Source: The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/world/middleeast/19monastery.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
When the 101st Airborne Division captured this base back in 2003, an American tank blasted the turret off a T-72 tank, catapulting it into the side of St. Elijah’s Monastery.
The force buckled a wall of mortar and stone that had stood for more than 1,000 years here in one of the earliest redoubts of Christianity. Such is the tragedy of war.
The division then made the site a garrison and painted its emblem on the stucco above the low door to the monastery’s chapel. The insignia remained there until a chaplain contemplated the righteousness of having “Screaming Eagles” adorn a house of God.
“That’s not right,” the chaplain said, as the story goes.
Thus began the accidental American stewardship of St. Elijah’s, an ancient site of Christian worship and martyrdom now stuck in the middle of a sprawling military base just south of Mosul, in northern Iraq.
Now, in one small act of preservation, and perhaps penance, the Americans hope to restore St. Elijah’s. Army engineers have drawn up plans to shore up the roof and walls of its main sanctuary — believed to have been built in the 11th century — before the last American troops leave the monastery to an uncertain fate.