大象传媒

EXPANDED EPILOGUE

My wartime career was totally undistinguished. In the jargon of the day, I had a very "cushy war". I write that because almost the only shots I heard fired in anger were during the VI and V2 bombing raids on London in 1944 and because no close relative was killed or wounded in the services not suffered any injury or damage to homes through bombing. This was despite having a younger brother in the Merchant Navy throughout the war mostly on Atlantic convoys, another in the RAF and another in the Army; there were also an uncle in senior operational commands in the RAF, a first cousin who was a career officer in the RN and two other cousins in the RAF.
The fact that there were no casualties within my extended family was simply a matter of `luck'. Almost that same factor determined the overall course of my life in the Army. It will be clear from the foregoing recollections that the unit to which I was posted soon after being commissioned in early 1941 was distinctly unusual in that it was never sent abroad on active service despite being a `fighting' unit. Instead, for a number of reasons, it was radically re-trained for a different role on at least three different occasions; this may well have been due to someone somewhere deciding that it was good enough to be retained as a unit. In the mid-war period a very small number of individuals were posted away and, during the campaign in NW Europe, a whole squadron with a normal complement of officers and men, was sent to replace casualties in another armoured car regiment; otherwise a high proportion of its personnel remained together from its formation in the early days of the war until its disbandment at the end and it remained in the UK throughout.
That is essential background to these extended reflections on my wartime service, which I have been asked to record. In writing them I am acutely aware that memory plays tricks and after 50-60+ years it is unwise to claim that all my recollections as recorded here are 100% accurate as to detail. Nevertheless I believe them to be substantially accurate.
I am also acutely aware of the dangers of being "wise after the event" and of putting too favourable interpretation an events as recalled or reading too much into them. Also it is quite impossible, for me at any rate, to judge how my character, life and
ministry would or might have developed had I not joined the army as I did before ordination.
With those caveats to be kept firmly in the reader's mind I would sum up my war service as being enjoyable (for the most part) and formative for the good. So I do not regret in the least that I opted in 1940 for service rather than exemption (see p.3) and I fully acknowledge my thankfulness to be alive to tell the tale and to have benefited from the experience.
Enjoyable? That seems a terrible word to use of a period marked by such awful loss of life, personal suffering and destruction of so much priceless heritage in our own and other countries. But use it I must. I was young, for the first (and almost the only) time I had money to spend and more than I needed, I lived and worked with some extremely nice and able people, I enjoyed much friendship some of which has lasted well into subsequent years; in England and especially in Northern Ireland there was a full social life alongside the work, hardly spoilt by wartime restrictions.
I loved driving and did so in a great variety of vehicles especially after we became mechanised, I relished the authority and responsibility given to me at an early age, I was present at some exciting moments towards the end of hostilities and I got out at the end with astonishing ease and speed.
What have I gained from it all? Here follow at least some things for which I am grateful. First, and on a fairly trivial level, some practical skills were quickly developed. The ability to snatch satisfying sleep when badly needed and as opportunity arises; from my experience with transport some ability in diagnosing faults in my cars and in carrying out simple maintenance; through teaching and supervising army drivers I was able to teach my wife and four children to drive a car (even if I sent them to a driving school to learn how to pass the test!), thus saving a lot of money; highly developed ability to read a map and to plan and memorise routes (in our armoured regiment it was my role at times to lead the CO's posse of vehicles; woe betide me if I led him and them astray!). Very importantly, until I joined up I had no idea how "sheltered" indeed privileged, was my upbringing: education at home and in independent boarding schools, vicarage and Church life at home. Even in the early
days of army life for my basic training and OCTU my fellows were from roughly similar backgrounds. It wasn't until I was posted to my regiment and became responsible for something like 30 men that my eyes were opened to see "how the other half lived". Most of the men in our unit were wartime conscripts, aged in their mid-twenties, many from the Leeds-Bradford area, all in manual occupations pre-war, some illiterate. They were indeed "the salt of the earth" and I learnt to appreciate them for what they were, to admire their sterling qualities especially of loyalty and good humour, to see beyond their difficulty in reading and writing, their inability to express themselves in words. On average they were some 5-6 years older than I was and they taught me far more than I taught them about life generally. From living with them, sometimes in very close proximity, reading their letters etc, I learnt never to despise someone who was illiterate or inarticulate, for instance, and always to respect someone who had manual skills and to be interested in their work. I like to think this has enabled me to relate easily in my ministry with people from that sort of background. It has certainly greatly influenced my thinking and leadership in the role of a school governor, which has been a major part of my ministry.
