Nov 9th 2008 Remembrance Sunday

52.00 n 5.53 e  capital city of Gelderland province – a railway junction, it’s industries included engineering and pharmaceuticals – as you will know – this is ARNHEM 2008.

• But what Arnhem was in 1944, meant something quite different for the large airborne landing of British troops dropped to secure a bridgehead across the river Rhine to facilitate the allied invasion of .

• Arnhem: near enough in our day, but a bridge too far for those ill-fated 10 days 17 – 27 September, 1044.  The battle failed to secure the bridge head.  There were heavy, heavy losses…..64 years ago….

  44 years ago, I was asked to go to for 10 days across the 

Christmas and New Year.  A few days before Christmas I was invited to large

reception by a man who urged me to tell the company about Midnight Mass.  “Everyone pay attention.  Padre, tell them what’s what”  I was stood on a chair, the company went quiet – the company being for the most part young men and women from the combined services ski team: Army, Navy, Airforce: “good thing to do”, hear, hear Padre” – they said they would be there – much to the nodding approval of the man who got things going – he, General frost then invited me to join his family and the ski team  to lunch on Christmas Day.  And there, at table, he told the story that had caused him to take what Christmas says seriously.  As one of the Commanding Officers at Arnhem attempt was failing, DISASTROUSLY.  Retreat being ordered, they decided to gather the wounded and dying into an open space in full view of the bridge.  Fit survivors were to disappear in small groups back towards allied territory D-Day 6 June that, year having secured Allied presence in Normandy.  Surviving as best they may, they went, leaving their wounded and dying comrades in the care of  medics and the Army Chaplains.

• In full view of the approaching German forces, they lay there, and sang….

(Abide with me….)

…Swift to its close  ebbs out life’s little day.

    Earth’s joys grow dim, it’s glories pass away.

    Change and decay in all around I see,

    O thou who changest not, abide with me.

• The enemy came on, saw them, heard them, and went slowly by, leaving in their wake their own medics for the wounded and dying, and soldiers to take our airbornwe medics and Padres to be P.O.W.’s.

• 4 weeks ago I was asked to go up to a ward where a man in his late 80’s had turned his face to the wall.  “Dad won’t speak to us anymore”.  Having asked about him I hissed clearly in his ear: ‘Turner, last 3!’

He whispered back: 499 sir – forget that and you don’t get paid….

Turner died 10 days later; I was asked to take his funeral.

Going through his possessions – the family found things which amazed them.  He had hardly ever spoken about the war, but there it all was, and a photograph of a young robust Sergeant Turner, paratrooper, grinning in the autumn sun, having made his risky way back to the Allied lines, eventually to stand with those who , year by year, remembered what it was to have been a survivor of a bridge too far.

·        He had lived with doubles up emotions of joy in surviving and guilt of having survived, when others close to him, did not.  What he tells us echoes in thousands of hearts and minds, bodies and souls to this day.  The particulars of Turners last story are not for sharing out loud : SAVE TO SAY that he determined  to live each dat as fully  and carefully as he could, to stand FOR and WITH those who lost out  for whatever reason  - their own or another’s fault, which he did politically and personally.  And I believed him, that he prayed every day, remembering comrades, medics and Padres, and the faint echo of the hymn:

“I fear no foe with thee at hand to bless,

Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.

Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;

In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me .

            He believed it!

            We believe it!

            Thanks be to God