For 30 years, this chaplain has listened to soldiers. Now, let’s listen to him. | Opinion
Veterans need your ear.
So says one of the top military officers to ever come from Hilton Head Island.
Chaplain William “Bill” Green Jr., who will be the keynote speaker at the island’s Veterans Day Ceremony on Monday at 10:30 a.m. at the Shelter Cove Veterans Memorial Park, told me:
“Probably one of the most important things you can do for a veteran is really get to know them and their life experiences and what they have done to uphold the liberty, the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. Veterans make a commitment to support and defend the Constitution, and that’s a wide open commitment. I know people take time to thank them for that, but I think they’ll understand a lot more about veterans if they hear their story.”
It has been Green’s job for three decades to listen to soldiers.
“First and foremost,” he said, “the chaplain’s role is to care, to have compassion and to want to see people meet their meaning and purpose in life.”
Green, who was reared on Hilton Head by Mary and the late Bill Green Sr. in the pews of First African Baptist and Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist churches, is now in charge of the “spiritual readiness” of the entire U.S. Army.
He was promoted in December to major general (two star) and became the 26th U.S. Army Chief of Chaplains — a corps that will mark its 250th anniversary on July 29, 2025.
From his perch at the Pentagon, Green oversees a worldwide corps of some 3,000 chaplains, an equal number of religious affairs specialists, more than 500 chaplain candidates and more than 50 directors of religious education.
Army chaplains represent approximately 110 religious faith groups. The Chaplain Corps, which over time has included eight Medal of Honor recipients, enables the soldier’s constitutionally-mandated free exercise of religion, Green said.
He said the chaplain’s job is “to care for and love, to walk with, honor, respect, and not to judge” the soldier or officer.
The U.S. Army Institute for Religious Leadership at Fort Jackson in Columbia is known as the “heart and home” of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps, and is where Green’s formal promotion ceremony was held in March.
A number of islanders were there — in person, or in the marrow of Green’s character.
He is a 1978 graduate of H.E. McCracken High School in Bluffton, which in that day served all students in southern Beaufort County.
“I am so thankful that I had an opportunity to grow up there, and I absolutely credit a lot of who I am today to the people on the island,” Green said. “From my school teachers, to my principal Mr. Isaac Wilborn, to my community leaders, such as Gators youth football coach Maynard Barker. It’s very foundational the way people loved and cared for me, and that had a big impact on me.”
Even after reaching the highest rank available to a chaplain, Green still credits the late Rev. Ben Williams of the island’s Mt. Calvary church with being one of the biggest impacts on his life and ministry.
“He really taught me how to be a chaplain because what he did, he connected with all faith groups on the island, and that’s what chaplains do,” Green said. “That’s what I do in the Army because I connect with all faith groups and those who don’t have a faith, or don’t believe. I still connect and care and love them.”
As he approaches his 31st year as a chaplain, Green finds today’s soldier more willing to talk about spirituality, to show emotions and to listen.
“I think our service members do believe in something larger than themselves,” he said.
That’s crucial, he said, because military leaders from George Washington to General of the Army George C. Marshall have understood that you can’t have victory without a moral grounding within the troops.
“The soldier’s heart, the soldier’s spirit, the soldier’s soul, are everything,” Marshall said. “Unless the soldier’s soul sustains him, he cannot be relied on, and will fail himself and his commander and his country in the end.”
So listen to veterans. And listen to Green, the Gullah general from the South Carolina Lowcountry.
“I am thankful to God,” he said, “for allowing me to serve this great nation.”
David Lauderdale may be reached at lauderdalecolumn@gmail.com .