[At this point I digress to comment on the role of an officer in censoring the mail of other ranks under his command. I found this task of censoring all their outgoing mail literally shocking. It was always a distasteful chore to be got through daily; perhaps it was as well that most of the men clearly found letter-writing hard work and did not do it all that much! But I hated the position of seeming to pry into their private affairs and was initially disgusted by the explicitly sexual content of much that was written to wives and sweethearts (to use the contemporary word, rather than the modern 'girl卢friend'!). That disgust never went away even though one quickly developed the ability to skim over such passages and to become somewhat inured to their (at times) lurid contents.
That said the process of censoring sometimes revealed useful information about chaps in one's charge, character traits, anxieties/problems at home, something to be acknowledged with pleasure (i.e. the birth of a child). Of course one had to be very careful about "using" any personal information gleaned from these letters and to be sensitive and sure of one's ground in referring to anything in private conversation
with the man concerned. To my surprise there did not seem to be deep-rooted, or even much, resentment to this system, rather unquestioning acceptance of it.)
The general circumstances of my army life, very particularly in Phantom, brought me into close working relationship with senior officers, whether the majors and colonels in the regiment or high-ranking generals in British and American forces. Consequently I learnt to respect, but not to be intimidated by, "rank". This has certainly enabled me, in Church life, always to get on well with the ecclesiastical hierarchy and, I hope, enabled me to be approachable whilst retaining proper `authority' when I myself was appointed to positions in the lower levels of the Church hierarchy. In particular through my experience of "dealing with" the company commander who issued an improper order (see above p.6) I have had no difficulty in questioning episcopal or diocesan policy when I felt it to be wrong or "unfair" to my parish or myself. Nor was I intimidated or submissive on the two occasions when different bishops, and in different places, summoned me to their office to rebuke me (without justification, I thought!) for my actions. On neither occasion did I win the argument but, later, each bishop gave me greater responsibility and `promotion' so presumably I got something right.
Such willingness to "take on" authority came to my aid when, in one of my parishes, a teenager in the congregation and her widowed mother seemed to me to have been harshly and unjustly treated by a Government Department. There was no Ombudsman in those days but, through a letter to a national paper and an interview with its editor and much correspondence with MPs, the injustice was rectified for my parishioners and, very soon afterwards, the national regulations were altered for the benefit of others in similar circumstances.
Man management and leadership were jargon terms during my officer training and, as I write, are back in vogue in industry and in the Church. I am sure that what I learnt and experienced in the army has helped me enormously in my ministry in leading a local Christian congregation, in co-operating with and drawing out the skills of the lay officers and others. It was of enormous value too later on when I was in the position of training young clergy in the parish and of seeking to guide and inspire other clergy during my time as an archdeacon. I like to think also that decision-taking, and accepting responsibility for decisions once taken, came much easier for me in parochial and diocesan life because of what was thrust upon me in my early years in the army.
Almost all the senior officers in my unit were regular soldiers and, almost without exception, they earned my respect. The good and the best of them set the highest standards of care for the officers and men under their command; by example and teaching they required the same of us junior officers. Through my father and grandfathers I had seen and learnt a bit of what pastoral care of parishioners involved. The military standards of care instilled into me throughout my time in the Green Howards and Royal Armoured Corps remained a standard and inspiration for me in my ministry. I would say that together those two influences of family and army taught me more pastorally than I learnt in theological college.
I have mentioned above (at p. 11) my reaction to the treatment of coloured American soldiers by their white colleagues, as I observed it. This was a rudimentary introduction to a situation which is now commonplace. Two generations ago I had never had any contact with a `coloured' person but I was so shocked by that wartime experience that it has been absolutely seminal in my thinking since. So it was that two chaps from different parts of Africa became personal friends during my time in Cambridge and that I was happy to have a West Indian lay reader to help me in my parish where everyone else was white. Ever conscious of Jesus' teaching and warnings of self-awareness I would not claim that all my actions and thoughts in the matter of race relations have been totally free of "discrimination" but I do know that what happened in that transit camp in Northern Ireland has acted as a stark warning to me. It was always in the forefront of my mind when, for instance, race issues arose in multi-cultural and multi-faith Bradford in the field of education and I was in the chair of the Diocesan Board of Education.
Nowadays many people have difficulty over the concept of a "just war". As will have been seen I had no hesitation in believing that that is what we were engaged in in 1939. I emerged safe and sound in 1945, thankful that it was over. For me personally it had been a "good" one.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.