Ken Comstock
Spc. Ken Comstock, 23,
August 20, 2004, when the Humvee he was riding in hit a roadside bomb near Samarra, Iraq. Ken was serving with Company C, 2nd Battalion of the 108th Infantry, a New York National Guard unit attached to the 1st Infantry Division. His forehead was broken into 500 pieces, doctors said.
"Ken actually was dead four times," his mom says. "He flat-lined four times on them before they could get him to Germany. They had to fly especially low because he kept dying on them."
"I was in a coma for ten days," Ken tells us, "and my mom sat by my side the whole time till I woke up. It's a miracle I'm alive at all. Miracles still happen!"
A gigantic scar runs jaggedly across his head like a mountain range from one ear to the other. His forehead is a spider web of scars. Ken points above both eyes and tells us he has bone there but nothing in between. His hand is bandaged and splinted due to the shrapnel still imbedded in it.
Ken is a brave young soldier. I am amazed at his faith and courage despite his condition and all that has happened. But his fiercest battles may still lie ahead: rehab, then back for skull reconstruction surgery, then plastic surgery, physical therapy, and re-entry into "normal" civilian life. And which will heal first—his marred and fractured body or his traumatized soul? I'm trying hard to understand. I think Ken's mother sees this because she hands me a poem Ken wrote just a week before "it happened."
By: Paul Button, article for
2005 Bruderhof Communities.
Please remember to pray for our soldier's, their families, and the leaders of the Nations.