As keynote speaker for the 2024 Veteran's Day service at the Emma Kelly Theater, Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Nick Spletstoser told how he aspired to become "a weapon" for America but instead was called to be "a worker" for God and has still served the nation, its soldiers and veterans.
He also played guitar and sang a song he wrote, "I Fought for You," to honor all veterans, including a verse dedicated to women who have served in the military in wartime.
More than half of the ground-floor seats were filled in the auditorium operated by the Averitt Center for the Arts in downtown Statesboro for the 11 a.m. Monday program that followed a 10:30 musical prelude by Stilson area piano prodigy Isaac Sherrod, now 16. As always, the American Legion Dexter Allen Post 90 hosted the program with support from other sponsors, including Joiner Anderson Funeral Home & Crematory, Chick-fil-A and the Averitt Center.
Other highlights included Post 90 Junior Vice Commander Ken Johnson's reading of three moving, highly personal poems he wrote while serving as a U.S. Army infantryman during a one-year tour of duty in Vietnam, Dec. 24,1968-Nov. 21, 1969, and post Adjutant Gary Martin's call for the public to help in the American Legion's "Be The One" mission to prevent veteran suicides.
Spletstoser, a National Guardsman in Georgia and South Carolina over the past 32 years, serves not only as Army chaplain for the South Carolina National Guard Joint Forces Headquarters in Columbia, S.C., but also, for 12 years now, in the civilian role of senior chaplain for Ogeechee Area Hospice here in Statesboro.
Spletstoser grew up around Cochran and Eastman, where he participated in Junior ROTC at Dodge County High School and during his senior year joined the National Guard, getting sworn in 30 days after he turned 17, the minimum age, before graduating in 1993. He recalls having teenage ideas of becoming a "super soldier," under the influence of movies starring Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone and so forth, late in the Cold War.
"In my mind I was preparing to be the military's instrument for distributing justice to Commies," he said.
His grandmother had dragged him to church, he said, but he hadn't been very much of a religious mindset.
'God wanted a worker'
But fear gripped him when prepared to go to training at Fort Benning (now Fort Moore), and he made a deal with God that "if he eased my fears and protected me during my training, that I would give him my trust," Spletstoser said.
After completing his training, he went on to the North Georgia College (now the University of North Georgia) in Dahlonega, and became active in the Baptist Student Union — now known as Baptist Collegiate Ministries — and heard the calling to a different path. Taking it, he lost his Georgia Military Scholarship, because choosing the chaplaincy program and keeping the scholarship wasn't an option then, as it is now, he said.
"See, I wanted to be a weapon; God wanted a worker," Spletstoser said. "God had something different planned, and I had to trust him."
He had to work and borrow money to continue his education, but graduated from North Georgia with a bachelor's degree in 1999. After 10 years in the military, he received his officer commission as a second lieutenant and chaplain candidate. Then, after graduating from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary where he received his Master of Divinity, he was commissioned as a chaplain in 2006.
Ironically, the young man who had entered the National Guard as a mechanized infantryman and antitank specialist and qualified as a designated marksman had moved on to be an Army officer without a gun.
"Did you know that chaplains are not only noncombatants, but they're also not authorized to carry a weapon, even for defensive purposes," Spletstoser asked. "So there are doctors that a noncombatants, medics that are noncombatants, but they can carry weapons. Chaplains are not authorized to carry weapons, even in combat.
"But by the way, you know where they send chaplains? To combat," he added.
'Shield of faith'
Still, as he sees it, he has does not go unarmed.
"God has prepared me to care for his men and women in uniform, because the weapon that I was going to use was something that can't be seen. I was going to walk into battle with a shield of faith, and God's word was going to be the sword and the tool that I use to fight the spiritual battles, especially the ones that our service members face."
Even before the United States of America declared its independence, its founding leaders realized that "war was going to bring suffering, and with suffering there's going to come brokenness of spirit," he said.
So, when organizing his Continental Army, "General George Washington emphatically stated, 'We need chaplains,'' Spletstoser noted. The Continental Congress established a chaplaincy branch of the U.S. military on July 29, 1775.
He briefly described several heroic chaplains who have served America since then, including the iconic, interfaith "Four Chaplains" of World War II.
When the troop ship SS Dorchester was sunk by a German submarine on Feb. 9, 1943, the converted passenger ship had about three times as many soldiers aboard as life jackets. The chaplains — Methodist minister the Rev. George L. Fox, Rabbi Dr. Alexander D. Goode, Catholic priest Father John P. Washington and Reformed Church in America minister the Rev. Clark V. Poling — gave up their life jackets to soldiers.
Survivors said the chaplains were last seen and heard praying together in the ocean.
The four were posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and the Purple Heart. But not having fought in combat, they were deemed ineligible at the time for the Medal of Honor, so Congress in 1960 unanimously created the Four Chaplains Medal especially for them.
Incidentally, the U.S. Army Institute of Religious Leadership is at Fort Jackson, South Carolina — near Columbia — maintains the Chaplain Corps Museum and a memorial wall. It displays the names of 294 chaplains and chaplain assistants who have died in wartime service since the Revolution, he said.
Spletstoser approaches his work from the basis of his faith in Christ, but recognizing that chaplains serve people of all faiths or none, he said. Chaplains in all branches of service are expected to demonstrate three core competencies: to nurture the living, care for the wounded and honor the fallen.
"Basically, I want to love them all, no matter what, and trust God to work through me. …," he said. "By applying these principles in my daily walk, I've been able to be an effective pastoral care provider for many of the service members that I've met and walked with through some of their darkest moments."
Spletstoser wrote the song "I Fought for You" for Veterans Day 2016 while deployed at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. Qualified as a veteran of the Global War on Terror, he led a round of applause for Vietnam War veterans.
"First of all I want to say, "Thank you,' because as a GWOT veteran, we got the welcome home that you never got," he said.
Suicide prevention
Speaking about "Be The One," and the tragic problem it addresses, Martin said this is more properly called a mission than a program or initiative. Indeed, it is described by the American Legion nationally as its "mission to end veteran suicide."
"Since the 9/11 attacks (in 2001) the number of veterans who have taken their own lives far surpasses the number of American deaths that occurred during the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War and Global War on Terrorism combined," he said.
"It's a serious issue. … A veteran is actually 50% more likely to take his or her own life than a person who never served in the military," Martin continued. "This has to stop."
The Legion, established in 1919 and still the largest U.S. veterans' organization, is asking the public's help with this mission. "Be The One" urges that people ask the veterans in their lives how they are doing, listen when then need to talk and reach out when a veteran is struggling.
For more information, including how to sign up for one of the suicide prevention training sessions developed by the American Legion and Columbia University, visit betheone.org.