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Prayers for Peace
Gulf War vet finds comfort in prayer
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May, 2003
As Ken Gillon prepared to take communion at the First Congregational Church of Dudley on the night the war began in Iraq, his thoughts turned back to his own experience in the Gulf War 12 years earlier.
“I was stationed in Saudi Arabia. We knew essentially when the ground war would start,” he recalled. “The evening before, they called us in to a service. I remember the chaplain praying not for courage, not for strength, but for peace, and for safety. Here we were, a bunch of soldiers, praying for peace.”
“I remember feeling scared that night, not knowing what was to come,” he said. “I also remember taking great comfort receiving communion.”
Like many people sitting in pews across the Conference since the war began, Gillon, the Christian Education Director at his church, has mixed feelings about this war. He prays for peace and prays for the troops.
“Profound sadness is the only thing I can say about it,” he said. “Politically, I think it’s a bit wrong-headed of us. On the other hand, I absolutely believe Saddam is a dangerous person.”
“I hope and pray that we will find weapons of mass destruction,” Gillon said. “I hope we have some moral high ground. I want Saddam to look bad, the US to look good and Arab nations to be more comfortable with what we’ve done.”
Gillon is very supportive of US troops.
“I get really offended by the protests now that we’re over there,”
he said. “Now that we’ve started it, we’ve got to finish it.”
Gillon, who served in the Army for 14 years, was a rear echelon soldier in the Gulf, so he was not on the front lines in Kuwait.
But he knows what it is like to hear Scud missiles fly overhead, and he has seen the aftermath of war. He remembers the piles of burned bodies along the “Highway of Death” and the emaciated children and beggars he was surprised to find in an oil-rich country.
He also knows how healing it can feel to pray for peace.