Ministering to the dead and wounded.

At first word of the shooting, Col. Edward McCabe, the highest-ranking Catholic chaplain on the post, broke up a meeting and sped over to the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center, where staffers were caring for about 15 of the wounded, he said.

“Total chaos,” he said. “Everyone’s running around. There are pools of blood on the floor and on the walls and on the medical staff uniforms.”

While he was there, one of the wounded died, McCabe said. He said a short prayer and used his thumb to place prayer oils on the forehead of Lt. Col. Juanita L. Warman, 55, of the 1908th Medical Company.

When he got to the nearby medical screening building where nine of the dead were taken, McCabe, who had done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, started to shake.

“You’re looking at all these bodies and blood,” he said. “But I couldn’t allow this display of evil to control me.”

The following evening, when his cellphone finally quieted, he poured himself a few extra snifters of cognac. “That helped,” he said.

No doubt cognac would help.  There are 75 chaplains at Fort Hood.

In the opening battle sequence of Saving Private Ryan, there is a brief image of a chaplain helping a dying man on the beach say his last prayers.  The camera pans by quickly — it’s easy to miss the scene.