For the week of April 9 - 15, 2003

In war, prayer
sometimes works,
often not

Commentary by PAT MURPHY

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Some American families have scant reason to cheer victory in Iraq as troops snuff out Saddam Hussein’s reign. They’re busy at home burying GI sons and daughters, mothers and fathers who perished in the military operation.

It wouldn’t be sacrilegious for them to wonder why prayers to God for their safe return went unheeded.

Not the least of those wondering is the Rev. Tandy Sloan of Cleveland, a Baptist minister: his 19-year-old son, Pfc. Brandon Sloan, was killed. "I’m trying" to understand, he tearfully told worshippers at Historical Greater Friendship Baptist Church.

I was raised in the fire-and-brimstone spiritualism of the southern Presbyterian Church, fidgeting through agonizing childhood Sundays on hardwood pews, listening bug-eyed to Hell-and-damnation sermons of the flamboyant Rev. Daniel Iverson. He left no doubt that a protective and charitable God would be my everlasting companion.

Since there are few if any atheists in battle, God is deluged by prayers from warriors on both sides of any battle beseeching God for protection.

Perhaps it’s of momentary comfort to families that their parents or children who died in battle did so for their country, and that in death, their souls have gone to that eternity their religion beatifies.

But in due course, they’re bound to wonder and ask whether dying for one’s country is adequate consolation for their indescribable grief or proper reward to replace a fallen father or mother, daughter or son who could’ve given a lifetime of uninterrupted family joy.

Dying for one’s country goes on. The world seems no more peaceful. And leaders in each generation find new cause to take up arms.

Not including those killed in the current Iraq operations, 652,604 Americans—equivalent to half the population of Idaho—have died in battle for their country since the Revolutionary War. More wars are bound to require more dying for country. The toll of war worldwide is in the hundreds of millions.

On a C-54 transport flying us from Korea to Tokyo for five days of rest and recuperation in July 1951, my seat companion was an Army reservist in his early 30s recalled to active duty for the Korean War. He showed me wallet photos of his wife and children back in Baltimore. Weeks later, I learned he’d been killed. Why? He had a family that needed him and prayed for him. I was a bachelor of 22. Such injustice.

There’s a poignant commentary (even if fictional) on the dreadful waste of young lives in war in the 1945 Errol Flynn film, "Objective Burma" I’ve never forgotten.

Bending over a dead comrade named Hollis to retrieve identification dog tags, a grim GI comments: "So much for Mrs. Hollis’ nine months of pain and 20 years of hope."

 

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