mm rocket went screaming directly over their heads and landed outside at the other end of the barracks. Fortunately no one died, but some Airmen were hit with shrapnel.

“I always had a feeling of helplessness when things like that happened,” Chaplain Perry said. “I guess it would be like getting picked on by a bully every day and knowing that you were helpless to fight back; you just had to take it.”

That helplessness drove him to fill the void. Instead of turning to God, he sought out a homespun treatment plan of alcohol.

“After Vietnam, I seemed to have no direction in life,” Chaplain Perry said. “I was so confused, mixed up and fragmented.

“I would not have called myself an alcoholic because I still had some control over my life,” he said. “Most of my friends were like me. Once we started drinking, we didn’t quit until we reached the bottom of the bottle.”

Even though most of his career as a crew chief on an F-100 Super Sabre was surrounded by a cloud of loneliness and inner conflict, he still requested to extend in Vietnam. But the planes he maintained were sent back home.

Shortly after he left the Air Force, he moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., to manage a baseball batting range in Coney Island.

A bit of a wanderer, he was offered a job on the Alaskan pipeline three years later. He married a girl from his hometown of Chippewa Falls, Wis., who also subscribed to the same liquid-release, and together they moved to Alaska.

There he managed an electrical contracting business, but as time passed, he decided to move on. But right before his move, he met a Christian who asked him to turn his life over to God.

Chaplain Perry told him he already had unsuccessfully tried religion before, that he had a long time to live and would reconsider it when he was older.

However, another close call changed his mind. As he and his wife drove to their new home, he encountered a truck barreling around a hairpin curve in their lane.

For a moment, he said everything went black and the only thing that went through his mind was, “No time.”

The next thing he knew, he was standing on the road looking at his truck. Unbelievably, he said there was no damage. He said it was then he knew God had intervened and spared their lives.

Shortly after settling in their new home, a man asked him to go to church. There he heard a gospel message that changed his life forever: Through Christ, sinners can have a fresh start in life; a second chance to get it right.

A month before his 30th birthday in April 1978, he became a Christian.

“I knew that it was the end of alcohol in my life,” he said. “My life was so changed that day I hugged the pastor and told him I knew I had to go back into the military and tell people about what I found,” Chaplain Perry said.

Sadly, it was also the end of his five-month marriage to a woman who wanted to continue their previous lifestyle.

At this point he was still unsure of exactly how he would serve God and he still was a bit of a daredevil.

So he signed the divorce papers and headed to Prescott, Ariz., on his motorcycle to attend Embry Riddle College and get his commercial pilot license.

He stopped in Leavenworth, Wash., with the intent of camping overnight, attending church and continuing on.

It was there his soon-to-be-second wife, Ruth, found him. He ended up staying through the harvest season and worked in the apple orchards. At a church service, she told him she had a premonition he was meant to be her husband.

Not quite ready to hear this, Chaplain Perry politely said to her through her tears, “Well, I’m sorry, God hasn’t told me that yet.”

He told Ruth he would go to church that evening, but was still leaving in the morning.

While listening to the sermon, he said he heard a voice, loud and clear, say, “You’re going to take up Ruth and be in the ministry soon.”

Even though he said this experience shook him to the core, he was still going to leave. However, later that night a massive snow storm hit the area, closing the mountain passes and preventing him from traveling.

So he settled in for a few more days to get to know the woman who referred to herself as his future wife. On Dec. 15, 1978, he took Ruth as his “Godly wife.”

With her support, he joined the Air National Guard and pursued an education that eventually led him to become an Air Force chaplain.

He was commissioned as an Army Reserve chaplain in 1988, and later switched to the Air National Guard in January 1990 when a position opened.

He often shares the story of his past with others, because he said it is unnecessary for servicemembers to feel as alone and lost as he once did.

“They know that I have been where they are and have hurt like they hurt,” said the chaplain,l who is now the father of three children.

“I let them know that God is not looking for perfect people,” he said.

Even though he has a strong faith, Chaplain Perry said he sometimes still has moments when images of his past bring tears to his eyes.

“The day I heard a story on the radio and remembered the picture of the little girl featured in Life magazine (running to escape her village as it was bombed by napalm), I felt hurt for her. I started feeling some responsibility for her experience and others like her,” Chaplain Perry said.

A thought came to him over and over, “You are guilty of killing hundreds of people because you prepared the weapon.”

But he knew it was not true and was able to shake the thought eventually. However, his emotions resurfaced as he watched the Gulf War unfold on television, and he experienced vivid, painful flashbacks.

He sought successful treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, but still sometimes revisits the hurtful memories.

As a certified addiction therapist, he said he strongly believes in the power of the spiritual role of the military chaplaincy, whose mission is to serve the various religious needs of all servicemembers -- whether Jew, Christian, Muslim or other religion.

“Most of the problems we deal with in our lives are best dealt with from a spiritual perspective,” the chaplain said.

“It’s proven that drug and alcohol programs that don’t have a spiritual emphasis have a very low success rate, while those that emphasize the spiritual aspect of recovery have a higher success rate,” he said.

In all, Chaplain Perry has given 29 years of his life to the military.

“This is what I’ve been called to do,” said Chaplain Perry, who said he enjoys ministering to people of all faiths.

“I only have a couple of years left before the military will put me out to pasture, so I want to do as much of this as I can (in my two years left before retirement),” Chaplain Perry said.

He already has volunteered to deploy in January 2006 with the Army, which currently has a shortage of chaplains. He has not yet been approved but is hopeful.

“I want to tell servicemembers, ‘If a person has strong faith, then they have assurance that their lives are in the hands of someone greater than any enemy force,’” he said.