Author Frank Schaeffer's stomach flipped as the words of his son, Marine Cpl. John Schaeffer, sank in. "Dad, I don't want to rain on your parade, but a situation has arisen and it looks like I'll be redeployed next week. Right now I'm the most qualified person available to do the job. They need me, Dad."

In his book, Faith Of Our Sons: A Father's Wartime Diary, Schaeffer picks up where he left off in Keeping Faith, the bestselling memoir he co-wrote with John.

Schaeffer's story, about John joining the Marines straight out of prep school, touched hundreds of military families whose loved ones had joined the service, post 9-11.

Schaeffer also wrote an op-ed piece for The Washington Post about how it took John's enlistment to connect him to his country and make him see who was defending our freedoms.

As a result, Schaeffer receives daily e-mails and letters from well-wishers and antiwar protesters, which he patiently answers every day.

John's enlistment was an unexpected and unsettling surprise for his parents. Schaeffer writes that it was hard enough to send John's older sister and brother off to college.

Four years later, on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, John volunteers to fight in the Middle East, and is deployed to Afghanistan the day after Gulf War II begins.

John is enthusiastic about serving his country. Schaeffer recalls John wanted to be a "real Marine," not an oddball Marine celebrating his 15 minutes of fame because he had written a bestseller with his dad.

John's deployment has Schaeffer wondering, since the book was his idea, had he killed his son? However, he tries to suppress his fears and tells John that both he and his mother are proud and scared about his decision.

After a tour of duty, John returns home for a short time, only to volunteer for an intel mission back in Afghanistan. " 'This is my job, what I signed up to do. They need me,' said John. 'Sorry, Dad,' he added quietly."

The Schaeffers are supportive and try not to press John for details about his decision. So far the Marines had been good for John, Schaeffer notes. He recalls John wanted the training and discipline of the Marine corps. That's why he joined.

Faith of Our Sons is Schaeffer's diary, poignantly punctuated with John's poems, e-mails from his mother and other GIs' parents and relatives who have a family member fighting in the Gulf, as well as veterans.

Schaeffer started the book the day John announced his first deployment and concludes the story with the end of John's second tour.

Although John could never tell his parents exactly where he was or what he was doing, he kept in touch via satellite phone. He also sent home letters and photos from disposable cameras his parents mailed to him.

The Schaeffers felt John would be safer in Afghanistan than Iraq. However, they can't help but worry whenever news agencies report the Taliban and al-Qaida are stepping up attacks against U.S. Marines.

John reassures his family that he's OK and that the news is usually exaggerated. To the surprise of his parents, John even jokes about a kid who tried to take a potshot at him with a 19th-century rifle.

" 'What did you do?' Schaeffer asks.

" 'Nothing.'

" 'What!' I exclaimed.

" 'What do you expect me to do,' John answered calmly, 'put a bullet between some kid's eyes? Anyway, the gun was some sort of single-shot musket about a hundred years old. If it had been a AK or something, then of course that would have been different.' "

John's usually cavalier attitude begins to change during his second tour. The Schaeffers hadn't heard from John for a month. Then the couple receives the following e-mail:

"Dear Mom and Dad: I have learned that the right thing and the necessary thing are not synonymous, rarely are they even in the same ballpark. It's very depressing to see the results of some necessary actions, it's never pure, and there is no purity here. I have started to pray again . . .

"In a natural state a human will kill, and kill not always for necessity, but for convenience as well. The only way that I know I am still me is that I hate that fact; I hate it more than anything I have ever known. Some of what I have had to do here will eat my soul for the rest of my life."

Faith of Our Sons offers a different perspective than many of the books written a year after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Schaeffer writes candidly about what military families go through having a loved one in harm's way.

He says he's not proud of the careless attitude he once had about America's servicemen and women. And he's not proud of the way the government sloughs off military families when it's done with them, or of the sanctimonious left that seems to want economic justice for everyone except military men and women. He's not proud of the American right, either, a group that says it supports our troops, he writes, but makes sure its kids don't serve.

Faith of Our Sons will be an enlightening and heartfelt read for civilians who take their freedoms for granted, and life-affirming for military families and servicemen and women who work their 9 to 5 actually 24/7 in harm's way protecting our country.

Laurence Washington is co-publisher and Editor of Blackflix.com and teaches journalism at Metropolitan State College of Denver.

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