Over three hundred people—Rangers, U.N. peacekeeping troops, Turkish army soldiers, and even a few nomadic tribesmen who lived outside the cities—stood along the hills leading to the stream. There were a few vehicles, military Jeeps and trucks, but for the most part it was obvious the spectators had arrived on foot. Under the sparse shade offered by the anemic trees, litters bearing wounded from all three military forces sat with groups waiting to move them forward in the long lines that had formed at the stream’s edges and met in the middle where Baker stood baptizing people.
Corporal Tommy Bono sat behind the Hummer’s steering wheel. He was young and lean, his angular face a mask of dirt and grease. He’d come from Brooklyn, from a long line of firemen, but he’d wanted to see the world before he settled into the old neighborhood at one of the firehouses. His bloody knuckles showed how hard and fast he had been working in the motor pool to get vehicles ready for the night’s evacuation.
“Man, Sarge,” Tommy said in a dazed voice. “Have you ever seen the like?”
“No,” Goose answered. But he’d heard of events like this one. His father had been baptized in the Satilla River in Waycross, Georgia, when he’d been fifteen years old.
The man who had baptized Wesley Gander had been a traveling revival speaker who had worn a white seersucker suit and played a guitar. The man had favored bluesy gospel, and threw in a few hot licks that had scandalized the mothers in the crowds and won over the hearts of the youngsters. He’d arrived in a battered orange Ford pickup that advertised handyman work and carried the tools of his trade in the back. Before doing the revival, the man had worked around town, mending fences, cleaning out garages, and doing small carpentry jobs in exchange for lodging and meals.
On the final day of the week-long revival, after the man had delivered a standing, shouting oration under the tent that had been borrowed from the farmers’ marketplace, interspersed the whole time with music and anecdotes, he had called for those who wanted to know Jesus Christ as his or her personal savior. Wes Gander didn’t tell the story much, but when he did, Goose was still able to see the fires of conviction in his father’s eyes. The revival had been a come-to-Jesus success that was never again equaled in Waycross, Georgia.
According to the local story, there were so many who came forward that day, and the spirit was so strong among them, that the revivalist had led them on a three-mile walk to the Satilla River. There the baptisms had begun. The man had dunked everyone who came forward, the symbolic resurrection of a person after accepting the Son of God’s most precious gift.
“Get us closer,” Goose said.
Tommy put the Hummer in gear again and crept toward the stream. “What are you gonna do about this, Sarge?”
Goose surveyed all the people around him. “I don’t know.”
Corporal Joseph Baker stood waist deep in the stream water. Tall and broad with flat features and a round face, Baker looked like a gentle bear. He stood six feet eight inches tall, the tallest man in the company.
Baker gripped the nose and mouth of the man standing beside him, put a hand under his back as the man folded his arms over his chest, and lowered him into the water. A moment later, he brought the man back up.
The man fiercely hugged Baker, then sloshed through the loose mud of the streambed to where he’d left his gear with a compatriot who was already soaked. The freshly baptized man wore the uniform of a Turkish soldier. The man holding his weapon was a U.N. trooper.
Tommy stopped the Jeep thirty yards from the river. “I can’t go any farther, Sarge.”
“This is good enough, Tommy.” Goose lifted his M-4A1 from the floorboard between his feet and slung the assault rifle over his shoulder. He stepped from the Hummer and felt his injured knee nearly buckle under him as it refused to take his weight, even with the brace. But he took another step and the knee loosened up. The pain was sharp and edged enough to bite ferociously.
When Tommy switched off the Hummer’s engine, Goose heard the singing.
“Just as I am, without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”
The music swelled across the stream, filling the depression with hope. As Goose slowed and looked around, the music grew stronger as more people joined in.
“Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”
For the first time, Goose noticed that the faces of the soldiers and the people around him were free of worry and fear and tension. They weren’t like the faces of the soldiers he had left back along the border.
“Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings and fears within, without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”
Electricity scurried along Goose’s neck as he listened to the song. In the stream, Bakern kept baptizing the men who stepped forward. He took the first of a line, then switched to the other line. The effort the man made at lowering all those people into the stream water and pulling them back up again was nothing short of Herculean.
“Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;
Sight, riches, healing of the mind,
Yea, all I need in Thee to find,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”
The group of OneWorld reporters made their way down through the people on the stream
