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| Two women were lost on D Day, Sister Mollie Evershed and Sister Dorothy Field, Standing With Giants. Source BBC News |
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
And let's remember the 134 British and Commonwealth Forces chaplains who lost their lives in WWII alone and those many others like Fr Gerry Weston murdered at the Aldershot Airborne Brigade Officers' Mess by the IRA and Revd Frank 'Ginge' Collins - hero of so many SAS operations in Northern Ireland and elsewhere (including his lead part in the Iranian Embassy SAS storming) who quit the army, prepared himself for ordination and was priested into the CofE. After a daring career where he was constantly prepared for his own death, he failed to realise death was ready for him. He committed suicide in his Hampshire vicarage. A victim of unnoticed PTSD at the extreme. Our prayers and remembrances therefore for the all-denomination pastors of our Service personnel; six of them I believe, awarded the VC over many decades. Lest we Forget ... I sometimes think we have.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that story, how sad. Thanks for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteSad indeed Baptist. Frank grieved the death of his SAS buddy (and mine) Al Slater murdered by the IRA in Ulster's bandit-country and despite his hard-training, impossibly massive soldiering pressures in a distinquished service with 22 SAS 'Ginge' was inwardly inclined to care, love and compassion. At his funeral (he was found dead in his car garaged in his Vicarage) a colleague remarked: 'We all knew how good Frank was at helping everyone. When he needed help himself, none of us noticed it. It is hard to imagine that Frank committed suicide way back in 1998. Somehow he still lives in the current.
ReplyDeleteIt was while he was seconded to the US's elite Special Forces he was prompted into an extraordinary religious conversion, so powerful that he could not return to the ways of UK special forces operations. After ordination (wonderfully ordained in Hereford Cathedral of his SAS Regiment) he acted as chaplain to the Para Regt. Reserve battalion for a short period, but his heart was now in the pastoral work of his parishes.
Pity his widow Claire and their three children. 'Lest we forget ...' indeed.
And Fr Gerry Weston. What an irony. A three man IRA team target the Para's officers mess beset on killing as many Para officers as possible. It was Gerry's birthday so he'd invited a few of us up for lunch. The bomb in a Ford Cortina exploded before most arrived. They succeeded in killing five lovely civilian staff including our elderly gardener and the only 'Red Beret' was our Padre ... and the irony: A Roman Catholic priest not even a 'Proddie' Yes indeed, at 11-11-11 we often overlook the sacrifices of HM Forces padres.
Giving thanks for all who paid the ultimate sacrifice. Thanks too for Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Ivor Gurney, Charles Sorley and Rupert Brooke whose gay poetic perspective makes clear the price paid by gay and straight alike.
ReplyDeleteBenllech
@ Ancient Briton
ReplyDeleteThree days have elapsed - four by the time this entry is posted - since I wrote ref the sacrifices of HM Forces padre/chaplains of all denominations and faiths. Despite hope that others would contribute their 'tributes' the AB blogsite went suddently dead. Perhaps none to match the pathos of Rev Frank Collins PTSD suicide or Revd Fr Gerry Weston's murder by IRA bombing in the Parachute Brigade Officers' Mess in 1974.
If this is to be the closure of the 'Remembrance' topic and no others want to add, may I please conclude with the extraordinary story of the Revd. Ray Bowers, CoE Chaplain to 10 Bn Para Regt at the fateful Battle of Arnhem - Market Garden - or Bridge Too Far.
Ray, then aged only 32, broke his ankle badly on landing (his first operational jump) into Arnhem and, immobilised, struck a deal with his German Panzer enemy: 'I'll bury your dead if you care for my wounded'. Days later and still almost crippled, Ray was formally taken PoW as the Germans regained Arnhem. He was segregated from his 'men' to a line of officers destined for an Officers' PoW Camp; his 'men' to be long marched to a badass Stalug. Ray objected. He demanded he join his 'men'. Not permitted, Verbodden, snapped the German. You are officer.
Then Ray (already on crutches) learned that there was no hospital in the Officers' PoW camp but there was one in the Other Ranks Stalug. He laid his already injured leg over two logs and ordered a sergeant to jump on it to break it clean ... that way to force his captors to transport him to the Stalug IV camp with his 'men' were there was a hospital and proper medical treatment. 'I can't do that Sir' said his sergeant; 'You're an officer. It's against King's Regulation to assault an 'hofficer'. Forget your King, replied Ray, My King of Kings is ordering you to break my bloody leg ... now break it!!!!!' And off he went, in agony, to join 'his men' in their PoW camp. Oh how I wish some modern 'priests' could follow that example of care for the flock.
Ray survived PoW life, briefly returned to UK then joined the CMS to become a missionary in Uganda and returned to UK to a parish in Cumbria until retirement aged 70. I met him (then in his much later 70's) in 1994, the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem, when he and 76 other amazing veterans of Market Garden aged between 69 and 86 decided in their foolhardy heroism, to return-jump into the old battleground DZ .... zimmer-frames included. We at JSPC/APA re-trained them either as freefall, static-line or tandem-jumpers and they - along with Padre Ray Bowers - remain the most memorable gents I have probably ever met.
So, AB, if this is to be conclusion to your blog theme 'Remembrance' here's to all those Padres or Forces Chaplains of two world wars and umpteen rather ugly conflicts since. Military personnel expect the Padre to pray for them ... quite forgetting that they, too, deserve our and God's thanksgiving.