Your guidance may be tested.
In the late 1930s students were enthusiastic about peace, and the P.P.U. (Peace Pledge Union) was the sort of society my colleagues joined.
To their horror, a friend of mine, (John Eastaugh — later Bishop of Hereford), and I joined the L.U.T.C. - Leeds University Training Corps; a sort of senior and more advanced version of the school O.T.C. but - being the beginning of the war - commanded by officers and senior N.C.O.s of the ordinary army (Infantry). We were part of the Home Guard — trained to help defend our country in case of invasion.
We both felt that it was important to defend our country, but we were the only two to do so.
We had to go straight from our first uniform parade into the Hostel refectory.
One could hardly walk into this room - filled with students beginning their meal - clad in army boots and khaki uniform without everybody knowing what we had done.
There was a protest meeting – against us - and we were asked how we could serve the King of Peace clad in the garments of war? I cannot remember whether we told them about a certain Centurion and his servant in the Bible, where Jesus healed the servant miraculously: or about England’s first Christian martyr, the soldier St. Alban … but within a term many more had joined us and we all knew what we would be doing if invasion came.
Looking back on those two years now, I am quite certain that that year down from the University, so painful at the time, helped me enormously for the work I was eventually to do.
My parents’ homes had been in rather small and remote North Devon villages like North Molton and Molland (by Exmoor), and then Ainstable amid the fells of what was then Cumberland.
Those 14 months in Blackburn put me in touch with numerous Lancashire lads and lasses and gave me my first taste of running a senior youth club as well as contacts through the Local Defence Volunteers.
To the officers and N.C.O.s of the war-time army I owe a debt of gratitude for giving me the beginning of self-confidence, training in public speaking, (talks and instructions on many topics) and an awareness of any idiosyncrasies which needed attention!
On the more practical side of a parish priest’s job these two things were the greatest help and I am profoundly grateful that once more my own inabilities had given me invaluable experience.
to be continued.
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