Ernie's story

I conducted a funeral earlier today of a lady who was born in a small Cotswold town and then moved in her late teens to a small Wiltshire village along with her 4 sisters and her brother. She moved no further than 5 miles from the Wiltshire village and is now buried alongside her husband who came from the village.

After the service I struck up a conversation with her brother, a local preacher. He must be close to 90 but had a wonderful memory and he shared with me stories of his (and his family’s) early life in the Wiltshire village. Including a time after the Second World War (in which he served) when he worked as a deliveryman for the village baker. The baker refused to use a motor van and even in the 1950s all deliveries from the bakery were via a horse drawn cart. The brother (I’ll call him Ernie) remembered a time when he was delivering on Christmas Eve to other villages in the area and finished his final delivery at 1 minute to Midnight.

Ernie then told me about how he had served in the Second World War. He’d been with the Royal Army Medical Corps and was in France from late in 1939. He had been stationed on the outskirts of Paris (“I could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance. And I said to my mate ‘Next leave we’ll go and see that.’ We never got there.”) He left France via Cherbourg in June 1940.

In due course he was stationed out to North Africa. There he developed hepatitis and was hospitalised. Once he was better he was put on a hospital ship and sent to Malta as a medical orderly in a hospital.

“There were only 4 of us going to the hospital. And a lorry came to collect us from the port. As we drove up through the Maltese countryside I saw a woman shepherding sheep. It was a very moving sight and I found myself reciting Psalm 23 ‘The Lord’s my shepherd’. I’ve never forgotten than.”

On returning to Britain he returned home to the village.

“I remember getting off at the little station in the next village. I knew the station master and he told me to leave my kit bag at the station. He’d arrange for it to be delivered to my home later.

As I walked up the hill to my village, I met a man who I didn’t know out walking his Collie dog. The man stopped and wished me good evening and the Colley came and fussed round me. And I found myself in tears. I’d not been home for 5 years. I carried on walking up the lane and a wood pigeon, a blackbird and a thrush started to sing. David, it was like evening vesper. And I said a prayer of thanks.”

I usually blog about things that have happened to me or things on my mind. But these were such gentle words from a gentleman I felt I had to share them.