大象传媒

It seems to me that, amongst others, my generation found its lives divided into three distinct periods.

Firstly: home, school, introduction to work or, for some, no work. But that situation generally improved in the 30s, except in some areas for women, until the threat of war began to affect everyone.

So, secondly: service in H.M. Forces, reserved occupations, voluntary services etc. for both men and women.

Thirdly: demobilisation, return to work and changes in occupation, the renewal of family and social life and service to God and the Church.

For me, the second period begins when, after joining the Territorial Army Royal Engineers, I was called up with my unit for full time service and sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force in September 1939.

Before long, an army chaplain was posted to our district on the Belgian frontier. He was soon busy and well liked. He orgaised a weekly fellowship in one of the "estaminets" in the nearby village where relationships were very cordial.

We had a quiet time for some seven months which included Christmas, when the Army Post Office rose to the occasion, as did the folks at home. This was our first experience of the army tradition that Christmas dinner is served by the officers to the men. After Christmas, leave to the U.K. for seven days was started, but it was very cold.

When the real wasy began we were on a bridging exercise on the Somme, a name familiar for twenty-five years as was Albert, the first town to be bombed in France in May 1940.

This sent us scurrying back to the frontier and, leaving our hastily prepared defences behind, we drove into Belgium and through Brussels when, with firing hardly a shot at the Maginot Line, the Panzers swept through the hiatus created where it stopped.

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