Shortly before Christmas, I received a phone call from the office of the Air Force Chief of Chaplains. I am a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force, and I was asked to go to Thule Air Base in Greenland for two weeks to provide Catholic services for Christmas and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God (New Year’s Day). Thule Air Base, 800 miles above the Arctic Circle, is the northernmost military installation of the United States. It has a small base population of American, Canadian, Danish, and Greenlandic personnel. The base’s main mission is to provide missile warnings, space surveillance, and satellite command and control for our senior civilian and military leaders. In the Air Force (and the recently formed Space Force), Thule is the punchline of many a joke about where one might end up if he or she doesn’t “straighten up and fly right.” Indeed, when I told a friend of mine, a former Air Force medical doctor, where I would be for Christmas, his one-word reply was, “Sucker!” That stung a little, but my instincts told me he was wrong.
