Chaplains struggle to pay fitting tributes

CHAPLAIN Kevin Wainwright was preparing his Easter Sunday sermon in Iraq when there was a knock on his door.

The news was grim: 1st Lt Phillip Neel was dead. The young officer and fellow West Point grad had been a regular at the chaplain’s Sunday church services. Wainwright knew and admired him. Now he had to find the right words to honour him.

Wainwright chose the legend of Sir Galahad, King Arthur’s noble knight, and the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson to salute Neel in a memorial.