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Moral and Spiritual Injury in War

Russo-Ukraine, Israel-Iran, and Beyond

 

Timothy S. Mallard, Stone Tower Press, 2025, 160 pages

 

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Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, PhD, U.S. Army, Retired

 

Chaplain Timothy Mallard’s book takes us beyond the physical impacts of war and reminds us there are deeper consequences. I learned from it, and I am confident any Army leader or potential leader will also.

His book, Moral and Spiritual Injury in War: Russo-Ukraine, Israel-Iran, and Beyond, deepens our understanding of “war as a human affair.” We realize that people fight and wage wars, and people suffer the consequences of war. These people are not just the combatants but also senior political and military leaders and the innocent who always get caught up in the fighting. We know that some of the consequences of war are physical and others are psychological. Mallard reminds us that still other consequences are moral and spiritual. And, importantly, that the people who suffer the moral and spiritual consequences include networks of friends, families, local communities, and sometimes even the political community that sends us off to fight on their behalf.

Mallard lays out the moral and spiritual injuries that can result from the trauma of war. In doing so, he equips leaders who read his book with a practical language and framework useful in understanding these forms of injury—important leadership tools.

Much of America’s Army (and our Marine, Air Force, and Navy brothers and sisters) have fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all over the globe. Many have had multiple combat deployments in which they faced situations they could barely imagine before they deployed—even with the best training and preparation. Now, those experiences are not imagined, they are very real. Maybe even hauntingly so. Many of us—I would suggest most of us veterans—have come home and adapted well. But among both the well-adapted and those still adapting, Mallard reminds us that part of that returning from war includes coming to grips with our moral and spiritual selves and what we did during our time at war. (Another great book about returning from war is Nancy Sherman’s Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of Our Soldiers [Oxford University Press, 2015].)

All of us, Mallard says, develop a moral self. We grow into a sense of what kind of person we are or should be through the expectations of our parents, teachers, coaches, pastors, mentors, friends, and extended families. This sense includes an understanding of what is expected of us, what’s right and wrong, and how we should act. No person is an island, the saying goes. Our moral self is a product of a network of relationships and expectations. The problem is war challenges all that.

War is a temporary and abnormal moral universe. In this universe, the same act can be both morally justified and morally repugnant. It’s a universe where, as a soldier, what you should do—in fact, what is your duty to do—is contrary to the norms and expectations that your “peacetime moral self” would allow. Our moral self can be injured by living and acting in the paradoxical universe of war. So can be the network that created us. Coming home, a soldier may think that he or she is now less than, or different from, what others think of them. Two disconnections—two injuries—can develop: one between our “peacetime” and “wartime” moral selves and another between who I think I am after war and what others think I am based on before war.

Many of us—veterans and leaders—lack the understanding and even the vocabulary to help ourselves or others deal with these disconnections, these unseen injuries. (For a firsthand account of what Mallard is talking about, read Nate Self’s Two Wars: One Hero’s Fight on Two Fronts—Abroad and Within [Tyndale House, 2008].) Giving us the details to understand and the language to use is Mallard’s huge contribution to this important aspect of our profession.

But he doesn’t stop there. He explains spiritual injury as well. As with moral injury, Mallard presents a practical definition and lays out the markers of spiritual injury. He then provides guides for soldiers and leaders to use in getting those injured the help they need. (Another great book on spiritual injury is Robert McChesney’s The Soul Also Keeps Count [Wild Soul Press, 2021].) Then he goes a step further to address what is probably the hardest issue: the reasons America goes to war, how we conduct ourselves in war, and how we end wars—all matter to the moral self and the soul of individuals as well as to the Nation. (In this aspect, Mallard is a reflection of Jonathan Shay’s earlier work Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character [Atheneum, 1994].) This is a well-argued perspective to which those who think the United States can go to war for whatever reason and suspend the laws of war and rules of engagement in prosecuting that war should pay very close attention. While war is a paradoxical and abnormal universe, Mallard reminds us that war is temporary, it has limits, and it has profound consequences—for individuals, networks, local communities, and the Nation.

There’s so much in this short 124-page book. All of us who have been to war have seen soldiers and families suffering from the invisible injuries Mallard describes. We sometimes hug each other, we often drink with one another, and perhaps we pray together. But what to say, how to describe what we’re experiencing, and how to respond—these are capabilities many of us lack. The profession owes Mallard a debt of gratitude for this book. Senior leaders would do well to encourage reading it for individual development and require it for formal professional education.

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January-February 2026