大象传媒

In 1940 I joined the Congregational Church in Sutton, Surrey where I met many interesting people of all ages who had become pacifists as a result of The First World War. At first I thought they were crazy but over time these people and the Church changed my entire perspective on life. I began looking at the New Testament in a new light and it made me realise what life was really for; I wanted to see a world that had learnt its meaning, that could only be loved into loving, not forced. It was this along with a chance encounter with a businessman who suggested a path for my life that I did not even know I was considering that persuaded me that I should become a Minister and consequently a conscientious objector. Jesus preached forgiveness, compassion and love for all mankind, I realised that if I was to choose this path in life I could not entertain the idea that to kill is ever justified, I also knew however that I could not stand outside the events of the war and wanted to be involved, just not in the killing business.
I had to prove my conscientious objection to violence at two a tribunals. The first was very hard-nosed and I had to continually justify my beliefs, in the second however I felt they wanted to understand what kind of man I was and my priciples. To my utter surprise they accepted my objection and I was told to 鈥済o peacefully鈥�. Soon after this I joined New College of the University of London situated in 鈥渂omb alley鈥�. As mentioned before I felt I couldn鈥檛 not be involved and became an Air Raid Warden. One night I will never forget I was with my fellow students at New College during an air raid. The Germans would scatter flares where they were aiming to drop their bombs and we would run as fast as we could from any flares we saw. That night I remember the raid was exceptionally loud and I looked at of our window to see a line of flares leading up to the college! I dived underneath the table along with my Landlord, his family and my fellow students. Once we emerged, luckily unscathed having not received a direct hit we realised that we had all dressed in each others clothes in our rush to get away before we decided to hide under the table! The next day I kept guard over an unexploded bomb near our college for 24 hours to warn people away, I remember feeling so scared that I couldn鈥檛 feel scared anymore. In 1941 I first met Una my future wife of 60 years when helping to bring in the wounded during an air raid in Bristol where she was Theatre Sister at the Royal Infirmary. It was only two years later when I went for an operation in Bath that we realised that we had met before in Bristol and started seeing each other.
After the war I visited the graves in Arnhem, Holland of British paratroopers who had been killed and I felt a terrible sense of guilt at not having fought and that in many ways I wished that I was one of them. The First World War had been such an earth-shattering experience and had created in so many the belief that this kind of war could never happen again and yet by the time of the second the lesson had not been learnt. My faith had shown to me that a better world was possible but that this could never be achieved by violence and hate but only through a world that had been 鈥渓oved into loving鈥�.

This story was submitted to the People's War website by Alessandra Grave and Alex Matthews from WM CSV Action Desk on behalf of Rev. Harold Eaton Johnson and has been added to the site with his permission. Rev. Harold Eaton Johnson fully understands the terms and conditions.

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