大象传媒

A short time after the D day landings, a group of infantry were lying in a ditch near Caen pinned down by heavy enemy fire. One of them, peering over the grass verge noticed a bright purple object lying on the road surface, level with his eyes. He cautiously raked it in and it fell to the bottom of the trench. It was a silver figure of Christ, burnt heliotrope by the force and heat of the explosion which had wrecked the wayside Calvary where it had hung. He burnished it back to brightness, wrapped it in an old piece of cloth and stuffed it in his shoulder pack.
Many days later,after the gruelling advance through Northern France , Belgium and the Low Countries now attached to a Yorks and/or Lancs Regiment, outside Nijmegen, he came across his friend from his old regiment, the Royal Fusiliers,( Joseph Couperthwaite, a Cumbrian man who had enlisted in the London Regiment ). ' Here you are Joe,' he said,' This is for you. I knew you had a nephew who hoped to be a minister'. He then added, reflectively,'I used the bag for a pillow every night and I always felt as I went to sleep with my head on it, I would come to no harm'.
The figure was handed to me when I was ordained two years after the war ended and I had it mounted on a plain black cross to hang in my study during almost forty years' ministry.in the city of Liverpool. Joe Couperthwaite died a few years ago, in his late eighties. I myself am over eighty.
The 60th Anniversary of D Day has reinforced my hope that this beautiful crucifix can now find an appropriate place where its provenance can be known and its significance can be seen --a historic memorial to very brave men.

(Size... Figure 18cm by 13cm.
Cross 45cm by 23cm.)

Regimental chapel ; Relatives of unknown soldier who retrieved it; French Origin ? Perhaps some suggestions will emerge.

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